Sheppard makes history; Blair comes close; Bruening makes remarkable recovery

There are always storylines with every race but the World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series event at the Orange County Fair Speedway in Middletown, NY on Thursday night was jam packed with tales to tell.

Defending WoO Late Models champion and current points lead Brandon Sheppard ultimately scored the feature win. Just taking a glance at the end results might cause one to assume it was just another typical night for the Mark Richards-owned Rocket Chassis house car team. After all, Sheppard won his heart race then drew the pole position for the feature.

After trailing Rick Eckert for the first five laps, Sheppard assumed the top spot when the early race leader suffered mechanical trouble on the fifth lap. But claiming the win proved to be anything but easy as the No. 1 machine had to fight off challenges, first from Chris Madden during the early stages of the race, and then from Max Blair over the closing laps.

Eventually, Sheppard would win the race to the finish line by a mere .075 seconds over Blair. The margin of victory was so close that the driver was not entirely sure he had actually won the race. He also pointed out after the race that only very narrowly avoided disaster late in the going.

“No, I didn’t,” Sheppard said in his victory lane interview when asked if he knew he had won at the checkered flag. “I really wasn’t sure. I was laying over because my right rear tire was going down over the last couple of laps there. I was really laid over on the right rear. He definitely made me work for it. That was a heck of a fun race. I’ve got to say thanks to Max for really driving me clean. It was a lot of fun to race with him. I’m sure he’ll be tough all weekend with us. I couldn’t do this without all my great fans and my great crew.”

The win was an historic one for Sheppard. It was the 74th World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series triumph which ties him for second on the all-time list with three-time champion Darrell Lanigan. He is now just four wins behind the driver who once drove the Rocket house car, Josh Richards.

So did the New Berlin, Illinois driver ever think he would reach such heights?

“I was hoping so but where I started back home in Illinois at Macon, Farmer City, Fairbury and places like that, I had pretty realistic goals back then,” Sheppard declared. “My dad and my grandpa gave me everything I needed to go race so thanks to them. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be driving for Mark Richards right now. They gave me what I needed to get out on the road.”

For Blair, it was an ‘Oh so close’ moment for one of Dirt Late Model racing’s top regional drivers. The 31-year-old Pennsylvania native reflected on his night that resulted in losing out by the thinnest of margins during his post-race interview with DirtVision.com.

“At the beginning of the race I was just trying to play it conservative, it was kind of choppy and rough,” Blair explained. “Then, I don’t know who it was, but I saw a flash of somebody on the outside so I thought I’d better move up there and see what we got. When I moved up, I felt really good and felt like maybe I ran those guys down a little bit. On that next restart, Chris(Madden) took the bottom and I got second. I thought ‘Oh man, maybe we’ve got something here’. He(Sheppard) obviously had a tire going down. I think we were pretty good, I don’t know when that started going down. You don’t get too many opportunities to race with them guys that hard for the win so that was a lot of fun.”

Does this run give Blair extra confidence going into the remainder of this busy weekend for the WoO Late Models?

“It sure does,” Blair stated. “Coming to a place where we’ve never been before, we struggled early. I qualified pretty bad then got a little better in the heat race, and a lot better in the feature. It was a fun night and we learned a little bit. We got to put on a heck of a show.”

Tyler Bruening had perhaps the most adventurous night of all. Trouble in qualifying led to trouble in his heat race which resulted in the need for a backup car just to make the show. However, the Iowa driver would ultimately work his way up through the field to earn a podium finish at the checkered flag.

“I didn’t even have time to have any emotions,” Bruening said following the race. “I don’t know, we were terrible in time-trials so we started throwing wrenches around. The oil pump belt came off coming into one(in qualifying). We checked the motor, we ran it and it blew up coming to the checkered flag here for the heat race. We thrashed on it. I mean, hell, we were putting shocks on the car when they were going four wide on the race track out here. I was just really trying to make the race to be honest with you.”

But things began to go in the favor of the Skyline Motorsports team once they made it onto the track for the 40-lap main event.

“Once we got going, I thought, geez, we’ve got a pretty good race car,” the driver explained. “I just kept slowly working my way and working my way. You’ve got to have some stuff go your way. It didn’t go all our way tonight but we had things in the race go our way and it helped us. This Skyline Motorsports Capital Race Car was dynamite tonight. We were really good.”

Chris Madden entered the night second in the series standings and appeared poised to give Sheppard a run for his money. After racing side-by-side for second with his fellow Rocket Chassis driver the two carried their battle to the front of the field after Eckert suffered his troubles. However, thigs to not end well for the Gray Court, SC driver.

Just two laps from the finish, fuel pressure issues doomed the No. 44 car and relegated Madden to a 13th place finish.

Please consider also reading “Brandon Sheppard fights of intense challenge for WoO win at Orange County“

For the first time since earlier in the spring, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series regular Stewart Friesen returned to Late Model competition on Thursday night. The driver who has been a force this season in Big-Block Modified competition and is a playoff contender for the Truck Series title turned in a top-10 qualifying effort then finished third in his heat race.

After starting 9th in the feature, the Canadian native posted a solid effort that ultimate brought him home in the fourth position.

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