Chuck Matthews managed to finish first after a close three-way battle for the win in Super Touring 2 at the 2016 NASA Western States Championships at Buttonwillow Raceway. Exchanging the lead a few times, Chuck Matthews and Oli Thordarson battled through 17 laps until Chuck Matthews managed to pull away slightly because of pressure from Adrian Wlostowski on Oli Thordarson.
“That was a great race,” said Matthews. “The first half of the race the three Corvettes in ST2 were running nose to tail and any of the three could have won. We got about halfway through the race and there was a spin on the back straightaway. It separated the cars, one went right one went left and inverted the three cars. At the restart it was a matter of managing traffic, and I got a bit luckier and ended up in front.”
“I think it was a great race,” Thordarson said. “We were nose to tail, all three cars for most of the race up until the full-course yellow. At that point, we were at the end of the train of almost 39 cars. The lapped traffic just separated us. Adrian and Chuck drove fine. My hat’s off to them.”
The top three were so close together that not only did Thordarson manage to set the fast lap of only 0.004 seconds faster than Chuck Matthews, but Adrian Wlostowski finished six tenths of a second behind second-place finisher Oli Thordarson.
“We were all nose to tail in the beginning until the yellow,” Wlostowski said. “Then Chuck made a distance on Oli, and Oli made a distance on me, but then I started catching up and we finished one, two, and three.”
