This past weekend represented back-to-back nights of racing at completely different styles of tracks. While Orlando Speed World is more of a bullring, New Smyrna Speedway is a horsepower track. Friday night got off to a rough start with mixed results while Saturday night represented a reversal of fortune and Wendy Mathis showed her true speed and never say die attitude.
"We got off to a bad start at Orlando when I almost hit the wall in practice because the right front brake caliper decided it didn't want to cooperate with me," said Wendy. "We got the problem fixed, but not in time for my heat race, so I had to start shotgun on the field in my heat race. I used the heat race to feel out the car and see what other changes we wanted to make."
The team went to work on some setup changes and looking at why the motor wasn't pulling enough RPM at the end of the straights. "We started eighteenth and finished twelfth. While not the greatest result in the world, by the end of the night the car came around to me and the changes we made to the setup really had a positive impact. While I'm generally not happy to finish twelfth, I was actually quite happy with the car at the end of the race."
Undaunted, the team packed up and headed to New Smyrna Beach on Saturday, confident that they had found something in the setup of the car that would yield better results on Saturday. In practice, the car was only pulling about 7800 RPM down the straights, not enough for top-end speed or enough to help the motor settle the car on turn entry. After a quick gear change, Wendy headed out for her heat race.
"Starting on the pole for my heat race was great and I got a fantastic start," continued Wendy. "The gear change gave me just what I was looking for and the car felt great but still pushed a little bit coming out of turn four. Another car got by me in the end, but I was very happy with second in the heat race."
After the heat, the team talked with Wendy about the tight condition out of turn four and discussed different setup options, ultimately leaving the decision up to Wendy. Starting on the pole for the feature, when the green flag flew Wendy dropped the hammer and took off.
"I got a great start and after I got some heat in the tires, the car felt fantastic, especially through turns three and four," continued Wendy. "Nobody had anything for Troy DeCaire, but he had a tire problem and that left it down to a three car shootout with me, Dude Teate and Wayne Reutimann, Jr. Unfortunately Teate drove in too deep and ran out of brakes and used my car to slow his down. The result was a bent left rear rim for me, which didn't feel very good under caution, but I was not going to slow down for anything."
On the final restart Wendy got a great start and fended off a challenge from Mark Gimmler to come home third! "This is our best result in quite some time and I cannot be more proud of my family. We all really came together as a team this weekend, had great communication and worked through our problems with the car. It's no secret we are up against much better funded teams and basically have two family members and one family friend working on the car. But tonight we showed that we can outsmart the best of them and run at the front where we belong. I've been telling everyone that 2008 is going to be a different story for Wendy Mathis Racing and tonight we showed it!"
As usual Wendy had a throng of young fans (and some older ones too - hee hee) during the autograph session and we loving sharing those pictures with everyone. Enjoy!
Up next on the TBARA schedule are DeSoto Speedway on June 21 and Citrus County Speedway on June 28.
Race on!
