After a thrilling last-lap pass Sunday evening at Vado Speedway Park, track-dominating Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., immediately wanted to review exactly how he’d captured the all-Illinois showdown with Brandon Sheppard in the second round of the Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout.

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“I’ll definitely be excited to watch a replay of that,” Pierce said in his victory lane interview after collecting $10,000, his second miniseries victory in a row and sixth in his last seven starts at the 3/8-mile oval. | Complete WWS coverage

Pierce wasn’t kidding.

Immediately upon returning to the pits, the 28-year-old climbed into his team’s transporter along with his father and crew chief Bob Pierce, scrubbed the FloRacing stream back to 10 minutes and enjoyed some must-see TV.

Across the pits at the Sheppard pit stall, when the 31-year-old New Berlin, Ill., driver heard what the Pierces had done postrace, he agreed that watching the final laps of the 40-lapper was a pretty good idea, too.

"I definitely need to see it just to see exactly where I messed up at,” said Sheppard, disappointed he’d regained the lead from Pierce on lap 34 but allowed his friendly rival to go back underneath him on the white-flag lap.

Sheppard’s summary before his chance to watch the video: “I've just gotta get up on the wheel and get it done. That’s all there is to it.”

The race is worth a rewatch for anyone who likes exciting Super Late Model action. While Oregon upstart Collen Winebarger led early from outside the front row by a margin as large as 2.2 seconds, it was Sheppard who used a lower groove to break free from a feisty five-car battle for second to catch Winebarger and take the point on lap 22.

At that point, Pierce, a $25,000 winner a night earlier, was on the verge of falling from contention altogether.

"I want to go back and watch more,” Pierce said after clicking the pause button on his remote. “I started (watching with) like 15 (laps) to go, but heck, the whole race was interesting really from like lap five on. Heck, we were like, the top six were all right on top of each other and I don't know who's going to win the race or be there at the end. I definitely didn't think it was going to be me there for a long while.

"I was struggling, you know, I was up to second, about to take the lead. The caution comes out and next thing I know I'm in fifth, almost falling back to sixth. Sheppard came on the bottom there, so then I dipped down, followed him.”

Pierce muscled his way back to third before the second and final caution on lap 23, putting him in position to track down Sheppard. The transitioning surface meant that Pierce “didn't really know where to go: top (or) bottom” — a decision that might change depending on what lane you entered the corner, Pierce said.

Not long after the lap-23 restart, Pierce took second from Winebarger, was briefly knocked back to third by Garrett Alberson’s high-flying slide job in turn four, then commenced to tracking down the leading Sheppard. After chasing him for 10 laps, Pierce’s turn-two slide job put him out front. Sheppard briefly nosed back ahead, but Pierce’s high-side momentum carried him into the lead on lap 33.

It didn’t last long as Sheppard returned to his lower groove and went back ahead when Pierce slipped up exiting turn four.

Sheppard solidified his lead, but traffic presented problems, particularly when the slower car of Sammy Mars was in Sheppard’s preferred lane in the waning laps. That Sheppard couldn’t find a quick way past proved to be the difference.

"With two to go, I kind of ran the middle through (turns) one and two trying to get closer to Mars and that I think that let him get close to me,” Sheppard said. “And then I followed (Mars) in on the top on the last lap, getting into (turn one). And that let him get underneath me to where he had a clear lane to the bottom going down the backstretch.

“It was a bob-when-I-should’ve-weaved type of deal, and when you got the best guy in the country behind you, you can't make those mistakes because he's going to capitalize on them. I made a mistake and he capitalized on it.”

Pierce’s winning move came when he went low in turn one on the final lap, his car rotating perfectly to provide the propulsion to pull even down the backstretch and turn back Sheppard’s last-ditch bid to hang with him in turns three and four.

Pierce's car stuck in turn one twice as good as it had all race long.

“It was kind of like a Hail Mary, in a way,” Pierce said. “It wasn't a slider, but like Hail Mary in the sense of he was about five car lengths ahead of me coming to the white flag and I was like, 'Well this is it. It's going to stick down there or not and we'll just see what happens.’ I went down there and it stuck when it gets that grip right there at the apex and you're still in the traction line and you're pointing off the corner and you can just mat it to get off that corner, it's a good feeling. We went down the backstretch side by side — I knew I had him then.”

The episode was so exciting that even Bob Pierce got caught up in being a spectator. While they watched the replay, Bobby asked his dad about some confusion over his stick signals from the infield.

"You had me so excited, I don't know what color (sticks) I had up,” the elder Pierce said with a laugh. “I became a race fan.”

Sheppard, who finished third in Saturday’s opener and is looking for his first Vado victory since 2022, definitely wasn’t a fan of how things turned out.

"He's the guy to beat right now, you know what I mean? I feel good that I could race with him there. Definitely I messed up. I messed up big time there and let him get close enough to get a run on me there,” Sheppard said. "I haven't ran up front in a while, it seems like, so just things that I gotta sharpen myself up on again.”

Piloting his family-owned No. B5 before making his official return to the Rocket Chassis house car later this month at Georgia-Florida Speedweeks, Sheppard did have some consolation that he’s running well in the Shinnston, W.Va., manufacturer’s latest iteration, the XR1.2. He noted that the second through fourth-place finishers — Sheppard, 15th-starting Chase Junghans and eighth-starting Tyler Erb — are all Rocket customers.

“That makes me feel good and I'm sure it makes (Rocket’s) Mark (Richards) feel good, too,” Sheppard said. “It’s just one of them deals. We’re competitors. Anybody who wants to give me a hard time for being down after running second, we're not here to run second. We want to win. We've raced against Bobby all (last) year and he won all the races, so here we are again and he's won both of them so far and he ran second to me” in December’s Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis, Mo.

"I feel like I've taken to it pretty well,” Sheppard said of the car he’s debuting at Vado. “We’ve just got to keep plugging away and just make better choices and make good choices on the car and make better choices behind the wheel, that’s all we can do.”