RPW Exclusive: Williamson & Sheppard Finish 2025 DIRTcar Nationals With Strong Performances

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – BARBERVILLE, FL – Since his first Super DIRTcar Series title in 2019, only one season has gone by without Mat Williamson visiting victory lane during the DIRTcar Nationals.

The year he didn’t hold a little gator was 2021, but other than that, Williamson has been a man on a mission in the Sunshine State, winning on five different occasions.

This season, however, hasn’t gone in true ‘Money Mat’ fashion, as entering Saturday night’s 50-lap, $7,500-to-win finale, his best finish all week had been a third place run on night two.

Even without visiting victory lane, Williamson was in the hunt for the ‘Big Gator’ Championship going into the final race of the swing, trailing leader Alex Yankowski by 16 markers and second place’s Peter Britten by six.

Getting the title for a third-straight season was doable, and he had a five position head start on ‘Kid Rocket’ on the starting grid. Williamson fired from fourth while Yankowski started ninth and Britten 12th.

Unfortunately for Mat, he was only able to get to second place in the 50-lapper, falling just short to Erick Rudolph who captured his first career DIRTcar Nationals win.

“We had a good car tonight,” Williamson said. “It was just that on one restart ended up not going our way. We dropped back to seventh and Erick (Rudolph) got by me. Stewart (Friesen) got by me and (Jack) Lehner got by me so we had to race with those guys. That made it tough.”

Williamson was able to fight his way back through but once he only had the leader Rudolph in front of him, he knew he had his hands full.

“Once Erick’s in clean air, he’s tough to beat,” he said. “The track was good tonight. It got really good at the end.”

Being a 50-lap feature, 20 more than any other night this week, was it the way Mat thought it would be?

“The first 15 laps of the main event felt like a time trial session,” he said. “Hats off to Billy the Kid for building an engine that could last through that and to all the guys on this Buzz Chew 88 for working hard all week.”

Sheppard Rebounds To Finish DIRTcar Nationals Strong…

Third place on the night was the winner on opening night of the ’25 DIRTcar Nationals, Matt Sheppard. Sheppard had an up-and-down four-race swing in Florida with a ninth on night two and a DNF on Friday (25th).

Driving from tenth to the podium is a great way to close things out at Volusia.

“This car was really good tonight,” Sheppard said. “We didn’t qualify well and kind of put ourselves back farther in the field.”

Even though he didn’t make the redraw, finishing third in his heat race, the no. 9s showed speed throughout the 50-lap main event.

“We passed a lot of really good tonight,” he said. “We got up to third and thought I had a shot at the 88 (Williamson) a few times in the middle of the race. We just didn’t have enough steam to finish it off.”

Though he didn’t get the big payday on Saturday, Sheppard was happy with his effort on Saturday night.

“This was a good run for my team tonight,” he said. “This was a lot better night than we had last night. This was a strong performance to finish off our week down here at Volusia.”