Jeremy Shaw didn’t sound like a driver willing to chalk up a 15th-place finish to bad luck.
Midway through a Limited Late Model race at Columbus Speedway on June 6, Shaw’s No. 1s car slowed after its battery died. After the race, Shaw, who’d won a race at Columbus earlier this season and finished second twice at Magnolia Motor Speedway, knew he had more unnerving issues.
Considered by other area drivers as a top-five competitor each week, Shaw had two finishes of 15th or worse. He said qualifying runs and adjustments from qualifying to the feature races were the reason for his inconsistency
“We were setting quick times a few years ago, and our qualifying has struggled this year,” Shaw said Wednesday. “We had to try a new thing … setup wise. We were locked in doing the same thing for a while. That was good, but others caught up. It’s all about focus.”
In the week following the June 6 race at Columbus and the build-up to the Clash at The MAG, Shaw changed his spring package for qualifying and to made minor tweaks throughout heat races and the feature. Prior to the added focus on springs, the setup package was mostly unchanged throughout all three phases of the evening.
“We made changes to address the problem in the corner exit, especially when we were in traffic,” Shaw said. “At that time, we were finding ourselves having to come through the field. The previous package was good, but there were times, like when the track slicked, when we were not good in traffic.”
The payoff was immediate, as Shaw finished eighth in the first NeSmith Late Model race at the Clash and won the second-day NeSmith race, besting a field that included 42 entries. On June 20, he won the Limited Late Model feature at Columbus.
“We were able to race in lap traffic really good,” Shaw said. “It seems to be really helping us a lot. When you’re racing, you can’t go out and win won week and just run that same thing for next three years. It’s a constant evolution process. A few years ago, we were top three every week. We ran against a lot of good guys and smart people, and when you out-run them, they’ll figure out a way to beat you. We got stuck in the middle … we weren’t bad, running top five, but we were struggling to compete for a win every week.”
Shaw will return to the track Saturday when Magnolia Motor Speedway plays host to a NeSmith Late Model race and weekly features for Super Late Models, Street Stocks, and Factory Stocks. The track will hold a fireworks show to celebrate Independence Day.
Shaw leads the NeSmith/Limited Late Model points standings at Magnolia. He won the track points in 2012.
“We’ve had some up-and-down years since then,” Shaw said. “We switched to the Trak-Star car at the end of last year, and we’re still learning. We’ve had a lot of rainouts, and where we’d normally have run 20 or so races by now, we’ve only run 10. We’re still getting good information from it. This year’s a rebuilding year.”
Shaw, who is from Millport, Alabama, could venture from “hometown” tracks Columbus and Magnolia and compete at NeSmith Series races around the state, like he has done in previous years. That decision will depend on how successful he is in the next 45 days.
His first priority will be the remaining races at Magnolia.
“A few years ago, I was running pretty much every NeSmith race around the area, then we started to struggle a bit,” Shaw said. “We’ve just been trying to get our confidence up this year and get good packages for each track. There are very different tracks here, and if you could get good base package for each, you can get something to be competitive at different tracks around the state.”
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