SHAWANO, Wis. (July 30) — Not everyone likes the long, sprawling Shawano Speedway, but don’t include Shane Clanton in that group. The 43-year-old driver from Zebulon, Ga., loves the place.
Clanton proved his affinity for the half-mile oval outside Green Bay once again on Tuesday night, leading all but the first circuit en route to a convincing $10,000 victory in the 40-lap World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series-sanctioned Sundrop Shootout. It was his third WoO win in the last five years at Shawano and came over the tour’s 2019 dominator Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., who couldn’t summon the speed to seriously challenge Clanton in the caution-free feature.
There’s something about Shawano that just tickles Clanton’s fancy.
“I don’t know if it’s because it’s just so big and you can lay out and get stuck getting in the corner or if it just fits my driving style,” said Clanton, who captured his second WoO A-main since taking over as the driver of Iowan Greg Bruening’s Skyline Motorsports Capital Race Car in late June and his third overall checkered flag of the season on the circuit. “I’d race here every day. I mean, it’s not hard on equipment. It’s fun to race at. You race all over — you catch a car and you go somewhere they’re not.
“There’s not many places we go that I like that, but this is one of them.”
Clanton was the evening’s dominant force as he set fast time — by less than a tenth of a second over his Skyline Motorsports teammate Tyler Bruening of Decorah, Iowa — won a heat race and dominated the 40-lap headliner. He shot by polesitter Boom Briggs of Bear Lake, Pa., for the lead on lap two and never felt any pressure from a rival over the remaining distance.
The 26-year-old Sheppard reached second place from the sixth starting spot by lap eight, but his best efforts to run down Clanton in his Rocket Chassis house car were all for naught. The runaway WoO points leader got no closer to Clanton than about a half-second before losing ground in the closing laps and crossing the finish line 2.790 seconds behind the victor, snapping Sheppard’s two-race win streak on the series.
Jimmy Mars of Menomonie, Wis., steadily worked his way forward from the ninth starting spot in his MB Customs machine to finish third after overtaking outside polesitter Chase Junghans of Manhattan, Kan., exiting turn four on the final lap. Junghans settled for a fourth-place finish in his XR1 Rocket while Shawano regular Nick Anvelink of Navarino, Wis., recorded a career-best WoO finish of fifth after starting 15th in his MB Customs mount.
Clanton remarked that his car ran flawlessly “all night,” resulting in one of his best start-to-finish performances of the season.
“Hot-lapping I wasn’t fast, but I wasn’t mashing the gas because it was so greasy,” Clanton said. “Then when we qualified, I knew what Tyler had for setup and I knew how fast he was hot-lapping and how stuck he was, so I just drove it a little harder and it made the difference.”
Ripping off 40 laps without the break provided by a caution flag was no problem for Clanton, who preferred the non-stop nature of the race.
“The best car won the race when there’s no caution,” Clanton commented. “When the caution comes out, you could seal a tire or blister a tire or whatever, and sometimes it changes the race. We were good enough to be the best car tonight.”
The Shawano surface allowed Clanton to negotiate slower traffic with relative ease and stave off any possible threat from Sheppard, who briefly closed to within about a half-second of the leader on lap 26 before moments later falling more a second behind for the remainder of the distance.
“It had traction spots where you wasn’t just married to the bottom so I could pass lapped cars on the outside,” Clanton said. “I know they put some clay on it over the winter or whatever, but whatever they done, it made it better. Last year I know it rubbered and there was no chance it was gonna rubber tonight.”
Clanton’s only real scare came in the final circuits when he had a run-in with an inside marker tire that slightly dented the left-front of his car’s nosepiece.
“I seen it on the (score) board there was a 1 (Sheppard) in second and (his crewman) was telling me I still had a good lead,” Clanton said. “It closed up a little bit there (late) and then I hit a uke tire and I thought I really messed myself up. It was stupid … down in (turns) three and four with about five to go I hit it and I’m like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. But it didn’t mess us up.”
Sheppard wasn’t close enough to take advantage of Clanton’s stumble. He gassed his car hard around the outside of the track lap after lap but just couldn’t make the headway necessary to challenge Clanton and secure his 16th WoO win of the season.
“The bottom was probably the preferred line,” Sheppard said. “I could keep up with (Clanton) on top, but I really knew I wasn’t gonna pass him in the bottom because he had a good, smooth line going down there. He did a really good job.
