BULLS GAP, Tenn. — A pair of Illinois drivers who have mixed it up on Midwestern black dirt faced off Friday at Volunteer Speedway on the red clay high banks at the 4/10-mile oval.

And it was World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series points leader Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., outrunning Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill., over the final 20 laps to capture his third straight WoO victory and fourth of the season.

“I’ll tell you what, it feels good to get another win, especially here,” Sheppard said in victory lane. “It’s not a place that I typically run very good at it, but the track was hammer-down and up-on-the-wheel tonight, just the way we like it.”

The eighth-starting Sheppard took the checkers 1.311 seconds ahead of the 10th-starting Erb on a surface soaked by afternoon rain, providing a rugged challenge that sent a few contenders by the wayside.

Cade Dillard of Robeline, La., who started alongside Erb in the fifth row, was third followed by 16th-starting Ashton Winger of Hampton, Ga., a series rookie who posted his best tour finish. Polesitter Scott Bloomquist of Mooresburg, Tenn., a longtime Volunteer competitor who hadn’t entered an event at Bulls Gap in six seasons, rounded out the top five.

The two leaders in the first half of the race weren’t around at the finish. Kyle Strickler of Mooresville, N.C., who led laps 6-27 — running all race long after cutting down his left-front tire in a first-lap scrape with Bloomquist and Brandon Overton — slipped high on a lap-27 restart and was running fifth on lap 46 when he stopped on the backstretch with a broken power steering pump and overheating engine.

Evans, Ga.'s Overton made two fourth-to-first moves to grab the lead, one on the first lap as he led the first circuits, and again on the lap-27 restart when he went past Bloomquist, Strickler and Erb. His second time out front was shorter than the first as he gave up the point and pulled into the infield pits with electrical issues after leading laps 28-29.

Erb inherited the lead on the 30th lap upon Overton’s departure, but Sheppard tracked down the fellow Illinoisan and took command on lap 34.

Sheppard was glad to win, but sorry he had to pass eight cars to get to the front.

“We should’ve won the heat race there. We qualified good, we qualified on the pole of our heat, we just didn’t get a good start there and ran second in the heat,” Sheppard said. “We just had to work a lot harder than we wanted to, you know what I mean? But my guys didn’t give up on me and they kept working hard on this thing and made it happen.

“We definitely had to do some slicing and dicing there. We got by Overton there midway through the race and the caution came out and put him on the outside, and he took off and got the lead. I don’t know what happened to him — I definitely hate to see that for him, I’d like to have raced him for the lead.”

Erb broke into the top three after just 17 laps as he charged to the front, but his car wasn’t as good in the final laps.

“The car was pretty good there at the beginning, and kind of faded there towards the end,” Erb said. “The bottom kind of went away and we had to move up the track there. But all in all, starting deep in the field and coming up to second, we had a good run tonight.”

Dillard found the rugged conditions challenging as the second-year series driver scored just his second WoO podium finish of the season.

“I’ll definitely take it,” Dillard said. “It was a pretty treacherous track. I was wore out about halfway, I didn’t know if I could go any longer. I looked at the (scoreboard) and it was barely halfway, and I was like, ’This is going to be rough.’ Fortunately I held on and got a good run there.”

Sheppard’s victory, which followed back-to-back series victories last month at Davenport (Iowa) Speedway, was glad to be greeted by cheers after coronavirus pandemic restrictions have forced competitors to race in front of empty grandstands.

“It feels really good to have fans in the stands again. It’s nice for sure,” he said. “It’s quiet when you get out of the car after the races and there’s nobody out there for you. It definitely means a lot to have the fans back.”

But Sheppard wasn’t sure if he or the fans would be around when late afternoon rain doused the facility.

“They worked their tails off on this racetrack all day today, through the rain and everything,” Sheppard said. "Before we started tonight, you wouldn’t have been able to tell me we’d be standing on this front straightaway and it’d be dry. Like I said, they worked their tails off on this thing and gave us a track to race on. In the feature, it widened out there and got pretty racy, so it was a lot of fun.”

Six cautions slowed the race, half of them for flat tires.

Joey Moriarty (lap three), Drew Kennedy (lap seven) and 10th-running Ricky Weiss (lap 27) had flats. Michael Brown slowed and pulled pitside on the 10th lap, Kody Evans drew a lap-45 caution after slowing with nosepiece damage and Brent Larson slowed on lap 46.

Notes: The feature ended about 12:25 a.m. … Fourth-finishing Ashton Winger was competing for the first time at the racetrack he first attended as a 2-month-old when his father Gary was working for Hall of Fame driver Freddy Smith in the 2000 season. … Logan Roberson lost the fourth quickest qualifying time in his group because he entered the infield in the wrong place after time trials. He scratched for the rest of the night and was considering heading elsewhere for Saturday action. … Boom Briggs had a flat left-rear tire in heat action and took a provisional starting spot for the main event. … Brent Larson blew a right-rear tire in consolation action, knocking the quarterpanel off his car and forcing him also to take a provisional.

Preliminary results: