FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 26) — There were 16 laps left in Prairie Dirt Classic and the 100-lap World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series event at Fairbury Speedway was primed to get serious. | RaceWire

Brian Shirley was clinging to the lead he had seized on lap 23. Defending champion Bobby Pierce and three-time race winner Brandon Sheppard were restarting side-by-side behind him. Nick Hoffman was up to fourth and eager to avenge his last-lap loss to Pierce in last year’s PDC.

Then the race suddenly was turned upside down.

As Shirley fired on lap 84 to bring the 14 cars remaining on the track to the green flag following the 14th of 15 caution flags in a marathon, rain-delayed feature that concluded in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Pierce’s car turned sideways on the inside of turn three. Mayhem ensued with more than half the field — nine cars — crashing together in a pileup that brought the huge and still engaged crowd to a roar.

The only driver blissfully unaware of the incident? Chatham, Ill.’s Shirley, who sped away from the mess on his way to an emotional first-ever PDC victory worth a whopping $88,500 including lap money.

“I didn’t know anything,” the 44-year-old Shirley said of what occurred behind him. “I just came around to the backstretch (under red-flag conditions) and saw everybody there crashed.”

The tangle was triggered by Oakwood, Ill.’s Pierce, whose car faltered as he sought to hit a perfect restart that might propel him by Shirley and to a second straight PDC triumph. He immediately collected Mooresville, N.C.’s Hoffman, and then the chain-reaction swept up everyone behind Shirley except a fortunate quartet — New Berlin, Ill.’s Sheppard, Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill., Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., and Cody Overton of Evans, Ga. — who escaped unscathed.

Max Blair and Mike Marlar rammed into Hoffman. Jonathan Davenport twirled from the outside of the second row. Jason Jameson spun into the pile. Tanner English, Daulton Wilson and Garrett Alberson were involved as well.

Only Alberson was forced out with the low-speed accident not inflicting major damage, but it was a race-changing moment. How could it not be with the involvement of Pierce, who had nearly overtaken Shirley for the lead just before the lap-84 caution flag?

Pierce, 28, went on to finish sixth, but he was understandably distraught with his fate. He headed almost straight to his toterhome after returning to the pit area and stayed there to cool off for nearly half an hour before emerging to talk about the tangle.

“What I was doing, I was trying to get a little bit of a run there,” Pierce said. “(Shirley) was going early (on the restarts). He wasn’t really bottling up the field — like, he was doing what he needed to do. I was trying to anticipate it.

“He didn’t hit the brakes. I just felt like he kind of slowed his pace for just a split second, but it might have just been me trying to time it. Well, I hit the brake pedal and (the motor) stalled. And that’s the thing — when you're going like 2 mph and it stalls, it ain’t firing back up, but when you’re racing and it the stalls for a split second, chances are it fires back up.

“It happened in the race, too, like, two times during the race (under green) when I was running the bottom going in there,” he continued. “It’s a thing that happens sometimes when you’re running little tracks because you got to run a lot of gear. You’re running this high gear, a lot of gear, so when you hit the brake pedal, your motor, the gear just drags your motor down.

“When I was shooting to the bottom and I’d hit the brake pedal it would stall for a split second and then fire right back up because your wheels are still rolling whereas on a restart, we’re going slow and I hit the brake pedal and it …”

It just didn’t go — a disastrous circumstance for the drivers following Pierce on a tightly-packed restart.

Like for Hoffman, the 33-year-old who’s Pierce’s closest pursuer in the WoO points standings and couldn’t avoid his rival since he restarted in fourth place.

“I guess I need to rewatch it, but I was the first car to hit Bobby,” said Hoffman, who survived to finish fourth. “I was right behind Bobby on the inside. He just tried to time Shirley’s start there, and Shirley just waited just a tick longer (to fire) that time. And, you know, Bobby kind of jumped it and then stopped, and I think he hit Shirley in the left-rear and it just kind of parked him. He stalled the motor.

“I just seen him pointed in the wrong direction and I just piled in at that point. I hit him right in the door and got turned, and luckily Max (Blair) hit me right in the door so it didn’t flatten my tire.

