The top three finishers in the Silver Dollar Nationals each started deep in the 33-car field before making their way to the front at I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Nebraska, on Saturday. At the end, it was 15th-starting Tim McCreadie who made the most of the opportunity to stand atop the podium in Victory Lane.

"Sometimes you have to have a little luck," McCreadie said. "I have only run this Pro Power motor twice before. Hats off to Bill Schlieper and everyone at Pro Power."

McCreadie's lucky moment came when Don O'Neal and Brian Shirley made contact with each other and the backstretch wall just before the lap-20 mark. Both were able to keep going, but O'Neal suffered enough damage to the nose of his car to ruin his handling. O'Neal finished 10th.

Shirley also fell back in the final 60 laps of the race to finish seventh.

McCreadie was able to get around the dueling duo on lap 21 and led the rest of the way, but the race was not without drama. McCreadie faced a powerful challenger on lap 69 when Gregg Satterlee's spin erased a 2.9-second lead over a hard-charging Brandon Sheppard.

"When I heard them say Sheppard was second on that final restart, I thought, wow, because he started in the back," McCreadie said. "On that last restart, my crew motioned for me to go out further on the track from where I was running. They showed me where Brandon was running. Holy cow, $53,000, that's a lot of money. After Don and Shirley got together I just got by them. My car was good on the bottom anyway so I just stayed there."



McCreadie had plenty of reason to be worried about Sheppard because he came from the final row and passed every other car in the field. The Silver Dollar Nationals are run under unique rules with all preliminaries -- including not one but two heats -- run the previous night. Sheppard wrecked his car in the first heat, but the crew made sufficient repairs to allow him to win heat two.

"We crashed the car pretty good in the heat race last night," Sheppard said. "We just put it all behind us. We had a pretty good race car tonight. We got behind early on the weekend, but it just shows how resilient we are to run like we did tonight."

Sheppard came up one position short in second.

Meanwhile, Kyle Bronson had to work his way up from 17th before stepping onto the podium in third.

"To do what we did with this level competition tells us how far we have come as a team," Bronson said. "I want to thank my crew. They have busted their rear ends this entire month we have been gone. The tires got hot and I slowed down a little, then I would get going again once they cooled off. For our first time here, we put on a good show."

Scott Bloomquist and Shannon Babb rounded out the top five.

Top 10 Finishers
1. Tim McCreadie
2. Brandon Sheppard
3. Kyle Bronson
4. Scott Bloomquist
5. Shannon Babb
6. Earl Pearson, Jr.
7. Brian Shirley
8. Chris Simpson
9. Hudson O'Neal
10. Don O'Neal
Complete Results, with heat finishes