ROSSBURG, Ohio (June 6) — Brandon Sheppard knew Saturday’s 100-lap Dream XXXII finale at Eldora Speedway could’ve — maybe should’ve — belonged to him. His comprehension of the moment was plastered across his face.
As $100,000 race winner Bobby Pierce’s voice was carrying over the track’s speakers from victory lane, Sheppard stood glumly inside the Rocket Chassis house car team’s familiar blue trailer. The 33-year-old star from New Berlin, Ill., was already changed into a T-shirt and pair of shorts and mourning his cruel fate.
“We had a fast race car,” Sheppard said, shaking his head in disgust.
No other words from Sheppard were really even necessary. The speed in his Rocket1 was there to win him the second Dream of his distinguished career. The good fortune he needed as well, though, eluded him.
On lap 79, Sheppard was stalking Pierce, starting to turn up the wick to make a bid for the lead. But when he entered turn three just a couple car lengths behind his fellow Land of Lincoln racer, his machine suddenly veered to the right and pounded the outside wall.
There was no warning. Sheppard’s right-front tire simply let go, taking away his control of the car. Adding insult to injury, he absorbed a hit from Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., who was running third and couldn’t avoid running into Sheppard and the wall to end his race.
“I don’t know,” Sheppard said. “It either got cut or just blew out, one of the two.”
This was a classic case of what-could-have-been. Sheppard had ceded the top spot to Pierce after leading laps 25-58, but he was far from resigned to finishing second. He was ready to mount a late-race charge and confident that he had the goods to regain command.
“We were coming back to him,” Sheppard said. “That’s the thing — I really felt like we still had the car to win there. Bobby got by me there (for the lead on lap 59) and I didn't think too much of it because I knew he was on the cushion. I started coming back to him, coming back to him, and I was looking at the laps and I thought, All right, here in another lap, or three or four, I’m gonna slide him back and hopefully I can stay in front of him (to the end).
“It was just one of the deals, I didn’t really panic when he passed me because I knew my car was really good. And I knew that if I just kept my composure and we got in lapped traffic again, I could get him back.”
Sheppard didn’t get the chance. His hopes came to an abrupt halt against the mud-caked concrete on the outside of turn three.
“Well, the bad part was, I started turning into the corner, and about halfway into my entry (the tire) blew out or whatever happened there,” Sheppard said. “And it just, I mean, picked up speed, it felt like, towards the wall, and you just do all you can to get it whoa’d up.
“And you know somebody’s going to come in there and hit you, so you just brace for the wall, and then you … tuck and wait for the next one to hit you because you know you crashed right in the lane and we’re going so fast here that you can’t get stopped.”
O’Neal was that pursuer whom Sheppard collected. The 25-year-old who drove the iconic Rocket1 machine in 2023 and a couple months in ’24 — a period during which he won Eldora’s ’23 World 100 — was settled into third place and primed for a career-best Dream finish when Sheppard’s disabled car suddenly blocked the path of his SSI Motorsports Longhorn Chassis.
“The one lap I kind of chose to run that top (entering turn three) to get by a lapped car and (Sheppard) blew a right-front tire out and I didn’t have anywhere to go,” O’Neal said moments after visiting the Rocket1 pit stall to talk with Sheppard and team owner Mark Richards. “I seen him pretty early, but there was just no way I was going to slow down. And (the surface) was too slick to stop and come back underneath of him and there wasn't enough room between him and the wall to drive past him, so I just spun and tucked and hoped it wasn’t that bad.
“And thankfully, I don’t think our car’s that bad — mostly nose, right-front suspension.”
Would O’Neal have factored into the race’s outcome if he could avoided Sheppard? He wasn’t certain about that, but he would’ve liked to have been around to better his previous high-water Dream mark of fourth in 2024.
“Bobby was really good,” O’Neal said. “I don’t know that I would have had a shot. It probably would have had to been in traffic if I did have a shot, but I don’t think I would have passed it. His car was really balanced.
“I was good after about 10 or 15 laps. It just took me just a minute to kind of get moving. About the time them guys got in traffic, I was getting better. I didn’t fire really great with them guys.”
Sheppard had no such trouble nor doubts about his prospects for dealing with Pierce. Everything seemed to be going his way for a rare time at Eldora.
