By: Ashley McCubbin

Last year, Sheldon Creed was 10th in points, with four top-five’s and 11 top-10’s with 23 events complete. Now with only 14 races done, he has three wins, five top-five’s and eight top-10’s.

“I think I just put my effort in, more experience, putting a lot time in with Josh Wise, and having great teammates with Zane (Smith), Tyler (Ankrum), and Brett (Moffitt) full-time,” Creed told POPULAR SPEED. “We’ve had really good feedback from all four of us and just everything – trying harder, racing smarter, trucks are better, the whole package.”

He had everything together to be at the front of the field at WWT Raceway Park, though it took contact with Todd Gilliland to get there. He noted post-race that he felt bad due to the pair being buddies.

“I hate racing like that,” he said. “It’s so hard to pass here and I passed the 24 (Moffitt) the same way. I was doing passes like that all day, go down on the rumble strips, and run up the track taking the run away. We both drove it in there really tight, or really hard, and he just held me down tight and I was just really free and couldn’t turn it down. I hate to do it to them. He’s going to wreck me back somewhere, but which hey, race how you want to be raced. I feel bad. I’m going to for sure call him.”

While this was more of a controversial win last weekend, there’s no counting him out as GMS Racing has proven to be a top-five team week-in-week-out, scoring four victories in a row. The strength has been there since coming back from the pandemic, with them sweeping four of the top-five positions at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“That gave us a lot of confidence as we showed a lot of speed for the trucks not driving that good,” he noted. “We just kept chipping away at it. Can’t say I’ve had a truck that I’ve said is, ‘That’s perfect,’ but they’ve been fast. Really proud of GMS and how everybody is working together and bringing faster trucks every week.”

If the year continues along the same route, he could easily find himself as one of the drivers in the Final Four. With both WWT and Phoenix Raceway utilizing the same tire, Creed may be in a good spot.

“This place is similar, but I feel Phoenix is harder,” he commented. “I think we’re going to focus on getting to Phoenix first. Hopefully bring something that can win there. We’re just going to keep chipping away at it, and keep working hard on our trucks and working together.”

Though on the other hand, it could make things interesting in having to compete against his own teammates for the championships,

“I think there’s a ton of us that will have a shot at Phoenix,” he said. “We just need to keep doing our job and sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder as teammates. Then we’ll see and we know we’ll similar trucks.”