Matthew had an awesome year for his very first year driving anything. We just had our Champion of Champions event. It was a two day event (run just like a divisional) where all the region's class champions competed head to head with the final times PAX'd to determine the champion. Matthew finished in 3rd place after making a GREAT comeback on Sunday. Saturday was somewhat of a let down for him when a chain broke on his 2nd run and his foot got stuck UNDER the gas pedal on his 3rd run. But he came back Sunday with some awesome runs and finished behind a SS Z06 (Paul Barros) and a very well prepared ESP STi (Joel Ferhman). On top of that he also won the Atlanta Region's Rookie of The Year award.
The scary part is when I let Matthew drive my car at a local novice school I was instructing at. It was the end of the day and I managed to get Joel to let Matthew make about 4 runs around the course. During the lunch break and at the end of the day I had made quite a few runs in my car and managed to get a 27 flat (small course) and but mostly high 27's. Keep in mind, Matthew had NEVER driven a car before, much less one with as much power etc as mine.
His first run he was a little jerky on the gas (after all, he's use to a kart) but did pretty good running a 39. Next run was much smoother and he ran a 34. Next run was MUCH smoother and he ran a 31!!! He spun on his 4th run but it wouldn't have surprised me if it was close to a 30!!!! Unbelievable. We had novices that day that NEVER dropped 8 seconds in three runs. And he had never even driven a car until then... Hell, he couldn't hardly see over the dash, he's only about 5' tall!!!
The other night we went to Andretti Speedlabs to race karts. They won't let him on the big course because he's too young (that's the course he qualified on for Red Bull) so he had to run on the small course, same karts. He was within .02 seconds of setting the all time lap record (which was set by an employee that sets up the karts).
As you might know, I'm in the process of setting my car up for SM and Matthew was going to drive it next year. The other day we were talking about him driving it and he said he wasn't sure he wanted to????? I asked him why and he said "Your car is going to be SM and I want to be competitive..."
Picky little shit. 
Ok, I'm done, thanks for listening to my rant!
)
