Fairbury Speedway
Good old days returning for Sheppard, Rocket1
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt.com staff reporter
Brandon Sheppard and the Rocket1 team. (Heath Lawson)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (May 9) — Moments after Brandon Sheppard parked his Rocket Chassis house car in Fairbury Speedway's victory lane Saturday, car owner Mark Richards was already dissecting how his team could’ve been even better.
More specifically, the perfectionist Richards wished he could’ve signaled to Sheppard to keep a tighter exit off turn four during the closing laps of the 60-lap Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series feature. Instead, Sheppard drifted all the way to the cushion as he rounded the frontstretch while Nick Hoffman stayed within arm’s reach lurking around the bottom groove, inching closer down the stretch.
“Had we gotten a caution, we would’ve told him not to float up off four because it was starting to lane up a little bit — not really rubber, but it was getting clean there,” Richards said. “Nick was starting to make a lot of time there. If Nick hadn’t found that line, we would’ve been fine running the line we were running. The only place Nick was really gaining was off four.”
That’s merely a snapshot into Rocket1 Racing’s pursuit to recapture its once-dominant form — the gold standard it established for itself and Dirt Late Model racing at large from 2017-20, while remaining a powerhouse in 2021 and ’22 before Sheppard departed for the Longhorn Factory Team ride in 2023.
At seven victories this season all at different racetracks, Sheppard has reached that mark with Rocket1 faster than at any point since 2017, when he’d also won at seven tracks by May 6.
The New Berlin, Ill., superstar and his tight-knit, Richards-led team keep climbing the Dirt Late Model pecking order, looking increasingly like a multidimensional threat capable of winning anytime, anywhere. Just like the good old days.
And even with Richards’s perfectionist nature, he still appreciates how far the rebuilding Rocket1 program has come and the consistency it has shown throughout 2026.
“It's been good. I can't complain,” Richards said. “I'll make this statement: (Sheppard) hasn't made a bad lap all year. … It's just getting to where everything's starting to come together. You know, we had three years of disarray. Brandon’s back working with the crew, and everybody's gelling. And it’s like the old days.”
Lost amid Rocket1 Racing’s effort to reestablish itself is that the team still captured the Lucas Oil championship with Hudson O’Neal in 2023. While the past two seasons haven’t matched the organization’s towering standard — only four full-field victories between Tim McCreadie in 2024 and Sheppard last year — Richards views those years as edifying more than damaging.
“There was a lot of noise out there when Brandon left. We never went anywhere. There was a lot of noise and a lot of … persona, that’s the right word,” Richards said, referencing the false perception some outsiders created around the state of his program. “Don’t get me wrong, we had enough issues trying to get the driver comfortable. We got Hudson comfortable. Hudson was rolling in ’23. Then all that changed in ’24 when Hudson left, and then we got Brandon back.
“Last year was a rebuilding year for Brandon to get him back comfortable. But since late fall last year — really mid-summer, around July, when we brought this car out (the Rocket XR2) — we started getting things together. A guy told me tonight, ‘You guys are starting to gain on it.’ I said, ‘We really haven't changed that much.’”
More than anything, Rocket1 Racing is assembling the kind of body of work that suggests this recent surge is sustainable rather than fleeting.
Since the end of Georgia-Florida Speedweeks, Sheppard has four victories, seven podium finishes and a sparkling 2.9 average finish across 11 starts. Even during Speedweeks, the Rocket1 team showed early signs of its hallmark versatility by winning at Volusia Speedway Park, All-Tech Raceway and Ocala Speedway — marking the first time since 2017 that Sheppard won at three different Florida racetracks in a single Speedweeks campaign.
The numbers are beginning to reflect that resurgence nationally, too. In this past week’s DirtonDirt Top 25 poll, Sheppard climbed to No. 2 — his highest ranking since Feb. 22, 2022, when he also sat second. His four first-place votes were his most since he opened the 2021 season as the preseason No. 1.
And perhaps most tellingly, all seven of Sheppard’s victories with Rocket1 this season have come over a 22-race stretch. That’s the most wins he’s collected over a span that short since late in 2021, when he piled up seven victories in a 21-race stretch from Aug. 13-Sept. 23.
Richards can point to only one stretch this season where he felt the Rocket1 team truly missed the mark: March 4-7 at Golden Isles Speedway’s Wieland Winternationals in Brunswick, Ga., where Sheppard finished third, 16th, 17th and eighth.
“The worst we were was Brunswick, and that was my fault,” Richards said. “We got off track during practice night. I wish we would have never practiced. We got off track and it had us off all week.”
Still, Rocket1 Racing believes there’s another level to reach. Saturday at Fairbury offered a reminder of that. While Sheppard controlled the second half of the 60-lapper, he never fully distanced himself from Hoffman, who stayed with Sheppard around the bottom groove late and steadily reeled in the Rocket1 driver over the closing circuits.
In today’s Dirt Late Model landscape, the finest details feel magnified.
Hudson O’Neal leads the nation with 12 victories. Bobby Pierce continues to set the standard atop the DirtonDirt Top 25 poll. Jonathan Davenport has piled up nine wins over his last 20 starts. Hoffman, meanwhile, has become the sport’s model of consistency with 37 straight top-10 finishes.
With the upper echelon tighter than it has been in years, Richards knows refining every little detail — even something as subtle as Sheppard’s exit off turn four Saturday night — matters more than ever.
“I really felt like I did a bad job there the last five laps,” said Sheppard, who added he believed his right-rear tire may have been losing air down the stretch. “As I said, I didn’t feel right. I don’t know if it was the tire going down or what. All in all, we were able to get the job done. And the FALS cushion made me happy again tonight, I guess.”
The Rocket1 team didn’t only celebrate Sheppard’s victory Saturday night. Richards was nearly just as pumped-up afterward discussing another triumph involving the Rocket Chassis brand: 60-year-old Jerry Bowersock winning a $5,000 Valvoline American Late Model Iron-Man Series feature at Atomic Speedway in Alma, Ohio, in a brand-new Rocket XR2 chassis prepared by Richards himself.
The Wapakoneta, Ohio, veteran scored his first touring-series victory since 2009 and his first full-fender victory of any kind since September 2023, providing yet another encouraging sign for a Rocket program Richards believes is regaining its footing across the board.
“I did all his shocks, set everything up for him,” Richards said. “He texted me today and he says, ‘Hey, can I run that setup you did for Eldora?’ I said, ‘Yeah, just put it in there.’ I told him a couple of little things to do. And he was happy. He texted me after the race. I was happy for him. Jerry’s been a great driver over the years. He’s just never had really good equipment. Now he’s got a good car, a good motor. He’s got a guy that's helping him out and they got some good equipment.”
Does Richards feel his team is beginning to hit its stride at the right time?
Considering Rocket1 Racing’s trajectory since mid-summer of last year — and especially the consistency and versatility it has displayed of late — Richards certainly believes his team is trending in the right direction.
But for someone wired like Richards, there’s no such thing as arriving too early, peaking too soon or becoming overly fixated on being at peak form during a specific stretch of the season.
“You know, it doesn't matter whether it's February or it's May, or whether it's October, you want to be rolling,” Richards said. “We’re just happy to be back, where — I feel like, we just got off the track in late ’22 when Brandon left. We're just now getting back where we were in ’22.
“It's just a matter of everything coming together and everybody working together. You know, Brandon's communicating well with all of us, and everybody's communicating well with him. And he's got his confidence back — and that’s what you need.”
