Earl Pearson, Jr. ended his Lucas Oil winless drought at Boyd’s
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series made its way to Boyd’s Speedway on Friday night for a $10,000-to-win feature race. At the end of what proved to be a wild feature, former series champion Earl Pearson, Jr. ended a drought that dated back to May of 2015 when he took the checkered flag at the Ringgold, GA facility in front of a huge crowd to take home the top prize.
Pearson led the way in Group A qualifying with a lap of 13.981 seconds around the third-mile clay oval. He beat out Riley Hickman, Michael Page, and Derek Ellis in that group.
Donald McIntosh proved to be fastest in Group B time-trials and overall among the 32 cars signed in for competition after he turned a lap of 13.947 seconds to better Mike Marlar, Scott Bloomquist, and Don O’Neal.
Pearson earned the pole position for the feature when he beat out Page, Boyd’s Speedway co-owner Dale McDowell, and Tim McCreadie while Jimmy Owens won the second preliminary race over Jonathan Davenport, Ellis, and Darrell Lanigan.
Mcintosh would start the main event from the outside of the front row as a result of his victory in the third heat race of the evening ahead of Scott Bloomquist, Jason Hiett, and Josh Richards while O’Neal was victorious in the fourth and final heat over Marlar, Brandon Overton, and Hudson O’Neal.
Shanon Buckingham and Gregg Satterlee won the two B-main races used to set the remainder of the starting grid for the main event.
At the start of the 50-lap feature it was Pearson who moved to the early lead with McIntosh, Owens, Page, and O’Neal trailing close behind. However, it did not take long for the the yellow flags to begin waving. In all, there were seven caution periods to slow the action with the first coming just after the completion of the first lap when Marlar spun.
It would be on the restarts where much of the night’s action would unfold and the lap 1 green flag would open the way when Owens and O’Neal powered around McIntosh to claim second and third respectively. But McIntosh answered back on the very next circuit as he pulled back alongside O’Neal and the two of them contested the third position.
By lap 7, the top-4 of Pearson, Owens, O’Neal and McIntosh had settled into single-file order while Davenport and Bloomquist waged a side-by-side war for sixth.
The action intensified on lap 9 when Owens, O’Neal and McIntosh found themselves in a three-wide hornets nest as the fought over the runner-up spot. Eventually, the high line employed by McIntosh would win out as he resumed his previous position in second with O’Neal and Owens respectively falling in line behind him.
One of the race’s pivotal moments occurred on lap 13 when Bloomquist and Davenport tangled while battling with Page over the fifth position. Davenport continued on through the contact but Bloomquist spun, and as a result, had to restart from the rear of the pack.
McCreadie, who won a Southern Nationals Bonus Series event on this same track just two weeks earlier, worked his way through a jumble on the restart from that lap 13 caution to move to fifth. He then captured the fourth spot just three laps later and appeared as if he had the potential to pull off another victory in Ringgold.
McIntosh made an attempt to wrest the lead of the race away from Pearson on a lap 19 restart but the veteran driver from Florida held back the advances of the Georgia native. But on that same circuit, a caution for the stalled car of Hiett set up another of the event’s big moments.
On the return to green flag racing, McIntosh and Owens went side-by-side for second as the cars roared through turn two and then onto the backstretch. As they entered turn three, McCreadie tried to join the fray, but the suddenly three-wide battle caused the drivers to run out of racing room. McIntosh did a complete 360 degree turn and kept moving. However, others who slowed to miss the mess proved not to be so lucky as Don O’Neal and Buckingham were eliminated from the event as a result of the damage suffered in the crash.
On lap 23, Owens made a move inside McIntosh in a bid to take over second while McCreadie fought over fourth with Page and Richards contested sixth with Overton.
Two of the race’s top contenders found themselves caught up in a mishap as McIntosh and Page ran out of racing room on the backstretch.
The second half of the feature saw Richards begin to move forward as he climbed around McCreadie to take fourth then began applying pressure on McIntosh for third. The No. 1 machine then claimed second away from Owens on the thirty-ninth revolution around the track, leaving the No. 20 fight over third with McCreadie.
Defending LOLMDS champion Bloomquist moved up from the tail of the field in the closing stages after having been put to the back after his issue with Davenport as he would eventually make his way up to seventh.
But in the end, no one was able to catch Pearson as he made his way to the checkered flag.
Feature Finish: 1. Earl Pearson, Jr., 2. Josh Richards, 3. Jimmy Owens, 4. Tim McCreadie, 5. Darrell Lanigan, 6. Scott Bloomquist, 7. Dale McDowell, 8. Donald McIntosh, 9. Jonathan Davenport, 10. Brandon Overton, 11. Dennis Erb, Jr., 12. Steve Francis, 13. Mike Marlar, 14. Gregg Satterlee, 15. David Breazeale, 16. Jason Hiett, 17. Boom Briggs, 18. Colton Flinner, 19. Timothy Culp, 20. Hudson O’Neal, 21. Michael Page, 22. Derek Ellis, 23. Don O’Neal, 24 Shanon Buckingham.
