RPW Column: Saturday Was A Near Perfect Evening For The Sheldon Family At Lebanon Valley

RPW Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – WEST LEBANON, NY – Kyle Sheldon just seems to love being called King of the Track at Lebanon Valley Speedway…and for good reason.

This past Saturday night, the third-generation driver parked his Alex Thomson-owned, Sheldon Oil Services #42 in victory lane at the West Lebanon, NY and collected a hefty $5,000 payday.

To his credit, Sheldon’s last victory was in the same event, exactly three years before in 2017. To say this win was needed would be an understatement.

“It may have been three years between wins, but man, that’s three too many,” Sheldon said. “I really have to thank everyone who helped get us here…everybody who helps on this car, especially my car owner Alex Thomson.”

Sheldon was extremely fast to give credit to his car owner who works tirelessly to get the machine to the track each week with a very limited budget.

“Alex literally does this on a shoestring,” he said. “This car sat in our trailer all winter long. We brought it out in the spring and basically ran it the way it came off the track last season and we’ve been competitive.”

Sheldon knows that the Thomson family puts as much effort as they can into the racing program, and is so happy that he was able to give them a checkered flag.

“The amount of blood, sweat and tears that Alex puts into this, I can’t thank him enough,” he said. “For us to be able to win like this, against what we race with each week, is unbelievable. I can’t say enough for him and his family.”

While they’ve shown speed, the 42 Racing team has been bitten by the bad luck bug as of late. Last time they ran, Sheldon broke a driveshaft and that severely hurt their primary engine. This week, they brought out an old friend in its place.

“The motor that’s in this car, Alex rebuilt it for $500,” he said. “This is one of our old engines we’ve got because it’s like Old Faithful to us. We broke our good one last week and this thing ran just great tonight.”

Sheldon had to keep up with his father on Saturday night. During the 358-Modified feature, Guy Sheldon took the Lorne Browe-owned #628 to a solid runner-up finish to Brett Haas. That put the pressure on his son to perform in the Big Block Modified main.

“There’s always a lot of pressure because I can’t let him finish better than me,” he said. “I only had one position to get and I’m pretty proud of how both he and I ran tonight. This is something we needed and I’m just glad to be back.”

Second place finisher Rob Pitcher did everything he could to get by the Sheldon machine, including a hard-fought battle over the final 12 circuits, but came up just short in his bid for the victory.

“We had a fast Bedell-powered Teo Pro Car tonight,” Pitcher said. “We got to second but and the car was to 230 degrees on the water temp but we just wanted to get it cooled down. Good job by Kyle but this feels good.”

Pitcher has put a big effort together to have a strong season in 2020. A brand new Teo Pro Car and a fresh engine out of Dan Bedell’s shop has the team working in the right direction.

“Hopefully we have all of our engine issues straightened out now,” he said. “Brand new Teo, Dan’s doing the engines again so I think we’re on the right track.”

The last few races have been trying for the Pitcher team. Problems in one of their qualifying races and then in the last feature run hindered their performance. Saturday night, they got that turned around.

“We had a bad couple of weeks getting wrecked in the heat and the feature,” he said. “Hopefully, that’s all behind us now and we can move forward from here and keep this strong momentum going.”