RPW Exclusive: Conditions, Tires & The Right Line: All Factors For Mat Williamson’s Second Place At Utica Sunday

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – VERNON, NY – The usual suspects were all aiming for Utica-Rome Speedway’s $6,800 top prize on Sunday, and the cream rose to the top, including second-place finisher Mat Williamson.

Williamson had another strong outing aboard the Behrent’s Performance #3 machine, winning his heat race and making it to the redraw for the feature where he pulled the number six spot.

However, it was right beside the driver who would eventually find his way to victory lane, Matt Sheppard, who drew spot number five.

“I really do feel like whoever got to the front first, between me and Matt, was going to win,” Williamson said. “They told me Rocky (Warner) was coming at the end but lap traffic’s always the great equalizer but that never materialized.”

The reason for that was Joe Kriss’ use of the yellow flag, and even the red, on quite a number of occasions. If the original starting spots were reversed, does Williamson feel like he would have been in victory lane?

“I don’t know if who started fifth instead of sixth would have been able to get to the front easier like Matt did,” he said. “Then, he got to control the pace of the race from there.”

Another variable for teams was the fact that rain forced speedway officials to move the Remembering Alex Friesen Memorial from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. This drastically changed the track’s racing surface.

“Racing during the day certainly got into the first more than Utica typically does,” he said. “Other than that, it was pretty good. It wasn’t as racy as it usually is too which kind of sucked. However, for a race in April when it’s 40 degrees out and below freezing with the wind chill, the track wasn’t really that bad.”

A red flag for a multi-car pileup on lap 17 which included Jimmy Phelps, Demetrios Drellos and Alex Payne, among others, halted the racing action while officials worked to clean things up. At that point, Williamson had worked his way to the runner-up position.

Does he believe his car changed at all during that stoppage or was the number 3 the same throughout the 30-lap distance?

“When we went back to yellow after that, I tried to get back up over the cushion and spin the tires in the rocks,” he said. “I tried to get some graininess and some heat back into them. The car fired off after the red pretty good.”

Did Williamson pull every trick he had out of his bag over the final 13 circuits?

“There was once where Matt drove into turn one and kind of slid up,” he said. “I could have filled the hole and I didn’t. It’s tough when they do stuff like that because you know he’s coming back to the bottom. If I had, we probably would have gotten together. That wouldn’t have been good either.”