Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – LAKE CITY, FL – Matt Sheppard wins on the Short Track Super Series ‘Sunshine Swing’ at All-Tech Raceway and Larry Wight comes in second.
It’s 2024 and we’ve heard this before.
For the third night in-a-row to open Brett Deyo’s annual winter gathering in the Sunshine State, Matt Sheppard took his #9s to victory lane with the red Gypsum Racing #99L of Wight sitting behind him in on the frontstretch after the race.
The win was worth $8,000 to the Savannah, NY driver who now has tallied nearly $20,000 so far this week for just over 100 laps of competition.
“Honestly, tonight really surprised me,” Sheppard said. “Track conditions were quite a bit different. There was a big ‘ole top tonight and I was surprised.”
Sheppard drove around pole sitter Stewart Friesen on a lap 3 restart and never really faced another challenge the rest of the distance.
“This car was outstanding,” he said. “It was probably the best it’s been all week.”
From the drop of the green, Sheppard could put his car anywhere he wanted. Starting sixth, he was able to get around the competition easily and once in the lead, nobody posed a serious challenge.
“I took off early and got up on the top of (turns) three and four and was able to make some head way,” he said. “I kind of learned from Larry (Wight) this week that you can’t just ride around the bottom. You have to get up on top.”
That’s what Sheppard did on Friday night.
“I thought I’d give it a shot on top in (turns) one and two on that restart,” he said. “To my surprise, the top of turn two really came in. It was probably the best part of the track at the end so I shifted my lane to the top at both ends. At the end of the race, I actually think the bottom of three and four was better, though.”
Sheppard was quick to give credit to the track crew for how racy the All-Tech surface was throughout the 40 laps.
“It was another awesome job with the race track here tonight,” he said. “They’ve thrown something a little different at use each night. The racing’s been outstanding. It hasn’t been touching tires so the tire bill’s been easy this week. We’ll take it.”
Having only one Short Track Super Series Sunshine Swing victory to his credit before 2024, Sheppard has made it look easy and is now one win away from sweeping the week.
“We’re excited right now,” he said. “To come to Florida and to win three features in-a-row, somebody pinch me.”
While Sheppard has won three-straight, Larry Wight has finished second in all three of those features, including an 11th to second run on Friday.
“The car was good tonight,” Wight said. “I think we might have made a couple of the wrong changes for the feature. We didn’t quite have the forward traction down the straights that we had last night.”
Always trying to improve his Gypsum Racing mount, Wight and his crew will go to work to try and regain Thursday’s magic before the 50-lap $10,000-to-win finale on Saturday evening.
“We’ll go back to our notes and dial it back a little bit,” he said. “Hopefully, we can get another shot at the win on the final night.”
Wight’s 2023 season, in his eyes, left a lot to be desired so the 99L team went to work this off-season to improve their performance.
So far, it’s worked.
“”I can’t thank Cole and Jake (the Gypsum crew) enough,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of hard work this winter and it’s all paying off.”
Wight echoed the same sentiments as Sheppard about how much the All-Tech surface varied from the start to the finish of the 40-lap main event.
“It actually changed a little bit more than I thought it was going to,” he said. “I thought there was going to be a little bit more of a bottom off of (turn) four. It seemed like you could get good bite all the way through there and as soon as soon as you got to the straightaway, it went away. That kind of hurt our set-up a bit, but we were able to rally on the top and make it happen.”
For the first time this week, Erick Rudolph made his way to the podium, grabbing third on Friday night.
“It seems like every night we’ve improved a little bit,” Rudolph said. “We’ve still got one more night to go and I’ve been real happy with how our car’s been.”
Since the opener this week at All-Tech, Rudolph and his #25 team have been working on the car to improve their fortunes and it’s worked, going from sixth on night one to fourth on night two before his third on Friday.
“I’m grateful for all the help the crew’s been putting into this car,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get a little bit better each time and it seems to be working. Whatever we’re doing seems to be going in the right direction.”
Could Rudolph find his way to victory lane in the Sunshine Swing finale Saturday? He believes he could.
“We’ve got one more down here and maybe it’ll be our night,” he said. “We did it a few years ago but it’s going to be anyone’s guess what the track’s going to be like. However, we’ll come back with a positive attitude and see what we’ve got.”