World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series
B-Shepp going for three in a row at Belle-Clair
By Kevin Kovac
World of Outlaws Late Model Series
Brandon Sheppard
Brandon Sheppard has good reason to be eagerly anticipating the World of Outlaws Late Model Series Photobilly 50 on Friday at Belle-Clair Speedway in Belleville, Ill.
“I’ve won the last two times I’ve been there,” said the fast-rising 20-year-old dirt Late Model driving star from New Berlin, Ill. “I’m definitely excited to go back.”
Indeed, Sheppard has demonstrated an uncanny knack for navigating the unique fifth-mile bullring, the smallest track the seires will visit this season. One year ago he conquered Belle-Clair to win his coveted first-ever WoO feature when the national tour made its debut there, and on June 20 he reached victory lane again with a triumph in the track’s UMP DIRTcar Summernationals event.
What’s Sheppard’s secret to success at the facility popularly known as Belle Vegas? For the most part, it’s just a basic understanding of the intricacies of the tricky speedway.
“When you run at Belleville, it takes a different mindset about how you set your car up,” said Sheppard, who won the Summernationals championship for the first time this season and is closing in on his first UMP DIRTcar weekly crown. “You can’t be as tight (handling condition) as you are at a lot of other tracks. It has short straightaways and tight corners, so you gotta be free and get in-and-out of the gas so you can get it turned and go back the other way real quick.
“And you can’t be afraid of being close to anybody,” he added with a smile, “because it’s definitely tight-quarters racing there. With guardrails on the inside and the outside, there’s not much room to operate. There’s no three-wide around that place.”
Sheppard noted that while real estate at Belle-Clair is hard to come by, that doesn’t mean passing is at a premium there as well. He expects plenty of action in the Photobilly 50, a $10,000-to-win show run in memory of late track photographer Charles Haffer Jr.
“The first time I saw the place I was amazed with how small it was,” Sheppard said. “You can’t help thinking, How is this place gonna race good? I think a lot of the Outlaw guys were a little bit worried that it wasn’t gonna be racey when they first got there (last year) and saw the place. But it’s a racy little place. It definitely surprises people.
“The past three or four times I’ve been to Belleville they’ve been doing a great job with the track (surface),” he continued. “They’ve been keeping the track nice for us all night long. You can really race on it, and that’s a big reason why I’m looking forward (to Friday night).”
Sheppard also is pumped to return to the site of his milestone WoO LMS checkered flag, which he earned in impressive fashion last year driving the iconic Rocket Chassis house car No. 1 while its usual chauffeur, Josh Richards of Shinnston, W.Va., was off running on the NASCAR Nationwide Series. He lowered the track record, won his heat and turned back several challenges to maintain the lead throughout the hyper-competitive 50-lapper.
“That’s definitely a memorable moment for me,” said Sheppard, who will be behind the wheel of his family-owned Rocket No. B5 at Belle-Clair (Richards returned to his father Mark’s house car this season). “To get that first one out of the way meant a lot. It gives you confidence because it lets you know that you can do it.”
With a star-studded roster of WoO regulars, UMP standouts and well-known national names expected on Friday night (last year’s race drew 52 cars), Sheppard knows repeating will be difficult. But he hasn’t entered many events with a better feeling than he has for the Photobilly 50.
“We ran really good there at the Summernationals this year,” said Sheppard, who has won another WoO feature since last year’s visit to Belle-Clair, capturing a USA Nationals preliminary event on Aug. 1 at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis. “I felt the car we had there at Summernationals was even better than the night when we won the Outlaw race, so that really has me excited.
“But it’s gonna be like any race you go to — all the cards have to fall into place.”
WoO’s St. Louis-area weekend continues Saturday at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Mo., where Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill., emerged triumphant last season in a race that had the fans howling down to the final lap.
Much of the race’s 2012 excitement was provided by defending WoO champion Darrell Lanigan of Union, Ky., who swapped the lead four times with Erb before making a go-for-broke late-race bid.
In a scheduled 55-lap feature that was extended an extended circuit, to 56 laps, by a late caution flag that set up a green-white-checkered finish, Lanigan slid to the outside of Erb off turn two on lap 50 and pulled ahead down the backstretch. But Lanigan skated a bit too high between turns three and four and momentarily rode the outside wall with the right side of his car, damaging his steering and causing him to immediately fall to fourth.
Lanigan made his frantic lap-50 charge because he thought there were only two laps remaining when the race restarted on lap 48, prompting him to throw caution to the wind in hopes of overtaking Erb.
While Lanigan won a record 15 WoO races last season and leads the tour this season with 10 victories, don’t think for a minute that he’s forgotten about his near-miss in the ’12 Pevely Nationals. The speedway is one of the few that he’s yet to conquer in his career — second-place runs in 2005 and ’11 are his best finishes — so the hyper-competitive driver will be going all-out to right that missing notch on his resume.
