FOUNTAIN CITY, Wis. (May 8) — Chris Madden isn’t a young, hard-charging racer. But on his way to winning Saturday night’s 60-lap Dairyland Showdown finale at Mississippi Thunder Speedway, he drove like one.

“Man, I’ve always been told I couldn’t run a cushion, but I guess I proved ‘em wrong tonight,” Madden said with a sly smile after capturing the World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series event’s rich $22,500 first-place prize. “Basically I just had to get me a race car that could do it.”

Wheeling his Franklin Enterprises-backed XR1 Rocket, the soon-to-be 46-year-old veteran from Gray Court, S.C., looked right at home sliding around the 3/8-mile oval’s top side after wrestling the lead for good from Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., on lap 17. He survived all five of the race’s caution flags while in front and a late threat from Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, to secure his second WoO triumph of 2021 and the 30th of his career.

Madden crossed the finish line 0.681 of a second ahead of Gustin, a 30-year-old WoO rookie candidate who grabbed second on lap 47 when Sheppard and Kyle Strickler of Mooresville, N.C., made contact on the backstretch and stayed there to the finish in his Tri-Star Engines and Transmissions XR1 Rocket. Gustin’s last-lap bid on Madden rounding turns three and four fell short, but he still registered the best WoO finish of his career.

Sheppard, who started second and led laps 1-7 and 16 while battling with the polesitting Madden early in the race, settled for a third-place finish one night after claiming his first points-paying WoO triumph of 2021 in the 40-lap Dairyland Showdown opener. Strickler placed fourth in his PCC Motorsports Longhorn — his first top-five WoO run since February’s Speedweeks action — and Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., who was back in action after sitting out Friday’s program due to an attack of kidney stones, was fifth after starting 13th in the Paylor Motorsports Longhorn machine.

Making his first-ever visit to Mississippi Thunder for the Dairyland Showdown, Madden followed up his fifth-place finish in Friday’s A-main with a virtually flawless performance. He never missed a beat once his gained command.

“I just had to make sure I hit my marks and didn’t slip my wheels when I didn’t need to,” said Madden, who celebrates his 46th birthday on May 23. “Just do the best that I could do, and if they beat me, they beat me.”

Madden’s most stressful likely came when he realized that Gustin had reached second place late in the distance. A winner of a $40,000 open-wheel modified race at Mississippi Thunder in 2016 and a contender in Friday’s WoO headliner before a broken driveshaft knocked him out with five laps remaining, Gustin knows his way around the track.

“I watched that Gustin go around here all weekend, and that guy’s tough,” Madden said. “When he got to second I said, ‘Boy, you better get your elbows up. Give it all you got.’”

Gustin, who started 10th, couldn’t summon enough speed to throw a slider on Madden. The WoO upstart was nevertheless pleased with his results.

“I love this place,” Gustin said. “It’s probably my favorite racetrack in the country. Hat’s off to (track owner) Bob Timm and all the people here.”

The open-wheel modified ace viewed finishing behind Madden as a step in the right direction.

“It’s huge to know you can actually run up front and be a contender,” Gustin said. “That feels really good. Hopefully this is the upside of things here.”

The 28-year-old Sheppard, meanwhile, experienced an eventful march to his third-place finish. After battling for the lead with Madden, he traded several sliders with Strickler before the two drivers made contact one circuit following a lap-46 restart. The incident allowed Gustin and Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., to slip into second and third, respectively, and left Sheppard in fourth and Strickler in sixth.

Strickler overtook Sheppard for fourth on a lap-54 restart and moved up one spot two circuits later when Pierce hit the turn-wall wall while bidding to pass Gustin for second and slowed with right-rear damage to trigger the race’s final caution flag. Sheppard returned the favor on Strickler when the feature resumed with a slider through turns three and four and stayed in the spot to the finish.

After the checkered flag, Sheppard expressed some displeasure with Strickler by stopping ahead of him at the turn-one pit entrance. The three-time WoO champion also noted the paint-trading he did with Strickler during his post-race interview in victory lane.

“The 8 car couldn’t pass me without hitting me there,” Sheppard said. “I don’t know what his problem is.”

But while Sheppard fell short of the $5,000 bonus for sweeping the weekend that was posted by Dynamic Concrete Resurfacing, he was satisfied with his outing.

“It was a fun race,” Sheppard said. “We were throwing sliders and it was pretty crazy out there, but we were a little bit free (handling). We got shuffled back on that one restart there and managed to pull off a third-place run so I’m happy with it. Our team’s staying positive and we’re in the right direction.”

The first of the race’s five caution flags flew on lap 27 when Rodney Sanders slowed while running fifth. Boom Briggs, who shot from the seventh starting spot to third by lap 12, brought out cautions on laps 36 (right-rear damage after falling back following the lap-27 restart) and 54 (left-front damage). Spencer Diercks stopped in turn four for a lap-46 caution and Pierce’s car had to be towed off the track after his trouble on lap 56.

Notes: Madden, whose previous WoO win this season came on March 6 at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn., was very complimentary of the Mississippi Thunder surface that was reconditioned immediately before the feature. “Awesome racetrack,” he said. “These people here did a phenomenal job giving us a racetrack to race.” … Jimmy Mars vaulted from fifth to second on a lap-36 restart, but he ran there only a single circuit before beginning to fade back to a ninth-place finish. … McCreadie had to start at the rear of a heat after having his qualifying lap disallowed because he didn't report to the scales. … One night after recording a career-best WoO finish of second, Brent Larson authored a quiet run from 19th to a 10th-place finish. … Veteran Lance Matthees, who lives in nearby Winona, Minn., was added to the feature field as a track provisional. … The WoO tour is off for a weekend before returning to action May 21-22 at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway.