Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – CANANDAIGUA, NY – When you start closer to the front in a handicapped weekly feature event, it’s usually because you’ve had three weeks of tougher finishes. However, you never expect that to be the case for Matt Sheppard, especially at Land of Legends Raceway.
Unfortunately, that was the case on Saturday night after three point finishes Sheppard would rather forget at the Canandaigua, NY track, including two DNF’s.
Not only did the 9s start close to the front, he started on the pole for the 30-lap DIRTcar Big Block Modified feature and made good use of that spot as Sheppard led every lap in a green-to-checker feature run to record his second win of the 2024 season and 92nd of his career at the speedway.
“I’m just happy to have gotten to victory lane tonight,” Sheppard said. “I don’t think we’ve finished a race with this car in about a month.”
Sheppard absolutely dominated the feature on Saturday night, blistering the field and winning by almost 10 seconds over runner-up Alan Johnson.
“This was about as close to a gimmie as you can get,” he said. “A pole starting position and a caution-free race but just finishing 30 laps here has been a struggle for us so I guess we’ll take it and move on to the next one.”
An early afternoon rain shower put the whole night into question. Fortunately for the competitors in the pit area, Mother Nature wasn’t victorious and the Land of Legends track crew put together an absolutely immaculate racing surface for the competitors.
“That rain storm early on definitely did this place some good,” he said. “What a race track tonight.”
From the heat race, Sheppard knew how fast of a race track it was going to be on Saturday night, so he had to make the most of it.
“The track was really fast in the heat race,” he said. “The Modifieds were like low 17 seconds in warm-ups. That’s like track record material and as fast as this place gets. It was wide and smooth.”
Even as quick as it was, and with the front row starting spot, Sheppard and his team still had their work cut out to make sure they made the right adjustments for the conditions that looked to be changing.
“It blew off and got black in the middle of the track for the feature,” he said. “It still had a nice top and a nice bottom. That’s about as nice as Canandaigua gets.”
Second on the night was another Canandaigua legend, Alan Johnson, who drove his 14J to a solid finish on Saturday.
“This was a good run for us tonight,” Johnson said. “We started up front and lucky for us it went green all the way or we probably wouldn’t have finished second.”
Johnson was happy with his run on Saturday as it was a great feature effort from start to finish.
“Lately, we’ve been starting near the front and not been able to stay there,” he said. “At least tonight we were able to run a little better.”
The Middlesex, NY driver made some chassis adjustments to his hot rod for this week’s action and they seemed to be a step in the right direction.
“We put a different shock package on the car tonight,” he said. “I think that helped us out a lot and I think there’s a little bit we can do to work on it and make it better. We’ll see.”
Completing the podium on Saturday was current Land of Legends Modified point leader, Mat Williamson, who was one of the biggest movers in the feature, driving his S&W Service Centre number 6 from 13th to third at the finish.
“We’ve got it going on here right now,” Williamson said. “We’ve been pretty good and tonight was another example of that.”
Williamson was amazed that the night was able to get in, to be honest, but with finishing third, he’s glad they did.
“I thought it was going to rain all day,” he said. “I didn’t think we’d be here racing so hat’s off to Paul (Cole) and his whole crew for sticking through it.”
Saturday’s third place run was another impressive run for Williamson whose last finish outside the top five at Land of Legends came on May 18th. Incidentally, that was a sixth place showing.
“I have to thank all of my guys that work on the car and our sponsors,” he said. “Hopefully, we can keep this consistency going.”
Defending champion Justin Haers came home in fourth and Daniel Johnson was fifth.
In a wild DIRTcar Sportsman feature, Nick Cooper made a daring move to the outside in an amazing three-way battle with Karl Comfort and leader Justin Liechti to grab the top spot with just ten laps remaining in the main event.
From that point, it looked like Cooper was on his way to victory lane but Comfort had eyes on the number one spot as well and made his presence known on the final lap.
Heading into turn three on the white flag lap, Comfort sailed it in on the top side, trying to get around the leader. However, Cooper was able to hold on by less than a car length to score his third career victory in Sportsman competition at the Land of Legends.
“This is a big-time confidence booster for us,” Cooper said. “To run like this, finally, is pretty cool.”
Did Cooper know Comfort was as close as he was at the end of the feature?
“I learned that on the last lap, you always protect in turns three and four,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t have but you can usually give a race away running like you normally wood on the white flag. However, I guess protecting was probably the best thing to do tonight.”
