FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 22) — As Shannon Babb swept past Hudson O’Neal for the lead on lap 34 of Wednesday’s 50-lap One for the Road feature at Fairbury Speedway, his faithful home-state followers rose up. They began to anticipate an epic victory to kick off the Prairie Dirt Classic weekend. | RaceWire

Babb, 52, of Moweaqua, Ill., briefly harbored the same hopes for his run in the FloRacing Night in America event. Maybe, just maybe, he could pull off his first national touring series triumph since a full-field 25-lapper in World of Outlaws Late Model Series competition on April 30, 2021, at Boone (Iowa) Speedway and his first $20,000 win since he earned $40,000 for 2015’s Topless 100.

“When we had that restart (on lap 29), I knew (O’Neal) was on harder tires than I was and a lot of times that helps,” Babb said. “So he kind of went in there and didn’t get hooked in the bottom and kind of slid out, and I was able to creep around and then get back up beside him a little bit and get ahead.”

But Babb’s run at the front lasted just three circuits, ending when Martinsville, Ind.’s O’Neal charged around the outside to put Kevin Rumley’s No. 6 back in front on lap 37 and controlled the rest of the distance. Babb spent the closing laps battling for second largely with Josh Rice of Crittenden, Ky. — though several other drivers including Brandon Sheppard were also were in the mix — before settling for a third-place finish.

Babb was in a quite jovial mood afterward despite falling short in a race he led three times, for laps 1-9, 16-21 and 34-36.

“I was just happy to have a solid run,” Babb said. “It was an awesome race, for sure. Hudson was great. Rice was great. I seen B-Shepp a little bit. Fairbury was really good tonight. The lanes changed multiple times. Every lane was good.

“I wasn’t perfect by no means, but I was good enough to stay in the hunt. Hudson definitely had the best car it looked like to me.”

Battling at the head of the pack energized Babb — especially the stretch on laps 14-15 when he raced under a blanket with O’Neal and Rice.

“Three-wide for the lead — that was cool, that was awesome,” Babb said with a smile.

In the final analysis, Babb felt fortunate just to make it through the entire night as well as he did. He said his team “had some shenanigans going on” with a power-steering pump change after he set fast time among 73 entries. It wasn’t an easy swap because his replacement component didn’t match up correctly.

“The bolts are bottomed out, but they’re too long,” Babb said. “I couldn’t get ‘em off and we were pressed for time (to make the first heat and later the feature), so we actually have it held on there with bailing wire right now. We had duct tape, we had zip-ties, and we went with the baling wires.

“We had to use some farmer techniques there, but it lasted. We can work on it tomorrow.”

Babb heads into Friday’s PDC qualifying program feeling as good about his chances for his success in the race as he has in considerable time. He’s confident in his Longhorn Chassis, a lightly-used machine he purchased over the winter from his buddy Jonathan Davenport’s Double L Motorsports team with financial assistance from his former team owner and longtime sponsor Ed Petroff.

“I’ve been running this one all year,” said Babb, who has three victories in 18 starts this season. “The cars that we had, I’d had them for three or four years and I’m like, ‘Man, to get any better, we just gotta move on. We gotta get rid of our older equipment and get some better equipment,’ so we did. And thank God Ed was in for it. He’s been a big supporter of mine all along.

“So we sold a car, Ed helped me buy this car, and it’s been great. J.D’.s able to help me with it because he knows it, and he’s helped me in areas that I wasn't good at.”

A three-time PDC winner — in 2002, ’06 and the first big-money, WoO-era event in ’13 — Babb has missed the cut for two of the last four PDC features and counts a third-place run in 2021 as his most recent top-five. He’s looking forward to this year’s event.

“Racing’s been good to us and Fairbury’s been good to us,” Babb said. “We just move on and see what we do from here.”