“That sucked,” he added. “I just kind of got it rolling there and felt really good. It felt like I had a pretty good game plan on what to do on that restart and stuff and then it just didn’t work out.”

Davenport, 41, of Blairsville, Ga., restarted on the outside of Hoffman in fifth place but couldn’t get away.

“I really don’t know what happened,” said Davenport, who continued, finishing 14th. “Hell, I asked everybody if I caused it because I really don’t know.

“I thought Bobby went and then checked. I went and checked, but then, like, he didn’t go, and I was getting plowed in from behind. I got turned around, so I got out of the wreck kind of backwards. I got turned around and then I got hit in my front end. It kind of pushed out me out of the way.”

Sheppard, 32, and Erb, 52, parlayed their avoidance of the wreck to restart second and third, respectively, and finish in those positions. Both drivers breathed a sigh of relief that they were in precisely the right spots to stay clean.

“My assumption would be, I seen Bobby go before Shirley even went, and then he must have stopped and somebody must have hit him in the left-rear,” Sheppard said. “Shirley was starting so early there that it was messing me and Bobby up. We were both trying to get turned and going at the same time, so we kind of had to do some throttle and brake-jockeying around.”

Erb was succinct with his assessment: “I just seen Bobby go sideways. I was on the outside and I just seen him go sideways … I just turned right to get up the racetrack.”

Shirley acknowledged pushing the envelope on his restarts by stomping on the gas rounding turn three, but that was part of his strategy to keep hungry pursuers at bay.

“I knew I had been starting a lot earlier than probably what you should, but I was just starting there because I didn’t want nobody to get a jump,” Shirley said. “I really wanted to be able to control the restart because if one guy could just get going, like Sheppy or Bobby, and they got a good run, I definitely feel they could have had an opportunity to roll me.”

Passing Shirley in open track was exceedingly difficult on a surface that was quite cushion-dominant following a three-hour delay for a downpour that struck just before the feature was lining up. Both Pierce and Sheppard took their shots but couldn’t pull it off.

Pierce, in fact, seemed to have positioned himself well for a run at a PDC repeat after an uneven. He began the race from the outside pole but almost immediately slipped to fifth, forcing him to battle more than he would have liked.

“I fell back there in the beginning to fifth,” Pierce said. “I didn't really have the car set up quite right. Like, I needed more balance, but you just never know. That track condition there (after the rain) was so different than anything we had all weekend.

“I really didn't need the caution there at the end (on lap 84), because I was kind of starting to set (Shirley) up. He hit the wall out of (turn) two one lap, and then I thought I was going to capitalize on him there, but … he came down and blocked. He did everything he needed to do. He was driving his butt off to stay in the lead, between me and Sheppard pressuring him. And he did a good job getting the lead.

“I think I could have had something for him there if it would have just stayed green a little longer so I could kind of get something going. And then we never really got in lapped traffic, I would’ve liked to see that,” he continued. “But congrats to him on the win, man. He really did everything right. He was nailing his restarts, and pulling away … not pulling away, but just doing what he could to get a gap.”

After the race, Pierce’s mind was largely focused on how he could avoid experiencing future problems with a stalled engine.

“Someone with J.D’.s crew mentioned maybe like running more fuel pressure at low idle, because you knew you got fuel pressure low and high, and so maybe I need to turn that up, maybe I need to turn my idle up, just whatever you got to do so it doesn't happen again,” Pierce said. “Because like I said, it was happening when I went to the bottom (under green) like two different times.”

Sheppard, meanwhile, chased Shirley relentlessly over the final 16 laps but fell short of a fourth career PDC trophy, crossing the finish line just 0.307 of a second behind the victor.

“I was waiting for one slip (from Shirley) because I was going to throw a slider there,” said Sheppard, who recorded eighth top-five finish in 10 PDC feature starts since 2013. “But once we get lined out there, you can run in so hard on the cushion, if I was going to (try to) slide up, I was going to crash into the cushion coming out of the corner because you had to run in wide open, but you kind of had to ease to (the cushion) on exit because it was choppy up there.

“You know, it’s just when the track gets like that, you can just run in there wide open and bounce off the cushion. So really once we got lined out there, after a few laps, after them cautions, there wasn’t much I could do. Because he’s running in wide open every lap, too.”