It’s been a trying year for Cooper who’s battled some health issues this year. Heading into the night, he was 24th in points with only four starts but there’s been no give up in this team.
“We found a lot of things, geometry wise, that weren’t quite right with this thing,” he said. “Tonight, it paid off.”
As stated, Comfort missed out on his first win of 2024 by the narrowest of margins but still drove from starting spot seven to finish P2. Zach Sobotka, Liechti and Gordon Smith completed the top five.
The story of the 20-lap 305 Sprint Car A-Main could be summed up in the final three circuits.
Leader Johnny Kolosek went high in turns three and four, out of the groove ever so much, and veteran Bobby Parrow drove under him for the top spot.
From there, the two drivers put on a driving clinic, battling tooth and nail for the top position.
Coming to the white flag, through turns three and four once again, Parrow went to the bottom to protect against a slide job by Kolosek in lap traffic. However, “Captain America” put it right back up on the cushion and powered to the lead coming to the white flag.
From that point, it was all Johnny Kolosek who recorded win number two of 2024 at the track.
The question everyone wants to know though. How did he drive back around Bobby Parrow after losing the lead?
“I think I just played my cards right with lapped traffic,” Kolosek said. “I just picked the right line and in those situations, it’s kind of a coin toss on where they’re going to go. You win some, you lose some, and tonight we got it done.”
Parrow was a close second at the finish with Blake Warner, Tyler Graves and Alysha Bay rounding out the top five.
In the 20-lap Street Stock feature, Mike Welch showed everyone why he’s one of the best, if not the best, ever in the division on Saturday night.
The Stanley, NY driver padded his lead on the all-time wins list by scoring his second victory in 2024 and 88th of his career in dominant fashion, taking the lead from CJ Guererri on lap four and never looking back.
“The car was really good but a lot of the credit needs to go to Richie and the track crew,” Welch said. “They put a lot of hard work in here and I’ll be honest, this was probably the best the track’s been in a long, long, long time.”
Welch, who is in a tight point battle for the championship with Jimmy Grant, was second heading into the night and always had driver number 36 in mind.
“Every once in a while, I’d look up at the leader board and saw Jimmy, who’s car is fast, moving up,” he said. “We were just hoping we could keep running our line and knew what we had to do to get the job done. We did that.”
Grant stayed close to Welch as he finished in the second spot with Guererri, Marc Minutolo and John Burritt completing the top five.
One extra note from the Street Stock main was the driver who finished ninth, Carl “Sparky” Hills. Saturday was Hills’ first race of the season at Land of Legends, but that’s not what’s noteworthy. Hills is 89 years of age. Congratulations sir.
