“We made a couple of changes in Friday’s practice, but unfortunately, it ended up raining on Saturday morning, so we didn’t get to test everything out,” Mathew said. “In the wet, I felt strong and confident that, if it was a rain race, I’d be battling for first. I got a pretty good start in the race but got a little bit bogged down in the first corner and lost a couple of spots. I clawed my way back up to the front group and, every lap, the pace was getting quicker and quicker, and I was just struggling to hang onto the guys. There were some sections where I felt like I could make up time, but in one or two corners, I was losing a lot of time, so we need to make some changes to the setup for Sunday. We had a long debriefing on Saturday night, probably the longest one I’ve ever had, and we have a very good idea what we need to do on Sunday, We’ll be very busy in the morning warmup, and it looks like it’s going to be dry, so we hope to finish on the podium on Sunday.”

Mathew’s teammate Sam Lochoff, who qualified 16th in Junior Cup on a track that he’d never seen until Friday, cut that starting position in half and moved up eight positions during the seven-lap race to notch an eighth-place result aboard his #57 Westby Racing Yamaha YZF-R3. Sam has been improving with each lap he rides on the unfamiliar Wisconsin circuit, and he and the team are looking for a top-five result in Sunday’s race.