Column By: DYLAN FRIEBEL / RPW – FONDA, NY – “I mean I am 2 for 70.”
That’s what Matt Sheppard joked after winning his first Firecracker 50 at the Fonda Speedway.
Sheppard made a lap 28 pass on pole sitter Matt Delorenzo and survived a lot of late race restarts with the best in the business next to him.
He dethroned Stewart Friesen when it came to crown jewel events at Fonda Speedway. Something nobody has been able to claim to do in the past five years.
“We had a good car for the (Fonda) 200,” Sheppard said. “We have had a lot of close runs and seconds to Stew before and we just keep throwing things at it and for whatever reason everything went our way tonight.”
The night’s feature wasn’t without some hardship for seventh place starter Sheppard. While he was fast, so was Matt Delorenzo, Alex Yankowski and so many others. On a middle race restart with Sheppard being third, he hit the pothole in turn one and was basically a dead rock down the back stretch.
“I don’t know what happened there.” he said. “We hit the hole in turn one on the bottom and I was getting passed on either side.”
Shortly after that third place running Danny Varin broke and hit the turn two wall and a red flag was put out, that’s when the race changed for Matt.
“When the red flag came out, I pulled up over here and I was asking my guys like, do I have a flat right rear?,” he said. “They’re like, no you don’t. I’m like, man, I don’t know what’s going on. And we went green again, I fired off six and the car took off like a rocket ship again. So I don’t know if it was just one of them fluke deals or, or what the heck it was, but I’m just glad it turned out for us.”
When it came to having Friesen breathing down his neck on the last two restarts, Sheppard knew what he had to do but knew this is Friesen’s playground.
“It’s definitely nerve wracking as good as I feel,” he said of the restarts. “I know he can always pull a rabbit out of his hat at this place and pull off some kind of spectacular move or something.”
However it was a race to turn one and Sheppard knew it with how the track conditions were on Monday Night.
“It came down to restarts and beat him to turn one,” he said. “Thankfully this engine ran good and smooth and pulled good, good on restarts and I was able to beat him to one. I lost a race to Tim Fuller here one year getting beat into turn one. If he (Stewart Friesen) beat me on the top into turn one it would have been hard to get back around him.”
The win sets Matt up for a busy two weeks on the Short Track Super Series with an event at Utica-Rome on Thursday and then two back to back dates in Quebec next week.
“We have been rolling really well in the North series,” he said. “We have a lot of racing to do before we get to Quebec for the first time with the series so I am going to focus on that.”
SHORT TRACK SUPER SERIES (STSS) FIRECRACKER 50 – 50-LAPS – MATT SHEPPARD, Stewart Friesen, Alex Yankowski, Matt DeLorenzo, Mat Williamson, Michael Trautschold, Max McLaughlin, Cody Clark, Billy Decker, Rocky Warner, Dillon Steuer, Marc Johnson, Steve Bernier, JaMike Sowle, Tyler Dippel, JR Hurlburt, Chris Curtis, David Schilling, Francois Bernier, Tim Fuller, Demetrios Drellos, Michael Parent, Bobby Hackel IV, Brian Calabrese, Danny Varin, Ronnie Johnson, Jessica Friesen
1st win of 2023 and the 6th of his career at Fonda for Sheppard
LAP LEADERS – 1-27 DeLorenzo, 28-50 Sheppard
HEAT RACE WINNERS – Parent, Hackel IV, Sheppard, Clark
CONSOLATION RACE WINNERS – Schilling, Sowle
DID NOT QUALIFY – Jack Lehner, Mike Mahaney, Brian Pessolano, Bobby Varin, Tanner VanDoren, Dave Constantino, Dave Camara, Keith Flach, Tucker O’Connor, Ron Holmes, Don Bellen