Brownstown Speedway
Soft-tire strategy pays for Jackson 100 winner
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Brian Shirley and his Jackson 100 trophy. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
BROWNSTOWN, Ind. (Sept. 26) — Brian Shirley was among a handful of drivers who rolled the dice on softer tires in Saturday’s 47th annual Jackson 100 at Brownstown Speedway, but the gamble never backfired.
Instead, that risk made the 45-year-old Chatham, Ill., veteran, who hadn’t won a national tour event since last July’s Prairie Dirt Classic — a 71-race winless stretch on the national circuit — appear unassailable. Starting ninth, he cracked the top five by lap four. Lap 11, he was third. Lap 24, into the lead. Lap 41, a two-second advantage. | RaceWire
The top three finishers — Shirley, Josh Rice and Max Blair — were among the few on softer tires Saturday, along with sixth-place Frank Heckenast Jr. But as Shirley put it following his $56,000 victory, “just because you put soft tires on doesn't mean you win the race.”
“You’ve got to have a car that's capable of doing what it needs to do through lapped traffic, through all the things that happen in the course of the event,” Shirley said.
Saturday marked a complete turnaround from Friday for Shirley, who finished 17th after starting 13th at the quarter-mile Brownstown oval. His Bob Cullen Racing operation entered the weekend with just one national-tour podium this season, while Shirley had averaged a 14.1 finish on the Lucas Oil tour since the start of August.
Shirley also hadn’t entered the Jackson 100 since 2017, when he finished 22nd, making Saturday’s dominant performance all the more unexpected.
“Truthfully, all the circumstances played in our favor,” Shirley said. “Obviously, if it would’ve been black-slick top to bottom, we may not have been that good. Luckily, the condition was our condition tonight that favors us and for the setup we have. All circumstances fell our way. Obviously the car was good. And the driver did his part, too. When all those things come together, obviously we’re capable of winning the race.”
The cool autumn conditions, which kept the racetrack plenty gripped-up around the bottom, prompted teams to consider softer tires over the traditionally favored harder compounds. As it turned out, drivers on harder tires struggled to get their cars to stick to the bottom. Venturing into the higher grooves didn’t offer much of a solution.
Lucas Oil points leader Brandon Sheppard, whose decision to run harder tires contributed to his eighth-place finish, put it plainly.
“I mean, soft tires won the race. We all had hard tires on. Nothing you can do,” he said. “Sometimes guys gamble and run good. Soft tires won the race, that's all there is to it. If we had soft tires on, we probably ran top-five or whatever. But we didn't.”
Sheppard actually said Rocket1 Racing car owner Mark Richards wanted to run softer tires, but with his championship lead over Hudson O’Neal tightening, the potential consequences of that gamble were too great.
“It's one of them deals. It's hard to gamble when you're points racing, which bit us in the ass tonight because Mark wanted to put soft tires on,” Sheppard said. “You just don't want to take that chance of it not being good at the end of the race. Hell, it was better at the end of the race being on soft tires than being on hard tires.”
Unlike Sheppard, O’Neal and his SSI Motorsports team “never really thought about” the option of bolting on softer tires.
“We just kind of thought that our tires were a safe play and that was what we needed to do,” O’Neal said. “Like what Sheppard and them felt like, if you put soft tires on and it's wrong, you're going to run 15th, and that's just — you take yourself all the way out of it.”
Besides, O’Neal knows Brownstown well enough. His home track, 60 miles south of his Martinsville, Ind., home, hasn’t traditionally favored softer tires in 100-lap affairs.
“It's Brownstown, and Brownstown normally, historically, is won on hard tires in these 100-lappers,” O’Neal said. “But a little different conditions tonight. A lot colder, a lot more damp. I felt like on lap 80 of the 100, we were better than we were at the beginning, but those soft tires just continued to be good.”
Before the start of the feature, Shirley’s crewmen, Anthony Martin and Brady Mezney, relayed to him that at least two drivers ahead of him — Heckenast and Rice — had softer tires. So the first order of business was getting ahead of them.
“People in front of us had soft tires on, so I was just truthfully hoping to get by them as quick as I could,” Shirley said. “I needed to make sure that I went fast enough to get in front of them and not have to be behind them later on in the race.”
With the cooler conditions potentially more forgiving on his tires, Shirley pushed hard from the outset. He didn't begin backing down his pace until after taking the lead on lap 24.
“That was really, really important. I felt like I needed to go immediately,” Shirley said. “And then as soon as I got to where I felt comfortable, I needed to back it down and just make sure I didn't overheat the tires.”
Shirley built his advantage to four seconds by lap 52, when his pace stalled behind a pack of lapped cars. Unable to pass a lapped car again until lap 79, Shirley remained ultra patient, knowing that maintaining a tempered pace behind slower cars would keep his tires cool.
“I stepped out a couple times to see if I could get around a couple of lapped cars. What you've got to watch is just abusing your tires,” Shirley said. “Moving around and trying to be up top where there wasn't much grip, you could easily heat up the tire, and I could feel it.
“As soon as I made one or two laps, if I didn't get by the lapped car, I knew I needed to get down and preserve my left-rear tire. I judged the lapped cars when I caught them, and really, there for a while, I was like, man, the lapped cars were as good as I was. So I was like, just ride with them, and then when they made a mistake, try to get by them.
“If somebody was going to beat us, I just felt like they would have to go earn it on the outside,” he added. “And if they did, then rightfully so.”
While Shirley remained patient enough to let his four-second advantage evaporate as Heckenast closed to his rear bumper by lap 70, his pursuer couldn't afford to play it as safe.
“I had two choices. I could either try to take the left side off my car, try to get to the bottom here and run third, or it's $50,000-to-win. We suck at Brownstown. Our worst track. Let's go for it,” Heckenast said. “So I went for it. Looked cool for a minute, got back by Rice for second, and then I just got my stuff too hot.
“Shirley did an unbelievable job, so congrats to him,” he added. “That was a big win for him. I know he's been trying to get one like that for a long time. He did a great job.”
Heckenast, who eventually faded to sixth after overheating his softer tires, noticed a subtle adjustment in Shirley’s racing line that thwarted his bid for the lead.
“I got to him, got to his quarterpanel off two there at one point — and he just moved up a half car. And that half a car, when it sent me into three, it sent me into no-man’s-land,” Heckenast said. “If he would've crouched down around the tires, we would've had a shot at it. But he floated out nicely like he should've, and that was enough to kill my momentum, kill my speed.”
Despite fading to sixth, Heckenast could appreciate the outcome because of his longtime rapport with Shirley. He was happy to see his familiar DIRTcar Summer Nationals rival return to victory lane in a monumental way.
“Shirley's winning the Jackson 100, and I'm running second, and I actually told myself in the middle of the race, this feels like a damn Summer Nationals race,” Heckenast Jr. said. “Where he's won so many races and I've run second to him, it's not even funny. If you're running second, he's one to run second to.”
Heckenast wasn’t alone in praising Shirley. Rice didn’t hold back, saying, “If I'm going to lose to anybody, it would be him.”
Blair, meanwhile, simply described Shirley as “a good dude” whose affable nature has made him someone his fellow competitors are happy to see succeed.
“Ever since I first started racing on the road, he's always treated me really good,” Blair said. “Super, super happy for him.”
