Brandon Sheppard has been very good to start off the 2026 season and he’s been red hot recently with back-to-back wins during the rain-shortened Illinois Speedweek at Spoon River and Fairbury.
He’s got five other wins outside of those two coming at Volusia Speedway Park, All-Tech Raceway, Ocala Speedway, Farmer City Raceway, and Hagerstown Speedway. He currently sits third in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series points, just 165 points behind current leader Hudson O’Neal, and finished third in the opening night of the Malvern Bank Presents High Bank Heist at Eagle Raceway.
Sheppard talked about his and his team’s success and pointed to his relationship with Rocket1 owner Mark Richards being the key to it. He shared on The Dirt Parlor Podcast, “Honestly, it boils down to getting me back comfortable again, getting my confidence all the way back, and then other side of it is getting Mark’s confidence back in me.”
“And, you know, my feedback to what he does is a major part of what we need to be able to click, right? And I think he knew about halfway through last year, around this time, he’s like, ‘Okay, he’s back for real. This is what he wants to do. He’s good. He’s ready to roll.’ From that point on he really started taking my feedback into consideration a lot,” Sheppard said.
“I’m no wizard on the cars by no means, but I know some stuff. The B5 is pretty good whenever we race it. The reason why we’re so successful is just because Mark can watch and judge what he’s going to do off of what he sees and what I’m saying,” he continued. “My biggest goal for this year was to just, as crazy as it sounds, not pay any attention or care what he does setup wise. I have 100% confidence all the time in whatever Mark wants to do to the car. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what he does. I’m just like, ‘Yes, boss. Let’s do it.’ I’m pushing him to want to try stuff and get better whenever we need to get better. And when he wants to try something crazy while we’re running good, go ahead.”
“And same way with him, I think, is when I mess up on the track, I know I messed up. I’m not ashamed to ask him what I need to do better. Like Hagerstown, for example, we won there and we wouldn’t have run there if it wasn’t for his experience there and him being able to tell me about his experiences and how he’s seen people win races in conditions like they were. And we go to a lot of tracks all over the country like. His experience, if everybody had [it], the racing would be terrible. … If everybody had as many notebooks and as much notes as what Mark’s got. It’s wild. He’s still got the notebook in the trailer from 2012 when I started there. And it’s every track, every spring load, scale number, everything. In the computer and in books in the trailer still. It’s wild.”
“Getting our confidence back in each other was a big key to our success and we’re having a lot of fun racing right now. Obviously, when you run good you’re going to have fun. But really, even last year when we weren’t running as good as what we wanted to, we were enjoying it. We knew we were building up to something special. It’s just, man, competition is so tough. I kept telling my dad and people that are my biggest critics that we’re this close. We’re this close. We’re right on the edge of being where we need to be to win some races. And we were able to win a couple last year and it was great and whatnot, but right off the rip this year my confidence was just there a little bit more, and mind was cleared. I was ready to roll. It’s been a great year so far.”
“It’s good whenever it don’t matter where you’re going. When you’re running bad, your like, ‘God, I don’t want to go that place. I hate that place.’ But right now it’s like, ‘Take me racing somewhere. I’m ready to go.’ Let’s go. It don’t matter at this point. Let’s go,” Sheppard said.
Sheppard is back in action tonight and on Saturday night with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at Eagle Raceway. All the action can be seen on FloRacing.
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