By KEN BRUCE
Matt Sheppard has won at just about every speedway he has ever competed in the Northeast, but the one-track Sheppard has not been able to conquer is the Georgetown Speedway. Sheppard has had a handful or second-place finishes, but just has not been able to park his modified in victory lane.
Sheppard has made two STSS appearances at the Brett Deyo run facility in 2019 and has walked out each time with a runner-up finish to his credit. Unlike the opener in March, Sheppard had the lead early on but couldn’t hold off a hard charging Billy Pauch Jr ., who passed Sheppard and went on to score the win relegating the Waterloo, N.Y., driver to another runner-up finish.
“We just flat out got too tight tonight,” explained Sheppard after exiting his No. 9S on the frontstretch after the race. “I just couldn’t carry enough corner speed tonight and had to keep letting off going through the turn. That’s definitely not the fastest way around this place. Billy was better tonight and he deserved to win and that’s about all there is to it.”
With only one race remaining on the STSS South schedule, Sheppard still is the points leader and tonight’s second-place finish helped solidify his spot atop the standings.
“It was a good run for us overall and we had a good points night,” mentioned Sheppard. “It’s a long trip down here and a long trip home and at the end of the night, the car is in one piece so we can’t be too mad about it and we’ll go onto the next one.”
Strong Podium Finish for Bachetti
Andy Bachetti has always been fast when he makes the long haul from Sheffield, Mass., to compete at the Georgetown Speedway, but something always seems to happen to take a good finish away from the driver of the No. 4. Tuesday night Bachetti had no such problems as he was fast right from the start of the night winning his heat race by a convincing margin and then going out and winning the cash dash to earn the pole for the 35-lap feature race.
Sheppard outgunned Bachetti right from the outset but Bachetti hung in there and never dropped back farther the fourth the whole race and came across the checkered flag with a very strong third-place finish.
“It was good night for us all around tonight,” said Bachetti afterwards. “It’s always good to come down here and finish well. We were a little tight there in the beginning but once the fuel load started to burn off it started to get a little better. We had a good car overall and it was a good finish for the Garrity Asphalt No. 4.”
Georgetown Granules
Thirty-five Modifieds took part in the night’s racing with the four heats being won by Craig Von Dohren, Billy Pauch Sr, Jimmy Horton and Bachetti. Danny Johnson back in the Petruska No. 66 was the consi winner…
Mike Gular, who was sixth in south series points coming into the night suffered a broken rear end early in the feature, ending his good run…
Good run for Matt Stangle driving the Jojo Watson backup car as he came from starting 23rd to a nice 12th place finish earning him the hard charger of the race award…
After a strong heat race win, the bad luck streak of Jimmy Horton continued as he was caught up in a wreck on a lap three restart ending his night along with the cars of Brandon Grosso and others…
Ryan Watt held on for a sixth-place finish as a shock broke on the No. 14W in the closing laps of the race…
It was an early night for Anthony Perrego in the Gary Simpson No. 12K as motor troubles cropped up in their heat race thus ending the night for the team…
Surprise no-show was Duane Howard and the Norm Hansel No. 357 who always run good at Georgetown. Word has it the team experienced motor troubles as they were prepping the car in the morning…
MAV-TV was on hand to film the nights racing activities. The race will be shown on MAV-TV later on this fall…
As always I can be reached at dirtracefan25@hotmail.com or on Twitter @dirtracefan25 for any questions or comments.
