The winningest driver in the Stadium Super Trucks is back for another year. On Friday, Sheldon Creed tested at series headquarters and announced he will enter the 2021 season opener in the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on 23–25 April. As he has since 2019, he will drive the Continental Tire truck.
A two-time SST champion who has competed in the series since the inaugural season in 2013, Creed added another truck racing title to his résumé in 2020 when he won the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. Incidentally, the CWTS championship and his first in SST both came in his second full-time seasons in each discipline. Five races into his title defence, he is third in points with three top tens and a runner-up finish at the Daytona Road Course. Creed has five career Truck Series victories while his thirty-six SST wins are the most in series history.
After his second consecutive SST title in 2016, he downscaled his schedule to focus on stock cars but has continued to race in the series whenever the opportunity arises. Since 2017, Creed has ten victories including a seven-win campaign in the first year. During the COVID-impacted 2020 season, he ran the Road America weekend and finished second and third.
In 2019, Creed began running SST races in a new truck fielded by Continental Tire, which joined the series as the second tyre supplier alongside Toyo Tires; he shared the truck with off-road drivers Ryan Beat and Christopher Polvoorde, NASCAR veteran Greg Biffle, and sports car racer Ryan Eversley. Creed provided the truck’s maiden victories with a sweep at Texas Motor Speedway followed by a third win at Portland International Raceway. The Continental truck was split between Bill Hynes and Creed for the two-weekend 2020 slate.
St. Petersburg is on a bye week for the Truck Series, which would be fresh off its 17 April race at Richmond Raceway. Although SST practice/qualifying for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and the Truck Series’ playoff race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will likely be on the same day (Friday, 24 September), Creed would skip the former before joining the points races over the next two days should he decide to enter. This would not be a new situation for Creed; last August, he and CWTS team-mate Zane Smith travelled from Michigan, where they had just competed in their primary series, to Road America to run with the stadium trucks despite missing qualifying. Such a scheduling conflict will not occur for the SST championship weekend in Southern California on 13–14 November as the Truck season ends a week prior on 5 November.
Creed posted a video of the test on Instagram that was captioned, “Making a few laps today before the first round of @stadiumsupertrucks in St. Petersburg in a couple weeks! Looking forward to running the @continental_tire truck!”
The NTT IndyCar Series-led Grand Prix of St. Petersburg returns to the SST calendar after a three-year absence. The street circuit welcomed the trucks from 2014 to 2017, during which Creed won in 2015 and 2016; he and Robby Gordon are the only SST drivers to have multiple wins at St. Petersburg. In the series’ last trip there, Creed finished second in both rounds.
Other confirmed names for the season kickoff include Gordon, Hynes, Matt Brabham, and Jett Noland. Noland has also made Truck Series starts in 2021 as he, Creed, and Gordon are among the twenty-four drivers who have run points races in SST and NASCAR. Creed, Gordon, and Justin Lofton are the lone names with wins in both disciplines.