“It was probably the best car I’ve ever had here,” Sheppard said.
Here’s where it should be pointed out that, while Sheppard is a Dream winner — he captured the 2019 event to give Richards his long-awaited first crown jewel victory at the famed half-mile oval — and also earned a $100,000 check for winning the 2024 Dirt Track World Championship driving the Longhorn house car, his overall Eldora results aren’t eye-popping. He has four top-five finishes in 12 career Dream feature starts (including Saturday), and he’s never placed better than sixth in 11 career appearances in the World 100 finale. What’s more, his lone triumphs in Eldora crown jewel preliminary features came in 2015 when he swept his pair at the World 100 driving a family-owned No. B5, though he also was stripped of two Dream prelim wins with Best Performance Motorsports in 2016 after a failed tire test.
But Sheppard possessed a stout vehicle throughout this year’s Dream Week. He made a 21st-to-fourth run in Wednesday’s 50-lap FloRacing Night in America feature and was a bona fide contender to win Friday’s 50-lap preliminary feature until lap 16 when Mason Zeigler of Chalk Hill, Pa., was turned into his path on the homestretch, causing right-front fender and suspension damage that left Sheppard hobbling to a ninth-place finish.
Sheppard finally had things going his way on Saturday. He took advantage of a pole starting spot in the fifth heat to win it for the outside pole in the 100-lapper and ran either first or second for all 79 circuits he lasted in the headliner until his demise left him 18th in the finishing order.
The racetrack was to his liking for the main event, even after a 10-minute downpour late in the afternoon delayed the start of the evening’s action for nearly 90 minutes.
“For the rain that we had, the track was awesome,” Sheppard said. “It wasn’t cushion-dominant like I thought it was going to be. It widened out. It got pretty clean in the middle, it looked like, there at the end.
“They did a really good job with the track all weekend honestly. They left it hard from last night all day today. There comes a time when you got to dig it a little bit, and they dug it and it rained a little bit, but fortunately they had it hard enough where they rolled it right back in.”
Sheppard felt he had plenty of racetrack to work with in his planned challenge of the 29-year-old Pierce down the stretch. He just didn’t end up having the laps he needed to make that run at his first crown jewel since returning to the Rocket1 seat for the 2025 season.
What would the final 21 laps have been like if Sheppard hadn’t gone down? That thought — of a showdown between two Illinois superstars on the sport’s biggest stage – did bring a bit of a smile to his face.
“You know, we’ll never know now, but I would have liked to at least tried,” Sheppard said. “It was gonna be a hell of a battle for sure.
“I hate it for Hudson too, and it’s just … it’s unfortunate for my team, man. They worked their tails off, and that car is so, so badass,” he continued, hailing his Rocket XR2 machine that he’s raced in the majority of his starts this season. “Hopefully it’s not hurt. All of our cars have been really good this year, though, so if it is hurt, we’ll get another one out and go on to the next one.”
Maybe Sheppard and his team will also eventually understand what caused their right-front tire failure. Hoosier Tire oval track dirt product manager Shanon Rush huddled with Richards over the tire inside the Rocket1 trailer after the race, closely examining the gash in its inner sidewall. Rush took the tire with him for deep analysis in the Hoosier lab in hopes of determining what might have led to Sheppard’s problem; he said camber rates, air pressure, excessive heat or simply the tire being cut down are all possibilities, but a definitive answer might never be known (and, Rush also pointed out, there were no other reported right-front tire problems during the four days of racing).
Richards certainly didn’t think camber or air pressure was a factor; he noted that Sheppard’s right-front had more air pressure than a couple other racers he immediately checked with. It also didn’t seem like Sheppard was pushing the tire to the point it should let go.
“The track was slick enough,” Sheppard said, “and usually when it gets that slick like that you’re not too hard on your right-front tire as far as overheating the inside of the sidewall.”
It’s quite possible Sheppard just suffered a horrible break. He was well aware of that reality considering how his last two nights at Eldora had gone.
“Man, we had some s--- luck this week,” Sheppard said. “I felt like we had a car capable of winning all three nights.
“It’s going to be a long drive home for sure,” he added before ending on a positive note: “But, you know, the car’s fast. It’s been fast all year, so we’re just ready to go to the next one mostly. That’s all we can do is just keep plugging away and keep going.”