FAIRBURY, Ill. – The 30th annual Prairie Dirt Classic kicked off on Friday night with four Prairie Dirt Shootouts that set the first eight rows for Saturday’s main event at Fairbury Speedway.
Just a short time after setting quick time in qualifying, besting the other 71 drivers in the Fairbury pit area, Brandon Sheppard once again put Rocket1 Racing’s prowess on display for the thousands of Prairie Dirt Classic fans watching in the grandstands.
Leading all 25 laps and going virtually unchallenged throughout the entire night, Sheppard picked up $2,500 and the third Prairie Dirt Showdown win of his career. He has now won a Showdown in each year since the most recent event format change that introduced them in 2017.
With 15 laps in the books, it looked as though it may have been an all-Outlaw top-five, with four of the top five spots occupied by full-time World of Outlaws drivers. Sheppard had led since the green waved with Chase Junghans and rookie Cade Dillard following close behind, Darrell Lanigan riding back in fourth and Dennis Erb Jr. battling it out with Chris Simpson and Ricky Thornton Jr. for fifth.
Unfortunately for Dillard, he slowed on the backstretch and ended up pulling off the track in a puff of smoke on lap 16.
This opened the door for Boom Briggs, who seemingly came out of nowhere on the lap 16 restart. From his 11th-place starting spot, Briggs steadily worked his way to ninth before the yellow came out. When the field came back to green, Boom got the jump and went from ninth to fifth in less than one lap. He went on to pass two more cars to claim his starting spot in Saturday’s 100-lap finale.
An even better run came in the same race for the driver out of Carpentersville, Ill., Dennis Erb Jr. He came from the outside of Boom Briggs in row six and passed five cars in less than one lap on the restart to go from seventh to second and put himself in Saturday’s redraw.
In the second Showdown, Bobby Pierce rode the big Fairbury cushion on the topside of the quarter-mile like he’s done so many times before, allowing him to lead all 25 laps to score his first Prairie Dirt Showdown win.
“It went a lot smoother than about all of the other times I’ve been here for this race,” Pierce said.
That statement sheds a bit of light on last year’s Prairie Dirt Classic, when Pierce set fast time over 60 other drivers but failed to transfer (or finish) out of his Showdown. This set him up for one of the greatest charges to the front (and the win) ever seen at Fairbury in the Prairie Dirt Shootout, but with the Showdown win this year, Pierce is just glad he doesn’t have to deal with such a situation this time around.
“This race has become one of the toughest races to win, by far,” he said. “With the amount of cars here and the competition, if you can start up front, that’s 50 percent of the race, I think.”
“Last year’s [Prairie Dirt Shootout] was something else. That was cool, but I’d really rather not have to do that again. Fortunately, here we are.”
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