Sheldon Creed 'paid the tax' and breaks through in NASCAR O'Reilly

Everyone liked that

Sam Mayer destroyed a Haas Factory Team race car because he was so otherwise excited to congratulate Sheldon Creed on his first career NASCAR O’Reilly Series victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

After pulling up alongside Creed to give him a playful door slam, Mayer peeled down onto the infield grass as a shortcut to pit road. However, the ground was so saturated from the storms earlier in the morning that Mayer just dug into the field and ripped apart the front suspension of his No. 41.

Creed parked his car on the frontstretch and the crowd literally erupted. The decibels were considerably louder than your standard issue NOAPS race because they understood the moment.

Four and a half years of trying
0-for-137
15 runner-up finishes
1-for-138

Creed, the 2020 Craftsman Truck Series champion had turned coming up short into an art form, but the seas literally parted in front of him on the last lap when Austin Hill and Ross Chastain came together racing for the win.

Even Hill, who spent two seasons as a teammate to Creed at Richard Childress Racing, overcame his frustrations in the moment to greet his friend in Victory Lane. Chastain was equally complimentary. Not a single soul had anything bad to say about this moment. For his part, Creed was counting.

“I don’t have to finish second again before winning,” Creed joked to open his post-race press conference. “So yeah, it’s been four years of trying, 137 starts, 15 second-place finishes.

“It wears on you because you win a Truck championship and win eight races and have a shot at winning those races every week and then go Xfinity racing and expect to win right away. We’ve had some good runs but just never finished off.

“So, to finally do that on a night that looked like another second or third place run, it just worked out.”

It also meant a lot how kind of everyone was to him in Victory Lane. And he noticed how the fans treated him as well.

“I’m not the class clown of the series but I joke around with everyone, and like to have fun with everyone, but also feel like I show a lot of respect to everyone on and off the race track, even when we have our run-ins,” Creed said. “I try to race really clean and I like to think it shows in return when you get the win, and everyone knows how close I’ve been, and how hard I’ve worked at it, and it’s just good to have this sort of respect from your peers.

“The crowd was awesome. It’s better than boos, right? To see everyone stick around and wait for me to get out of the car … some races … everyone is on their way out. I always figured, based on autograph sessions, that everyone told me the reaction to this first one would be big.”

Hill had some battles with Creed when they were teammates but their friendship never wavered.

“We have been really, really good friends for a very long time, and he is going to burn it down,” Hill said. “I’ll say that. It’s going to be a good time.”

Chastain, who had his own well documented path from driving backmarker cars not capable of winning to a winner at the second-higher level before going on to race on Sundays, also offered equal respect.

“He worked for that for a long time,” Chastain said. “He paid the tax for it. He paid it for a long time.”

Creed’s winless steak was such a weird thing because he was one of the dominant forces in the Truck Series and ARCA before that. Then he goes the next level and drives for the likes of RCR, Gibbs and Haas but still didn’t break through.

It’s not like he was slow either but Creed found new and ever-more-heartbreaking ways to lose races every season. But Creed has upped his physical fitness regimen during the winter and credits Josh Wise for maximizing mind and body.

There were points he started to doubt himself. He went from telling himself he was going to race on Sundays in the Cup Series to legitimately calling himself ‘a loser,’ and the latter mindset was washed away before this season began.

Clean slate.

“Every year, I started to think, man I am just not good enough, and then I have good runs that brought me back,” Creed said. “I thought maybe I just need to go run construction equipment or work in an office. Wait, no, I would be terrible in an office. Racing cars is an incredible way to make a living and I don’t want to run construction equipment.

“I wanted to keep working hard at this but yes, 100 percent, I started to doubt myself but working with Josh Wise again has helped. I had to start believing in myself, telling myself that I could do this again.”

So now, Cred doesn’t want to stop at just 1-for-138. He wants to win multiple races. He wants to win another championship and he still believes at 28-years-old, there is a pathway to the Cup Series.

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