Daniel Kerrick drove to victory in the 15-lap Hobby Stock feature while Chase Spoor captured the 12-lap New Legends Sportsman main event win.
A tip of the hat to everyone at Land of Legends for putting on an action-packed six-division night of racing and completing it in a timely manner. The final feature event got the checkered flag just before 10:30pm.
DIRTcar Big Block Modifieds
A Feature 1 (30 Laps): 1. 9S-Matt Sheppard[1]; 2. 14J-Alan Johnson[3]; 3. 6-Mat Williamson[13]; 4. 3-Justin Haers[5]; 5. 27D-Daniel Johnson[2]; 6. 21A-Peter Britten[12]; 7. 70A-Alex Payne[11]; 8. 7Z-Zachary Payne[8]; 9. 34-Kevin Root[4]; 10. 27J-Danny Johnson[7]; 11. 25R-Erick Rudolph[14]; 12. 19W-Justin Wright[9]; 13. 42P-Pat Ward[6]; 14. 17-Marcus Dinkins[10]; 15. 39C-Kasey Coffey[18]; 16. 22G-Gil Tegg Jr[16]; 17. 21P-Derrick Podsiadlo[19]; 18. 18K-Dalton Martin[17]; 19. 21B-Kevin Britten[15]; 20. 34S-Rusty Smith[20]
Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 14J-Alan Johnson[2]; 2. 3-Justin Haers[3]; 3. 7Z-Zachary Payne[4]; 4. 6-Mat Williamson[6]; 5. 21B-Kevin Britten[7]; 6. 22G-Gil Tegg Jr[5]; 7. 21P-Derrick Podsiadlo[1]
Heat 2 (8 Laps): 1. 9S-Matt Sheppard[1]; 2. 42P-Pat Ward[3]; 3. 25R-Erick Rudolph[6]; 4. 70A-Alex Payne[5]; 5. 19W-Justin Wright[4]; 6. 18K-Dalton Martin[2]; 7. 34S-Rusty Smith[7]
Heat 3 (8 Laps): 1. 27D-Daniel Johnson[1]; 2. 34-Kevin Root[2]; 3. 21A-Peter Britten[5]; 4. 27J-Danny Johnson[3]; 5. 17-Marcus Dinkins[4]; 6. 39C-Kasey Coffey[6]
DIRTcar Sportsman
A Feature 1 (25 Laps): 1. 35-Nick Cooper[3]; 2. 10-Karl Comfort[7]; 3. 38-Zach Sobotka[15]; 4. 21J-Justin Liechti[1]; 5. 23S-Gordon Smith[17]; 6. 32C-Kasey Coffey[9]; 7. 64-Tyler Corcoran[12]; 8. 711-Nick Ventura[2]; 9. 00-Sam Hoxie[4]; 10. 12G-Matt Guererri[13]; 11. 21-James Henry[8]; 12. 7-Paul Guererri[11]; 13. 30-Nicholas Root[14]; 14. 31K-Kennedy Payne[5]; 15. 113-Frank Guererri[20]; 16. 44-Dave Conant[10]; 17. 51-Tim Lafler[25]; 18. 9-Tim Baker[23]; 19. 23-David Dickey[19]; 20. 69V-Tony Velez[16]; 21. 7T-Tyler Guzzardi[27]; 22. 44C-Abby Castile[26]; 23. 72-Jessie Truax[24]; 24. 18H-Justin Henderson[28]; 25. 34-Behr Grover[6]; 26. 9J-James Galarneau[22]; 27. 23B-Tim Borden[21]; 28. 7S-Torrey Stoughtenger[18]
Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 711-Nick Ventura[2]; 2. 10-Karl Comfort[4]; 3. 31K-Kennedy Payne[3]; 4. 38-Zach Sobotka[8]; 5. 64-Tyler Corcoran[6]; 6. 69V-Tony Velez[7]; 7. 23-David Dickey[9]; 8. 9J-James Galarneau[10]; 9. 51-Tim Lafler[5]; 10. 18H-Justin Henderson[1]
Heat 2 (8 Laps): 1. 35-Nick Cooper[2]; 2. 44-Dave Conant[5]; 3. 21-James Henry[4]; 4. 21J-Justin Liechti[1]; 5. 12G-Matt Guererri[7]; 6. 23S-Gordon Smith[9]; 7. 113-Frank Guererri[6]; 8. 9-Tim Baker[3]; 9. 44C-Abby Castile[8]
Heat 3 (8 Laps): 1. 00-Sam Hoxie[2]; 2. 30-Nicholas Root[7]; 3. 7-Paul Guererri[5]; 4. 32C-Kasey Coffey[4]; 5. 34-Behr Grover[3]; 6. 7S-Torrey Stoughtenger[9]; 7. 23B-Tim Borden[1]; 8. 72-Jessie Truax[8]; 9. 7T-Tyler Guzzardi[6]
305 Sprints
