OCALA, Fla. — Brandon Sheppard’s toughest task this Georgia-Florida Speedweeks hasn’t been trying to master the tricky racing surfaces of Golden Isles Speedway or Bubba Raceway Park, nor attempting to keep pace with the hot-starting Brandon Overton. No, Sheppard’s main challenger at this juncture seems to be himself.

“I give myself a C-minus on my setup choices at this point,” Sheppard said after Sunday's seventh-place Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series finish at the BRP Winter Nationals. “My car has been really good come race time, but I keep messing it up early in the night and getting us behind. There’s too many good cars and too much competition to get yourself that behind in qualifying, to have to start in the back of the heat race and battle up through there every night.”

The Longhorn Chassis camp has taken the sport by storm — not losing a race at the national level with Jonathan Davenport, Bobby Pierce, Mike Marlar, Devin Moran, Brandon Overton, Kyle Larson and Ricky Thornton Jr. — to start the new season. New to Longhorn for 2023, Sheppard's  been inconsistent in a dozen races: second, fourth, third, fifth, 23rd, 11th, 10th, seventh, ninth, 18th, fourth and seventh.

“I don’t know these cars yet,” Sheppard said. “I’m probably working on them a little too much, just trying to figure everything out. Matt (Langston), (Kevin) Rumley and Steve Arpin — all of them (at Longhorn) — have been very helpful. It’s just me figuring out what I want … what I need … what I like. It’s been difficult.”

Passing race cars hasn’t been the issue for Sheppard, who’s gained a combined 48 positions his last six races. The pitfall lies in time trials, where Sheppard’s failed to crack the top-five in a split group the last six races. He’s qualified as low as 19th over that span, too, as Sheppard continues the search for more speed from the onset.

“As I said, you cannot put yourself in that position and be behind the whole night,” Sheppard said. “We’ve done that pretty much all of Speedweeks now. We have to get better earlier in the night and we’ll be good, I think.

“We’ve been happy with the way things have been going. The car is really fast, especially when I get it right. Even when it’s not right on, it’s still pretty good. It’s just getting myself to do what I need to do in qualifying. That’s the biggest struggle so far. Once I get that figured out, we’ll be in good shape.”

VIDEO: Brandon Sheppard sat down with FloRacing's Michael Rigsby to discuss his new journey in 2023. 

Switching to Longhorns after racing Rocket Chassis most his life is like the equivalent to learning a new language, as systems that were proven to win under the watch of Mark Richards won’t necessarily work at Sheppard’s new venture.

“We’re kind of doing the same principle of things. We just go about it in a different way with these cars,” Sheppard said. “That’s been my struggle. I’ve been in Rockets for so long. To do something different, it’s just tough. It’s tough to get consistent. The consistency from the Rockets came from years and years and years of testing, and figuring it out. I knew it was going to be a learning curve.

“At the end of the day, I hope that we can get rolling a little bit and qualify good, and have some good runs — some solid runs. And we’ll go from there. I know we have a good car. The motor is running good. The car is running good. It’s just the setup man is off, which is me. Got to figure that part out.”

Bruening’s Disapproval

Considering Bubba Raceway Park’s narrowness, third-starting Tyler Bruening settled on the goal of simply finishing inside the top-five on Sunday. Then a mid-race melee sent that train of thought off the rails.

Perhaps a byproduct of wide-open conditions, Hudson O’Neal clipped the rear of Bruening’s Capital Race Car following a restart through turns one and two, which sent Bruening spinning in front of the field. It resulted in a 24-minute red flag that collected Dennis Erb Jr., Tim McCreadie, Garrett Smith, Garrett Alberson, G.R. Smith, and Wil Herrington.

“I didn’t know what exactly happened behind me. I didn’t want to say too much until I saw the video,” Bruening said. “I mean, according to (O’Neal), I was 90 degrees spinning out toward the infield. I just watched the video, and I was not 90 degrees facing the infield."

O'Neal took the blame for tearing up multiple race car in his postrace interview on FloRacing, but it didn't make Bruening feel much better.

“Yeah, it’s unfortunate to have gotten taken out and wrecked. The guy that does the wrecking and takes us out goes on to a good, solid (fourth-place) finish," he said. "It’s frustrating. I feel bad for Dennis and T-Mac. I have nothing but respect for those guys. I wanted to go over and tell them I didn’t have much control over the situation there. It’s just unfortunate. Had a good car, had a good night. I was really content with just riding right where I was at.”

Despite feature lap times on par to those from qualifying (Ricky Thornton Jr.’s best feature lap of 14.158 seconds would have been third-quickest in the first flight of qualifying), Bruening said that there is no excuse for someone to not to lift in that situation.

“We all know each other as drivers. We know the drivers who will lift and the ones who won’t,” Bruening said. “I don’t agree with that at all. The guys lift that have respect. When I have respect for them, I lift. Unfortunately, when you give a guy an inch, he takes a mile, and you end up getting spun out. It’s just unfortunate.”

