Mat Williamson entered the 2023 DIRTcar 358 Modified Series season in search of wins, with a championship far from his mind; but, with some help from Mother Nature, he ended the year with his first series title.
Williamson finished third at Glen Ridge Motorsports Park and picked up the win at Fulton Speedway to start the season. He says the race at Glen Ridge was one that got away, as he surrendered the lead by driving out of the rubber, while passing lapped cars, at a track where he had no experience.
Following a break, the schedule resumed in September, where Williamson finished ninth at Can-Am Speedway and won in the inaugural series race at Albany-Saratoga Speedway. A turning point in his season also came during that stretch, where a race at Weedsport Speedway was postponed by nearly a month.
Williamson had a fast car in hot laps, but lost power when accelerating during time trials; he pulled to the pits, but his team couldn’t find the issue. The next morning, their engine builder came over and diagnosed it to be a problem with the distributor shaft; the fix was made and the rain postponement gave the team another chance.
“I’m not sure if we would’ve won or not; we would’ve probably needed some cautions to fall our way, but I got into the top-five,” said Williamson. “Then I had a right-rear tire go flat, just from the chaos of driving up through the field. We ended up hitting the wall…that was our worst run in the series.”
Williamson quickly rebounded by winning his fourth-straight Hurricane Harvey 75, at Brewerton Speedway, and his first Salute to the Troops 150, at Oswego Speedway, during Super DIRT Week. He says Brewerton is a track where he runs really well, but that something would always seem to happen when he had a good car at Oswego.
Wanted to win that race…
“We were fortunate we had everything go our way this year,” said Williamson. “That’s one of the ones that we’d circled. We hadn’t won it; we’d won most of the big races other than that and Fonda. We really wanted to win that small block race just to say that we’ve done it; to get it done was pretty cool.”
Despite having a championship lead entering the finale at Brockville Ontario Speedway, Williamson was prepared to lose the title. He planned on running a $50,000-to-win Short Track Super Series race at Pennsylvania’s Port Royal Speedway instead, something he’d done in recent seasons, when in the same position.
But weather was on his side yet again, with Port Royal being postponed to 2024. He finished second at Brockville to clinch the title; the two rain postponements allowing him to start and collect points in races that he would’ve otherwise missed.
Williamson says the approach of not racing for a championship may have been a little bit different, but that his mindset was still the same.
“We didn’t set up spare tires, we kind of had the mentality that if we got a flat tire we were going to pull in and park the car, because at that point it wouldn’t be a win,” said Williamson. “You kind of race a little bit care-free, you don’t worry about too many things, but for the most part we go to all these races to try and compete and run up front. That’s kind of the mentality that you would have if you were points racing anyways.”
Williamson says that it’s a cool feeling to be able to finally capitalize on his crew’s hard work by winning the championship; his 10 wins this season, including weekly DIRTcar competition at Ransomville Speedway, were the most of any driver. He says modifieds will remain part of his plans in 2024.
“I think Modified racing is as good as it’s ever been,” concluded Williamson. “The competition level’s super high, there are a lot of good race car drivers and everybody’s got good equipment. It’s probably the toughest time to win races in Modified racing and it’s cool to be able to go all over the country and put on a good show for the fans.”