“I was hustling it as hard as you could hustle it up there. I kept thinking maybe he would bobble and as long as I could maintain I was gonna stay where I was at, but then there towards the end he got through lapped traffic really good and the top was just going away. I was trying not to give up on it, but we couldn’t quite keep up.”
Calling the Shawano track conditions “probably the best I’ve seen it,” Sheppard was satisfied with his runner-up finish. It continued his remarkable run of consistency since his $125,000 victory in last month’s Dream XXV at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio; in his last 16 starts he’s won seven times and hasn’t finished worse than fourth.
“This place is definitely still eluding us win-wise, but the past two years have been tough,” Sheppard said. “We got a flat tire in a heat race the first year (2017) and last year we spun out in the heat race. It was just a rough couple years here at this track, so to run second and be as competitive as we were, we’re definitely happy with it.
“Next year when we come back we need to win a heat race. That’s gonna put us in a better position to be a spot better.”
Mars, 47, continued moving forward during the race’s second half. He was fifth at lap 20 and proceeded to grab fourth from Cade Dillard of Robeline, La., on lap 30 and steal third from Junghans on the final circuit.
Would Mars have liked a caution flag to fly late in the distance? He wasn’t sure.
“In one way you wish it would’ve happened,” Mars said. “In another way, after the last couple runs that I’ve had, I was happy that I got third. That was kind of a win for us the way we’ve been going.
“We’ve been fighting some ignition problems, which has been affecting the car quite a bit. I was trying to go back through and figure out what’s been going on, so hopefully we got things back in order again. We’ve been running consistent all year and then all of a sudden I didn’t know what was wrong. It kind of freaked me out.”
Clanton’s victory continued his steady improvement since replacing Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., in the newest Skyline Motorsports entry just over one month ago. He noted that his confidence in his new affiliation is growing thanks to the manpower he now has behind him as his mechanic when he drove his father-in-law Ron Davies’s equipment, Josh Smith, has been joined by Steve Dixon and Roger Padgett, the Skyline Motorsports employees who worked with Madden.
“Since Day 1 we were gelling,” Clanton said. “Even when they (Dixon and Padgett) were working for Madden we still discussed things back and forth. What (joining forces) has allowed me to do is concentrate on my race car. What people don’t realize is, yeah, I’ve had good help before and I’ve had the right help, but not the right help and enough help.
“The 1 car (Sheppard) has got three full-time guys — and actually four with (team owner) Mark (Richards) — and to compete against that you’ve got to have the equal (number of crewmen) so I can concentrate on my car and not have to do other things. Now (with three full-time crewmen) I don’t have to work on my race car; I let Steve work on it and I just make the adjustments. I just tell him what to do and he immediately goes and does it. If I tell him to turn four shocks over and put them right back on, he don’t argue one bit. He just goes out there and does it.
“That means more than what people realize. When you have to argue with your crew while we’re doing something … I don’t have to argue one bit with him. When we do it and we’re wrong, he says, ‘Man, you should’ve never done that,’ but it ain’t like he’s griping that he had to do it. He’ll just go do anything I ask him to do and it’s hard to find somebody like that.”
Notes: Clanton, who registered his 45th career WoO victory, scored his two previous series wins this season on Feb. 9 at Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga., and July 13 at Ogilvie (Minn.) Raceway. His previous WoO triumphs at Shawano, meanwhile, came in 2015 and ’16. … Cade Dillard ran in the top five for much of the distance before finishing sixth. … After leading the race’s first lap, Boom Briggs faded to a 13th-place finish, one lap down at the checkered flag. … Darrell Lanigan of Union, Ky., said he “loves” racing at Shawano and he’s had plenty of success on the big layout — he won the WoO feature in 2011, ’12 and ’14 — but he was never a factor Tuesday en route to a ninth-place finish. He said an ignition problem plagued him throughout the night and caused a vibration in his car during the feature. … Tyler Bruening was unable to parlay his second-fastest qualifying lap into heat-race success after he was outgunned for the lead at the start by Briggs and then slid high in dirty air in turn two to fall to fourth. He finished 10th in the feature, going a lap down to Clanton at the finish line. … The only driver in the 23-car field who didn’t start the feature was Chris Engels of Green Bay, Wis., who hit the wall during hot laps. ... The event was co-sanctioned by the Dirt Kings Tour, which awarded its drivers show-up points for participating.