A Feature 1 (20 Laps): 1. 26-Johnny Kolosek[3]; 2. 80-Bobby Parrow[12]; 3. 21B-Blake Warner[2]; 4. 25G-Tyler Graves[8]; 5. 48A-Alysha Bay[1]; 6. 66-Jordan Hutton[13]; 7. 8-Dillon Paddock[23]; 8. 14X-Lance Dusett[11]; 9. 121-Spencer Burley[10]; 10. 77-Matt Rotz[7]; 11. 18C-Dan Craun[5]; 12. 17E-Ethan Gray[16]; 13. 45-David Ferguson[18]; 14. 48-Darryl Ruggles[9]; 15. Z28-Tucker Donath[15]; 16. 9N-Alan Buchanan[17]; 17. 23-John Smith[6]; 18. 33Z-Sydney Wetherbee[19]; 19. 25-Cameron Moss[14]; 20. 85C-Cam MacKinnon[20]; 21. 2-Randy Years[4]; 22. 18-Timmy Lotz[21]; 23. (DNS) 29T-Tori Kaplin
Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 80-Bobby Parrow[7]; 2. 48A-Alysha Bay[2]; 3. 2-Randy Years[3]; 4. 48-Darryl Ruggles[5]; 5. 66-Jordan Hutton[8]; 6. 17E-Ethan Gray[4]; 7. 33Z-Sydney Wetherbee[1]; 8. 29T-Tori Kaplin[6]
Heat 2 (8 Laps): 1. 21B-Blake Warner[2]; 2. 77-Matt Rotz[4]; 3. 14X-Lance Dusett[6]; 4. 18C-Dan Craun[3]; 5. 25-Cameron Moss[1]; 6. 9N-Alan Buchanan[7]; 7. 85C-Cam MacKinnon[8]; 8. 8-Dillon Paddock[5]
Heat 3 (8 Laps): 1. 26-Johnny Kolosek[2]; 2. 25G-Tyler Graves[4]; 3. 23-John Smith[3]; 4. 121-Spencer Burley[5]; 5. Z28-Tucker Donath[1]; 6. 45-David Ferguson[7]; 7. 18-Timmy Lotz[6]
Street Stocks
A Feature 1 (20 Laps): 1. 00-Mike Welch[6]; 2. 36-Jimmy Grant[7]; 3. CJ1-CJ Guererri[4]; 4. 25B-Marc Minutolo[5]; 5. 12-John Burritt[1]; 6. 3-Pat Hobbs[3]; 7. 122-Chris Beyea[10]; 8. 63-Mike Fellows[2]; 9. 45-Sparky Hills[9]; 10. 57J-Chris Woodard[8]
Heat 1 (6 Laps): 1. CJ1-CJ Guererri[5]; 2. 25B-Marc Minutolo[6]; 3. 00-Mike Welch[8]; 4. 36-Jimmy Grant[9]; 5. 3-Pat Hobbs[4]; 6. 12-John Burritt[2]; 7. 63-Mike Fellows[3]; 8. 57J-Chris Woodard[1]; 9. 45-Sparky Hills[10]; 10. 122-Chris Beyea[7]
Hobby Stocks
A Feature 1 (15 Laps): 1. 61-Danny Kerrick[8]; 2. 25B-Marc Minutolo[7]; 3. 56-Ed Stevens[5]; 4. 57J-Tyler Burnell[9]; 5. 55B-Blane Smith[3]; 6. 57B-Jack Terrell[12]; 7. 67-James Werner[13]; 8. 88-Justin Jacoby[1]; 9. 22J-Randy Johnson[11]; 10. 69J-Heather Auble Gray[14]; 11. 8J-Jeff Rex[15]; 12. 90-Nathan Peckham[6]; 13. 28-Willy Easling[10]; 14. 97-Kevin Schrader[2]; 15. 09-Preston Hennigan[17]; 16. 36X-Brighton Grant[4]; 17. (DNS) 25J-Justin Eldredge
Heat 1 (6 Laps): 1. 28-Willy Easling[9]; 2. 57J-Tyler Burnell[7]; 3. 25B-Marc Minutolo[6]; 4. 56-Ed Stevens[5]; 5. 36X-Brighton Grant[4]; 6. 22J-Randy Johnson[2]; 7. 67-James Werner[3]; 8. 8J-Jeff Rex[1]; 9. 09-Preston Hennigan[8]
Heat 2 (6 Laps): 1. 61-Danny Kerrick[6]; 2. 90-Nathan Peckham[5]; 3. 88-Justin Jacoby[1]; 4. 55B-Blane Smith[3]; 5. 97-Kevin Schrader[2]; 6. 69J-Heather Auble Gray[7]; 7. 57B-Jack Terrell[8]; 8. 25J-Justin Eldredge[4]
New Legends Sportsman
A Feature 1 (12 Laps): 1. 41S-Chase Spoor[3]; 2. 20K-Kyle Ridley[2]; 3. 89-Belle Hogan[4]; 4. 63-Dylan Woodworth[7]; 5. 3S-Wayne Swinson[6]; 6. 88J-Jocelyn Just[5]; 7. 72-Jackyln Nettleton[9]; 8. 25N-Elizabeth Nugent[1]; 9. 20-Nick Galusha[8]
Heat 1 (6 Laps): 1. 41S-Chase Spoor[3]; 2. 29G-Evan Gray[1]; 3. 89-Belle Hogan[2]; 4. 88J-Jocelyn Just[4]; 5. 25N-Elizabeth Nugent[8]; 6. 20K-Kyle Ridley[9]; 7. 3S-Wayne Swinson[5]; 8. 63-Dylan Woodworth[7]; 9. 20-Nick Galusha[10]; 10. 72-Jackyln Nettleton[6]