After a fifth runner-up finish to Bobby Pierce over their last seven races Thursday at Huset’s Speedway, Brandon Sheppard and crew member Jeff McGee debriefed for a long while inside the Longhorn factory team transporter.

Pondering what might give Pierce an edge, Sheppard and McGee traded guesses after opening night of the Silver Dollar Nationals on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.

“If we do this … you think that will work?” Sheppard continued before acknowledging a reporter listening in on how they’re trying to buck being the bridesmaid to the top-ranked Dirt Late Model driver in the country.

“Welcome to our debrief session,” Sheppard told the reporter. “You’re in the middle of it.”

Needless to say, “you’re never going to figure out what the other guy is doing,” Sheppard explained, but when he’s finished runner-up to Pierce five times over the last 13 days, he can’t help but to evaluate Pierce’s race program from afar to see where he’s falling short.

“We just have to work on making our stuff better, which we’ve done a lot of different stuff over the past three months,” Sheppard said. “We’ve been good in a lot of different ways. We’re just trying to hone everything in to where it needs to be, or where we think it needs to be, anyway.

“Overall, we’re happy with the second-place run,” he added. “We ran second to Bobby on the World of Outlaws side, and now we come over to the Lucas side and you expect to have some movers and shakers in there. And still run second to Bobby. So, obviously our stuff is pretty good. And obviously Bobby’s stuff is really good. We just have to keep working on it and challenging ourselves to make it better night in and night out. That’s all we can do.”

Races Sheppard’s been the bridesmaid to Pierce recently: July 6’s World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series Gopher 50 at Deer Creek Speedway in Spring Valley, Minn.; July 8’s Castrol FloRacing Night in America at Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway; July 11’s WoO stop at Bedford (Pa.) Speedway; July 13's WoO event at Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio; and Thursday at Huset’s.

Over that five-race stretch alone Pierce has accrued $110,000 in race winnings while Sheppard’s raked in $49,500. Consistency-wise, Sheppard is right there with Pierce, as the Longhorn factory team driver has only finished outside the top-10 three times in 23 races since the start of June. Sheppard and Pierce both have 19 top-five finishes in 26 WoO starts and Sheppard even has 24 WoO top-10s to Pierce’s 22.

But in the victories department, Pierce’s 21 stateside checkers (he won a super saloon feature earlier this year) are considerably more than Sheppard’s three victories. Sheppard, of course, would like more victories, but by the time July is over with, he’ll have 30 features logged, barring rainouts.

Racing literally every other night, on average, has refined his once middling program that went four months between victories (Feb. 14 at Florida’s Volusia Speedway Park to June 20 at Tennessee’s Thunderhill Speedway on the WoO tour).

“We’re getting a lot of races under our belt because we can’t just test and figure out what we need,” Sheppard said. “We have to race against Bobby to see where we stack up. And Ricky (Thornton Jr.) and Hudson (O’Neal) and all these guys. We keep fine-tuning and changing little stuff. Some nights we make gains. Some nights we get worse.”

Sheppard deemed Thursday as “a gain” for the Longhorn factory team — “We have to build off it for tomorrow,” he added — despite qualifying seventh of 25 drivers. His third-to-second run in the heat race helped him start fourth in the 40-lap feature, better than the seventh he'd have started had he finished third in the eight-lap heat.

Overtaking Daulton Wilson and Devin Moran to stay within 1.5 seconds of Pierce for all but the feature’s final three laps provided some consolation.

“We were better later in the night but qualified not as good tonight,” Sheppard said. “But I also think we helped the car out throughout the night. I think we can take some of the stuff we learned early and apply it later, or earlier in the night.”

Sheppard comes into the weekend as the last season's Silver Dollar Nationals winner with a narrow 0.326-second victory over Pierce. As Sheppard showed last year, leading every lap doesn’t always equate to commanding performances at Huset’s as he simply calls the third-mile “a tough racetrack.”

“A lot of it is because it’s a short track. But that’s what me and Bobby grew up on,” Sheppard said. “Bobby said something tonight having a little bit of an arm pump after the race. I remember feeling that last year to a certain extent. It’s elbows up the entire race. There’s no time to breathe. There’s no time to settle. I feel like it’s a lot of what me and Bobby grew up on. I feel, if all the cards fall our way, we’ll be battling for the lead Saturday night.

“But a lot of good cars here. A lot of people who have their stuff together. Some better than me, some not. It depends on the day. I feel like we were competitive with Bobby tonight. Hard to pass. A little top-dominant tonight. But I feel like it’ll be better for 80 laps, obviously.”

Sheppard’s focused on bettering his race program in longer distances during the height of summer. At July 6’s Gopher 50, Sheppard led the opening 58 laps, but lost the lead with 18 circuits remaining. On Thursday, Sheppard got to within a half-second of Pierce with six laps left, but ended up nearly 2.5 seconds behind at the finish.

With Saturday’s 80-lap finale looming, as well as next weekend’s 100-lap Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway and Aug. 3’s 100-lap USA Nationals at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis., he knows he must to do better at closing out long-distance races.

“A lot of what we’re doing with our program right now, today, is based around getting better next week for Fairbury,” Sheppard said. “We want to be better in the long runs. I think we have a good midrace car. I think we fall off a little bit at the end right now. I think we made some gains tonight and definitely got a little bit better. We still have room to improve, but we definitely got a little bit better.

“As I said, we’ve changed a lot of stuff on the car the past three months to fit me and to try to get to the next step to be able to compete with Bobby and them guys. We just have to keep working at it. I think we had a good balance tonight. The only way to find out is race 80 laps on Saturday and see what it does.”