A twist of fate during a mid-race red flag gave Jeff Shepard the break he needed in the fifth annual Weldon Sterner Memorial for 410 sprint cars at Lincoln Speedway in Abbottstown on Saturday night.

And the Upperco, Md., sprint star took advantage, to claim his first win in three years at Lincoln.

Shepard started fifth and was running second when a flipping Jeff Busby stopped green flag action for the first time in the event.

During the red flag, Red Lion's Cody Darrah, who took the lead from race-long leader T.J. Stutts on the seventh lap, was forced into the pits to change a flat right rear. The leader change also put two lapped cars back onto the lead lap, and put the Zemco Headers/Zemco Tool & Die No. 1 on the point for the restart.

Shepard, who ran his first sprint car race at Lincoln 21 years ago, drove away from the rest of the field to score a 3.59-second win and claim the $5,000 top prize in the 30-lap contest.

Defending champ Fred Rahmer came from 20th starting spot to pass Stutts for second on the 21st lap, but could not close on Shepard. In fact, Shepard doubled his lead over the final nine laps.

Stutts settled for third, with Lance Dewease and Alan Krimescompleting the top five. Sixth through 10th were Michael Carber, 16th-starting Cris Eash, 14th-starting Brian Leppo, 17th-starting Brian Montieth, and 22nd-starting Chad Layton, who was sporting the Sterner Cement top wing in honor of the memorial event.

Aaron Ott set a new

10-lap track record in his heat and was leading on lap 2 of the 358 sprint feature when the rains came during a caution.

The remainder of the feature will be made up as an addition to a regularthree-division show on May 31.

Ott's 10-lap record of 2 minutes, 24.16 seconds bested the old record by more than two seconds.