FRENCH CAMP — Shelby Sheedy doesn’t mind a deliberate approach to racing.
After all, he still is a relative newcomer to late model racing.
The French Camp native, who is in his third season of Crate Late Models, has been racing since 2010. His four career feature wins came in 2013 in the Mini Stocks division.
While the success prompted a move past Street Stocks and 602s to Crate Late Models, he has been content to improve by “trial and error.” Sheedy isn’t part of a race team and doesn’t lean heavily on other drivers to determine setups for his car. Instead, he trouble-shoots with Trak-Star, the manufacturer of his car, and experiments based on the results of previous races.
At 22 years old and with a limited background in racing, there’s no need to rush his learning curve.
“I didn’t grow up racing, so, naturally, that’s my approach,” said Sheedy, whose father, Glenn, raced briefly. “My ultimate goal has been to drive a dirt late model. We saw some success in what we were doing, so I made that decision to give it a shot. We made a pretty big jump, skipping other divisions, so it was a big change going from a stock suspension to all the adjustments of a late model. We still learn something new every week.”
Sheedy, who drives the black G4 car, will compete Saturday at Magnolia Motor Speedway, which will play host its annual “fan night” event.
Sheedy is eighth in track points at Magnolia. He has been a regular at Magnolia and Columbus Speedway before the latter shut down earlier this year. His highest finish at Magnolia this season is ninth, and he has made every NeSmith points feature.
Still, bad luck has marred Sheedy’s season.
Last weekend, Sheedy competed at Jackson, qualifying third overall and finishing third in his heat race before mechanical failure precluded him from making the feature.
“Early on, we were really good this year,” Sheedy said. “Then we had some issues and got the car straightened out, but it’s kind of been hit or miss since then. We’ve gone back to the basics here within the last three weeks, and I feel like we have a top-five car. It’s just a matter of being consistent.”
Part of Sheedy’s learning curve, at least this year, has been setting up his brand new car. Sheedy bought a 2016 Trak-Star car from Late Model racers Jamey and Mike Boland, who are based in Cuba, Alabama. When he started racing Late Models in 2014, he drove a 2007 model Trak-Star car. He said the decision to invest in a new car rather than a used car was nerve-wracking.
“You have to sit down and look at all your options,” Sheedy said. “You can get something that’s a year or two old, but you may not know all the history of it. You just have to look at what you can afford to spend and the chance of how well you’re gonna run with what you got. I sat down and looked at what I had and what we could be. I’ve never been in a new car like that.”
What sold Sheedy on continuing with a Trak-Star car was his familiarity and the support he gets from Trak-Star.
“You can call them anytime,” Sheedy said. “That’s helped tremendously.”
Still, logging more laps in the car will be the greatest factor that will help him reach his goal of winning his first Late Model race before the end of the year.
“On top of the competition, the maintenance and learning about the car, the biggest thing is being on the dirt and chasing the conditions of the track to stay on top of it,” Sheedy said. “You may unload and be really fast, but if you don’t change with the track, you’ll go from hero to zero really quick.”
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