Anyone who expected a return of the infamous Super Shepp during Friday’s Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals preliminary program at The Dome at America’s Center was sadly disappointed.

Oh, Steve Sheppard Jr. had a reason to let loose in anger after a direct hit from Trevor Gundaker knocked him from the lead in the fifth of six heat races. But Sheppard is an older and wiser version of the driver who earned a hero’s nickname for his memorable, high-stepping run up the front of Dennis Erb Jr.’s car during the 2009 DIRTcar Summer Nationals event at Highland (Ill.) Speedway, and he refrained from retaliation of any sort upon having his car’s left-rear tire cut by Gundaker’s contact.

At 48, the veteran racer from New Berlin, Ill., kept a cool head amid a frustrating moment.

“Actually, I was really mad at first,” Sheppard said. “And then I drove back there (to the pit area) and I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve been there. I’ve done the same thing to other people — on accident, you know?’”

Sheppard’s demise was certainly disappointing, though. Making a rare competitive start in a Longhorn Chassis from the Sheppard Riggs Racing stable that features his superstar son Brandon, he timed second-fastest in his qualifying group and led the first six circuits of his 8-lap heat before his night was turned on its head.

Gundaker, a soon-to-be 21-year-old driver from St. Charles, Mo., charged hard into turn one and slid across the track into the left-rear corner of Sheppard’s No. 5s. Sheppard managed to maintain control of his car while Gundaker executed a 360-degree spin in turn two before continuing without stopping and leaving several machines stacked up in his wake.

“He overshot the corner,” Sheppard said of Gundaker. “Everybody up in the stands said he overshot it and just got a dead push (into Sheppard’s car). I kept it straight, and I pulled up beside him (after the caution flew) and I was pointing my finger at him and said, ‘You little s—. You better watch it next time,’ but I didn’t know I had a flat then.

“I thought I was all right, so I was sitting there (during the tangle’s cleanup) thinking, Ah, hell, we’ll keep going, and then they announced (over the one-way radio), ‘Hey Sheppard, you got a flat tire,’ and I was like, ‘You gotta be freakin’ kidding me.’”

The news prompted Sheppard to loudly gun his engine, drive off to the turn-three exit and limp back to his trailer. By the time he arrived there and climbed out of his car, he had come to grips with his fate.

“Honestly, after I thought about it a second, just as soon as I crossed the track I thought, Well, you dumb ass, if you’d have been up on the wheel and driving a little harder, I’d have been gone. My car was that good,” Sheppard said. “I watched Ricky Thornton the race before mine, and man, he run through that middle, stayed out of trouble, stayed smooth. I thought, That’s what I want to do, so after that caution before (his scrape with Gundaker), I looked up right as the caution came out and I was way ahead of (Gundaker) so I was like, This is working! I thought if I just keep running that line, I’d be fine.

“Then the next thing you know it’s like, ‘Bam!’”

The 34-year-old Sheppard who went after Erb some 14 years ago might have reacted similarly toward Gundaker, but an inner voice told him such a response wouldn’t have been worthwhile.

“I wasn’t gonna do that,” Sheppard said, before adding with a smile: “Hell, he’s a young man. He’d probably whup my ass.”

Sheppard did walk over to Gundaker’s trailer after the heat — which the young driver went on to win because keeping his car’s wheels turning as he spun allowed him to retain his running position — and feigned some anger.

“I grabbed him by the neck and said, ‘You little s—!’” Sheppard quipped. “And he said, ‘Man, I’m so sorry.’ I knew he was. He’s a good kid. I was mad at first, and then I got thinking, When I was his age I did the same s—.

“I’ve done the same thing to people and they’ve been madder than hell at me. And I was mad at first, but I just thought, You know what? I’m too old to just be mad at everybody all the time. It’s life, things happen, and we’ll race another day.

“It sucks for me, but it’s the Dome,” he added. “And it could’ve been way worse. We could’ve been in a big pileup.”

Gundaker said Sheppard “come up behind me and, like, bear-hugged me” in the pit area. He proceeded to apologize profusely for his move-gone-wrong while pushing his car to the limit on a fifth-mile bullring where “it just feels like you got wolves chasing you 24/7 whether you’re running first, second, seventh, eighth, it don’t matter.”

“I just went down there (into turn) and, like, where the track transitions, it’s got that little hump, and I went in there and he was running the top and I was just trying to tuck to him,” said Gundaker, who celebrates his 21st birthday on Dec. 19. “Then I hit that hump … it’s no excuse, but it just kind of launched me out at him and I run him over.

“I could’ve done much better as the driver, yes, and I do feel bad for them guys. I don’t ever race like that and I don’t want people to race me like that. And I hate to hit a guy like Stevie Sheppard too, especially when we’re in Missouri or Illinois. It could’ve been anybody else, and I hit Stevie Sheppard! I grew up watching that guy, and when I lined up next to him (in the heat) it was a surreal moment for me.

“It’s a bad situation. I just flat run him over,” he continued. “I feel bad for Stevie and his guys. They work hard, and Stevie don’t get to race much, maybe 10 times a year, and I ruined one of his weekends. That’s the thing that sucks about it. I wish we could’ve finished one and two, but we gotta take our licks and learn from it.”

Gundaker felt fortunate that his car “didn’t stall out on me” as he spun and he was able to avoid stopping with “a John Force burnout.”

“But it’s not the way I want to win a heat race, especially at the Dome, my first heat race here,” said Gundaker, who drew the pole position for the 25-lap feature but slipped back at the initial start before losing his brakes on lap five and ultimately finishing eighth.

Gundaker also was thankful that Sheppard accepted his mea culpa.

“He’s in good spirits,” said Gundaker, who is hoping to qualify for Saturday’s 40-lap, $30,000-to-win finale in his fifth career attempt at the Gateway Dirt Nationals. “He come over and said, ‘I was mad at first, but I remember when I was your age and I was doing dumb stuff like that. I’m not mad at you by any means because I was there. I understand. I went through those mistakes and I hope you learn from ‘em,’ and I said, ‘I will.’

“I have the utmost respect for all them guys over there. I dug them a hole pretty hard.”

Indeed, Sheppard has a long road ahead to make his first Gateway Dirt Nationals headliner. He’s not throwing in the towel in his second career start in the event (he failed to qualify for the finale in 2022), but he’s scheduled to start 12th in the first of Saturday’s three 10-lap non-qualifiers’ and must finish among the top two just to tag the rear in one of six 10-lap qualifying races.

Sheppard missed his chance to start near the front of Friday’s 25-lap feature with his son Brandon, who won the sixth heat and went on to finish third in the A-main. But he’ll attempt to salvage his weekend Saturday with an unlikely, but not impossible, rally on a track that he hopes will sport plenty of character.

“I just enjoy running the Dome,” said Sheppard, who expects to race during the 2024 season when he can fit action in between his commitments at the family salvage yard. “(Some drivers will) are probably gonna be griping because the track is rougher, but you know what? We need it rough, because this is the Dome and we need the excitement. That’s what’s got all these people here.

“Believe me, it’s hard on an old guy like me. It will beat you to death. I work out, but I probably need to work out a little more to run the Dome when it gets like it was tonight.”