Bruening added that his race car is “not that bad” damage-wise and he hopes to unload again on Monday with a shot to win his first national touring race.

“Obviously, Dennis, getting up on his side — I don’t think he got it too bad either, I hope,” Bruening said. “I hope those guys will be all right to run those cars tomorrow. We’re all right. We’ll get the body straightened up and go back at her.”

Blair’s Resolve

Three days after needing to re-clip his Boom Briggs-owned race car, Max Blair turned in a feel-good performance on Sunday in a runner-up to Ricky Thornton Jr.

“It’s awesome. It really is,” Blair said. “Driving for these guys, nobody really got down. It wasn’t a big deal we had some bad runs. Everyone’s put their head down, and basically put a new clip on two new race cars over night. We worked our tails off and I’m glad we had a good run here to pay everybody for what they did.”

VIDEO: Max Blair discusses his runner-up finish Sunday night at Bubba Raceway Park. 

The Centerville, Pa., driver in his second national touring season had a respectable debut with his new team last weekend at Volusia, registering 11th- and 13th-place finishes. That speed carried over to the opening night of the Super Bowl of Racing at Golden Isles Speedway in Brunswick, Ga., until an ill-timed collision with his car owner, Briggs, brought unwanted adversity.

After scurrying through their repairs just to be in serviceable condition for Friday's second night of action at Golden Isles, Blair qualified 19th of 26 cars in his time trial flight. Missing a transfer spot by both two spots in his heat race and consolation race, Blair and his Briggs-owned team went back to work that night to shore up the deficiencies. Blair qualified 10th in his group on Saturday but couldn’t translate that into a feature start.

On Sunday, he finally had something to show for his apparent speed.

“I know we’re fast. I know I can do it,” Blair said. “We just need to put a whole night together. Tonight we finally did. … I’m excited for the future of this deal. I think it’s going to be a good fit.

“I didn’t have anything for (Ricky). He was definitely the class of the field all night tonight. I was pumped to finish second. My car was getting worse and worse. I think we know what’s going on, something going on with the brakes. I think we were OK. We need to be a little bit better if we want to be running with (Thornton). Still, running second to (Thornton) is pretty cool.”

Good And Bad For T-Mac

On a macro level, Tim McCreadie bears good news this Georgia-Florida Speedweeks.

“I feel like we have more speed right now (than at this point last year),” the two-time reigning Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion said.

Beyond that, McCreadie hasn't found quite enough to reach victory line in four Lucas Oil starts so far. His mixed bag of finishes — second, 11th, sixth, and 22nd — aren’t worrisome, but having Sunday's race end prematurely because of a wreck out of his control paints his slow start to Speedweeks in duller colors.

“We haven’t had any bounces to go our way,” he said. “The last two nights we’ve timed less than a tenth off the pole and finished third in the heat, unfortunately. Just doesn’t always work out. … We were getting up there little by little. We were going to be up front. Just the way it goes.

“We just don’t … it’s not luck. You just have to be in a better position. You go out for heat races and the track is so slimy. The bottom can’t take off. Pretty much every heat race is won from the outside. If we would have been on the pole, it might have not helped us anyway. It was just hard to race because it wasn’t race-ready. It was too slimy the whole night. I think they ran times in the feature as fast as they did in qualifying.”

Four races into the new season is, of course, too early to seriously assess the points standings. McCreadie’s 215-point deficit to leader Brandon Overton, however, is also something he faced last year en route to a second straight championship.

Overton has said he's not planning to follow the Lucas Oil Series, but until then, who knows what the top four could like come Eldora Speedway’s season-ending Dirt Track World Championship.

“Overton is good. It doesn’t make it any different with what we do,” McCreadie said. “We race him 50 to 60 percent of the year anyway. It’s no big deal. Whatever they want to do is up to them. We just do the best we can with our team, and hopefully the chips fall where they may.”

Odds And Ends

Lucas Oil points leader Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., didn’t initially plan on running the start of the Winter Nationals on Sunday and Monday at Bubba Raceway Park. When asked afterward if he’s might commit to the Lucas Oil Series at some point, Overton shrugged his shoulders and simply answered “I don’t know.” … Hall of Fame racer Scott Bloomquist of Mooresburg, Tenn., has continued to lend a crewing hand to Garrett Smith. Bloomquist’s racing schedule for 2023 is in limbo as the Hall of Fame driver awaits another back surgery either in late February or early March. Bloomquist should know an exact surgery date this week, he said. … Carson Ferguson of Lincolnton, N.C., has parked his No. 93 Taylor Motorsports entry the rest of Georgia-Florida Speedweeks after Saturday’s crash at Golden Isles Speedway in Brunswick, Ga. … Surveying the pits after Sunday's feature at Bubba Raceway Park, Ross Robinson of Georgetown, Del., found a little levity: “Man, it’s like a race car graveyard around here,” he said through a laugh. For context, 12 of the 27 feature starters were involved in some kind of incident on Sunday, thus needing some late-night maintenance to ready for Monday’s 40-lap, $10,000-to-win program.