Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Sheppard shakes up Top 25
In a new feature appearing regularly on DirtonDirt, senior writer Kevin Kovac will offer readers five things worth mentioning from around the Dirt Late Model landscape (index to previous Take Fives):
No. 1: Voting for this week’s DirtonDirt Top 25 power rankings produced unprecedented results with four drivers receiving first-place votes and Bobby Pierce becoming the first racer to earn No. 1 status without the most first-place nods. It was Brandon Sheppard who shook up the poll, rising five spots to No. 2 following his 2-for-2 performance on the rain-abbreviated Illinois Speedweek. B-Shepp picked up four first-place votes (versus Pierce’s three) to rise up the rankings, and an examination of his past month of action with the Rocket Chassis house car team indicates that he’s worthy of No. 1 consideration. Not only does he have four wins among seven top-fives in his last eight starts in the Rocket1 machine dating back to last month’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series-sanctioned Illini 100 at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway, I looked up his results over the period in head-to-head matchups with the remainder of the current top five in the poll — Pierce, Hudson O’Neal, Nick Hoffman and Jonathan Davenport — and found that he stacks up very well. While Sheppard hasn’t run any races against Davenport for the past month, he has head-to-head advantages over O’Neal (4-3), Pierce (3-1) and Hoffman (3-1).
No. 2: There’s been plenty of discussion in the Dirt Late Model world about the incident during Saturday’s Best Plumber 604 Racing Series feature at I-75 Raceway in Sweetwater, Tenn., that led to the tour handing a minimum two-year suspension to Greg Martin of Olive Springs, Tenn., for running into Lenoir City, Tenn., driver Matt Henderson’s car in the infield — and knocking backward two of Henderson’s crewmen who were on the other side of the car — after the two tangled on the track. Martin was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and has not yet made a public comment, but Henderson elaborated further on the situation in a Monday post on Facebook. In it Henderson said he’s received “three death threats for Skinny (Martin’s nickname) getting arrested,” but he asserted that he “never called a cop” and reiterated his initial comment that he had bounced through holes and was responsible for the feature contact with Martin. Henderson wishes that he and Martin would have met “eye-to-eye” after the race to avoid what happened in the infield. “I know why he was mad. And I understand it,” Henderson wrote. “Again, if I had intent of wrecking him I could have done it before that lap. I hate it but it happened. I am sure he hates it too … Skinny will have a process to go through and get this straightened out for him. I’m just putting my car back together and on to the next one.”
No. 3: The side controversy to the Martin-Henderson incident was the decision by Best Plumber 604 Racing Series officials to disqualify Cory Hedgecock of Loudon, Tenn., who was leading the race when Martin ran into Henderson’s car in the infield. Hedgecock’s DQ was apparently because his father, Chad, was involved in an altercation at Martin’s car; Hedgecock said in his own Facebook post that he was told conflicting reasons for his DQ, including that his father hit Martin, his father “interfered with (Martin) leaving” the infield and “my crew was up at (Martin’s) pits fighting.” But Hedgecock maintained that his father wasn’t even working on his car that night — Chad Hedgecock actually was the owner of Henderson’s car and was with him all night. Hedgecock’s DQ seemed to be an all-around mess of a situation and even prompted the series to issue another statement on it on Monday; the statement noted that officials made the call “based on the best information available at the time,” claiming that Chad Hedgecock was in the infield “visibly signaling” both Cory and Henderson and “entered a restricted area and engaged the (Martin) car shutting off the car while the driver was attempting to exit the racetrack as he was being directed to do so by series officials.”
No. 4: The weather for this weekend’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned High Bank Heist at Eagle (Neb.) Raceway won’t be quite like the scorching-hot conditions that were typical for July’s Silver Dollar Nationals at the closed I-80 Speedway in nearby Greenwood, Neb., but it appears it will be quite steamy for mid-May. Forecasts are calling for high temperatures to climb into the low 90s, so teams are going to get an early taste of summer.
No. 5: Speaking of weather forecasts, I saw a video posted on social media by Georgetown (Del.) Speedway that featured a clip of a weather report during a newscast on WBOC-TV 16 in Salisbury, Md. Meteorologist Mike Lichniak gave Georgetown’s Wednesday night doubleheader for the World of Outlaws Late Model Series and big-block modified Super DIRTcar Series some nice shoutouts as he detailed that his thoughts of whether the event could beat the rain showers expected to move into the area late Wednesday night. I was especially impressed how Lichniak even offered a suggestion on how the track could increase its odds of running the show before the rain arrives: “I’m optimistic that we get things in if they just go with the Late Models and Super DIRT Series and don’t try to stick the other classes in between because it’s gonna be close.”
