TOLEDO OH (7-4-08)--Matt Carter headed into the 2008 ARCA RE/MAX Series season with tremendous pressure as a series rookie assuming driving duties for the team that led Frank Kimmel to an unprecedented nine series championships. The Denver, North Carolina native answered the pressure with a career-first win at Toledo Speedway in May. 

Carter currently sits third in the ARCA RE/MAX Series Championship Point Standings and is the next featured driver in arcaracing.com's "Mid Season Report Cards", which recaps the 2008 performance of a different ARCA RE/MAX Series driver and team each day, focusing on the top-15 championship point contenders.

Matt Carter's Season Stats at a Glance:

Mid Season Report Card:

Professor	Driver Grade	Team Grade	Analysis
	B	B	Matt Carter is a young man with a good head on his shoulders. Carter has really shined on the short tracks which is where virtually all of his experience has come from but he is gaining on it on the speedways. I'm not surprised that he is where he is in points and look for him to be in the hunt all year long. Carter has a great team behind him, completely new from the championship years past. The team fell right into being competitive from the very start. Of course, they have a tremendous amount of experience with Matt's dad, Travis, overseeing the operation. First class effort.
	B	B +	I guess I expect a lot out of Matt this season.  He is a capable driver with very good equipment to drive.  Getting his first win in Toledo where Ken Schrader and Frank Kimmel have dominated over the years was a big hurdle Matt overcame.  Now with that win he needs to be more consistent.  He shouldn't finish out of the top 10 at any track ARCA goes to. Having to fill the shoes of 9-time champion Frank Kimmel is no easy task.  Add to that taking Bill Kimmel out of the picture and this team easily could have fallen off the face of the earth.  But they didn't and they even have ran fairly decent.  Getting a win already in the first half of the season shows that this team kept notes from the previous decade.
	B -	B -	At 26 years-old and stepping in to a completely different race car heading in to 2008, Matt Carter's done extremely well.  Ill-handling race cars and puzzling handling during certain races this year have hampered this, in all reality, first-year team.  Having his dad as his crew chief and surrounding himself with all his crew guys has been a plus.  Sooner than you think, Carter will add to his rookie resume the ability to handle the pressure in a championship run aboard Larry Clement's ride, which will be played out on superspeedways and on SPEED TV in front of a national audience. I've seen Travis Carter shake his head side-to-side after hearing of a tire going down under green, or when Matt radio's in the car is not handling well, and this team is chasing their set-ups in a first-year effort.  Larry Clement has won championships and remains very involved, but it is the Carter shops where the 46 is kept and worked on in the Carolinas.  Salvaging solid finishes on not-so stellar days may prove out they are championship contenders.
	B	B +	Matt got off to a great start--leading the points early and getting his first win at Toledo.  Mat wants to win badly and it shows in the way he attacks the race track.  Matt has the advantage of the years of experience of not only Larry Clements but of his father, Travis as well.  Matt admitting that he is actually listening to the advice of his dad the first time he was on Inside ARCA was quite funny.Larry Clement Racing knows what it takes to win championships.  That is quite obvious as they have nine of them.  2008 is a challenge because its been a long time since the team has had a rookie in the car.  If they keep giving Matt good race cars he'll contimue to run up front.
	B +	B	Matt has three top fives and five top tens to go along with the single win at Toledo.  He sits third in series points after leading early.  He's run up front in most races but has had a tendency to fade from very front late in many. Clement Racing has done a nice job fielding the rookie after eight seasons with the ultimate ARCA driver, Frank Kimmel at the wheel. The #46 is always competitve, but they have to take some of the responsibilty for the late race fades that have cost Matt top three spots.
Matt Carter	C	C	I don't think people should out run us ever. I think we should win every race and we don't seem to be putting ourselves into the position to win every week so I would give myself and the team a C grade. This definitely isn't because of a lack of effort--we work all the time. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Compared to the teams we are racing against versus what we've got, we're doing really, really, good. It's not like we've had bad luck, we've just ran bad. Two things stick out in my mind about the year, that race at Iowa where we missed the set up completely and finished fourth when we should have won and then at  Pocono when we were running pretty good but cut down a tire and we ended up 12th.

Arcaracing.com's "Mid Season Report Cards" recaps the 2008 performance of a different ARCA RE/MAX Series driver and team each day, focusing on the top-15 championship point contenders. Agree or disagree with a driver's analysis? Grade them yourself at the ARCA Nation Forums.