Column: Brian Shirley’s Ready To Get Season Rolling With More Farmer City Success

Column By: SPENCE SMITHBACK / WORLD OF OUTLAWS – FARMER CITY, IL – This weekend’s Illini 100 serves as a homecoming for the many Late Model stars who hail from the Land of Lincoln.

But few of them have a resume at Farmer City Raceway as long and impressive as Brian Shirley.

The Chatham, IL driver has been turning laps around the black-dirt bullring since the dawn of his career in the early 2000s. Between the World of Outlaws Late Models, DIRTcar Summer Nationals and countless other local and regional races, Shirley has played a role in many of the track’s most memorable moments over the past 20 years.

For the first 14 years of his Farmer City career, the only hole in Shirley’s resume was a World of Outlaws victory. He had come close, starting on the pole in 2012 and 2015 before coming up short on both occasions.

That all changed in 2017 when “Squirrel” squeezed past Billy Moyer with four laps to go for his fifth World of Outlaws win and first at Farmer City.

“Obviously the car was working pretty good there on the hub,” Shirley said. “I remember lap after lap, feeling I was gaining on [Moyer] a little bit. The next thing you know, I was in the lead and ended up winning the race.”

Two years later, Shirley backed it up with another triumph against The Most Powerful Late Models on the Planet, but it came in a stark contrast from the slow and slick surface he won on before. Drivers in the 2019 edition of the race were faced with a lightning-fast track that Shirley remembers a little too well.

After getting up on two wheels and nearly barrel rolling while leading, Shirley regained his composure and held off a hard-charging Brandon Sheppard for his second win in three years.

“I just remember everybody was in the gas and we were just wide open, all you can get,” Shirley said. “We were lucky enough to be out front. I remember it was cowboy-up, and normally in that type of scenario we always seem to excel a little bit. I’m not sure why, maybe I’m not as nervous as everybody else is to flip.”

It’s now been six years since Shirley’s latest score in the Illini 100, a trend he plans on snapping this weekend. And while the trophy and paycheck were all Shirley was concerned with after his first two victories, he now has an extra incentive as a third-year full-timer on the World of Outlaws tour – points.

The No. 3S Racing team won four times in the final 10 races of 2024 and expected to carry that momentum into the opening weeks of the 2025 season. Instead, an attrition-riddled start to the year buried them in the standings and sent them into rebuild mode to be ready for the rest of the campaign.

“We definitely wore some stuff out there in Florida,” Shirley said. “You work all winter to put yourself in the best position that you can to hopefully start yourself out in a positive way as far as being in the points chase. For some reason, it just hasn’t worked in our cards the last couple years to start out in the points in a positive position. But for me, my guys, everybody at Bob Cullen Racing, we’re not just going to give up and roll over. We’ve come home, been doing our due diligence every week trying to get back up to where we were.”

Shirley hasn’t finished a World of Outlaws race in the top 10 since the opening night of the season at Volusia Speedway Park. He was in contention for a top five in the Saturday program at Swainsboro Raceway, but a flat tire at the midway point of the Feature sent him to the back and put him 20th in the final rundown.

In the weeks since, Shirley traveled north for a pair of MARS Late Model Championship events at Maquoketa Speedway, where he swept the Hawkeye 100 weekend with the World of Outlaws last August. In a field that featured several of his fellow Outlaws, Shirley brought home a pair of top fives, proving to the Late Model world that he hadn’t forgotten how to go fast.

With eight World of Outlaws races in the books, Shirley’s 12th-place slot in the standings is a far cry from what the 12-time World of Outlaws winner has come to expect. He can’t waste any time moving up the board if he wants to be in the title conversation, and a weekend at home presents an ideal opportunity to start the climb.

“We’ve had a couple pretty good runs here the last couple weeks, solid top fives,” Shirley said. “Bobby [Pierce] and them, we’re starting to at least get where we can see him. And once you can start seeing him, then you can start realizing a little bit more what you’ve got to do to beat them. It’ll all come together, we’ve just got to get into the next couple weeks and get this warm weather, get racing all the time. Everything will come together.”

Shirley and the rest of the World of Outlaws Late Models will head to Farmer City Raceway for the Illini 100, Thursday-Saturday, April 10-12.