Brandon Sheppard dominated the Pepsi Herald & Review 100 at Macon Speedway with the Summer Nationals on Sunday night, but it was not without its difficulties.
On lap 82, Sheppard suffered some kind of mechanical issue as white smoke began billowing from the front of his car. A couple of laps later and he saw his nearly 5.5 second lead shrink down to just 3.5 seconds.
However, the problem was not terminal and he was able to hold on and even survived a green, white, checkered restart to get the prestigious victory.
In victory lane, Sheppard revealed what caused the problem, “I’m definitely a lot more winded than I should be right now. And I don’t know if anybody was paying attention about lap 75 when that big puff of smoke come out underneath the car. I thought my night was over.”
“Usually when that happens your oil pump belt breaks, but I kept watching my oil pressure for the next few laps and I didn’t see it going down. So I thought, ‘Well, obviously the power steering line broke.’ And I’m telling you, you can’t hardly hang on to it when it’s like that,” he explained. “I thought, ‘Okay, I’m all right.’ And then the caution come out with green, white, checkered. And I thought, ‘Yep. This is it. It’s going to snake bite us again.’ This race has snake bitten me and definitely my dad too. I’ve seen him lead a bunch of laps here at this race and not be able to win it. ”
However, that was not the case on the restart, Sheppard got a phenomenal restart, hugged the corners in 1 and 2, and then jetted through the middle of 3 and 4 to get the win by .729 seconds over Luke Morey.
The win was Sheppard’s second Herald & Review 100 of his career. His first wan came back in 2020. It was also sweet redemption from last year after he came up just short to Trey Mills.
“This one, we’ve ran second here about five or six times it seems like and we’ve won it one other time and we had a really awesome car last year and I just did a bad job,” Sheppard said. “I’m just super grateful to have my whole family here and do it in front of this crowd. I know there’s a lot of family and friends and BShepp fans in them stands.”
0 Comments