Brandon Sheppard(center), owner Mark Richards, and crew chief Danny White have had a tough week
Following a crash that led to two consecutive nights resulting in finishes of 20th and 23rd at Minnesota’s Deer Creek Speedway, the Mark Richards-owned Rocket Chassis house car team decided to forego their plans to race with the XR Super Series at Stuart(IA) Speedway in favor of making the long journey back to their home base.
After an grueling drive of more than 900 miles(one way) back to Rocket 1 Racing’s headquarters in Shinnston, West Virginia, the team set out to build a new racer for driver Brandon Sheppard then turn back around and head for Odessa, Missouri for Thursday night’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event at the I-70 Motorsports Park.
Sheppard had entered the weekend at Deer Creek as the LOLMDS points leader but left trailing defending champion Tim McCreadie.
For much of the night at I-70, it seemed as if the team’s exhaustive efforts had paid off. Sheppard set the overall fast time in qualifying around the revived 3/8 mile clay oval then went on to earn the pole for the feature by winning the first heat race of the evening.
Jimmy Owens took the early lead in that race but Sheppard passed the four-time champion 11 laps into the 30-lap affair. From that point, it looked as if the blue No. 1 car was bound for victory lane as Sheppard led the wide open action on the blisteringly hot night. However, things suddenly turned sour as the cars were roaring through turns three and four with the feature race’s white flag in sight.
Sheppard’s car began smoking badly with a stream of fluid trailing behind. It was later confirmed that the engine had been lost. What had looked to be a payoff for the hours of travel and hard work during the heat of summer literally went up in smoke just over one lap from the finish.
“Don’t really know what happened yet,” Sheppard told FloRacing.com following the conclusion of the race. “We haven’t assessed the damage but we know the motor let go. We just don’t know why. They were definitely, I’m sure we were all running hot out there as hard as we were running.”
Sheppard recognized the efforts of eventual feature winner Hudson O’Neal and his Double Down Motorsports team but vowed that his own team would continue to work hard.
“It’s definitely disheartening,” the New Berlin, Illinois native admitted. “We had a really fast race car all night long. For it to end like that just sucks, for sure. Congratulations to Hudson and all his guys. They did a really great job. This will make for another long couple of nights but we’ll get her fixed and try again tomorrow.”
Please consider also reading:
Hudson O’Neal takes advantage of Sheppard’s misfortune to claim Lucas feature at I-70
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