By J.J. O'Malley
It's been a tale of two seasons for Riley Matthews Motorsports in 2008. After five races, Jim Matthews and Marc Goossens were challenging for the Daytona Prototype championship, riding a streak of three consecutive podium finishes. Since then, though, a variety of circumstances and bad luck have kept them out of the top 10 for three straight races, dropping them to third in the team standings.
Now, Goossens is looking to return to contention in the Porsche 250 presented by Bradley Arant at Barber Motorsports Park.
"We have to put everything back together and hope everything starts coming our way again," Goossens said. "Last year was my first visit to Barber, and our test day was cut short by heavy rain. We didn't have the best car for the race, but I think we can improve on that this year. We had similar handling problems at other tracks last year that we've been able to fix, so I'm hoping to have a strong run there like we've had at most of the races this year."
Joined by Ryan Hunter-Reay, Matthews and Goossens ended 2007 by winning the Sunchaser 1000 at Miller Motorsports Park, scoring the first victory for the team. They carried that momentum into 2008. Hunter-Reay was leading two-third of the way through the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
While mechanical issues resulted in an eighth-place finish, Matthews and Goossens then finished a competitive fourth at Homestead-Miami Speedway before returning to the winner's circle at Mexico City, where Goossens led the final 29 laps. A third at Virginia International Raceway was followed by second at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, where Goossens finished 1.5 seconds behind Ryan Dalziel at the checkered flag.
"At the beginning of this year, all of the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place," Goossens said. "That's how you build on results and score points. That keeps everybody on their toes and builds momentum. But, since Watkins Glen, we haven't had the results we were looking for."
A 13th at Watkins Glen was followed by 11th at Mid-Ohio.
"We were pretty fast in the rain at Mid-Ohio," Goossens. "Jim - along with many other people - got caught out when it suddenly started to rain early in the race, and he got stuck for two laps in the gravel. There wasn't any damage to the car, which made it possible for me to put some good laps and get a lap back. Unfortunately, we were two laps down, and there wasn't enough time to get that second lap back and get a better result."
In the most recent race at Daytona, Matthews was running in the top 10 when he had to go through the grass to avoid two spinning cars.
"We had to change the radiator and bodywork and went eight laps down, so basically a good result was over for us," Goossens explained. "So we kept Jim in the car to get him some more mileage to score some extra points for the Jim Trueman Award."
As a result, Matthews was able to extend his Trueman Award lead to 190 points over Mark Patterson. However, they slipped to 59 points behind Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett in the battle for the championship. They're looking to cut into that lead, beginning with next Sunday's race at barber.
Matthews and Goossens are also looking to share some of the racing luck their endurance racing co-driver experienced last weekend, when Ryan Hunter-Reay captured his first IndyCar Series victory at Watkins Glen International.
"It was great to see Ryan win," Goossens said. "I thought that move he made on Darren Manning was pretty cool, and he definitely deserved to win there. He's got to be in a very good mood, and motivated to keep winning races."
-grandam
More reports from this category all copyright automobilsport.com.
