Hudson O’Neal
Hudson O’Neal is having a very strong 2023 Dirt Late Model season. The 23-year-old driver of the Rocket Chassis house car currently sits second in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series standings with six victories on the tour. He has also won a $100,000 XR Super Series feature at Kokomo(IN) Speedway and the much coveted World 100 earlier this month at the famed Eldora Speedway in events not associated with his regular tour.
Even with all that, the driver from Martinsville, Indiana wanted very much to emerge victorious on Saturday night at his home track- Brownstown Speedway- in the Jackson 100. However, that was not meant to be as O’Neal would, for the fourth time in Lucas Oil races this year, finish second behind Ricky Thornton Jr.
The runner-up finish in the 100-lapper came on the heels of an 11th place effort on Friday evening in the C.J. Rayburn Memorial, also at Brownstown, then a third place finish in his Saturday night heat race that left him starting the feature from the outside of the fifth row.
“After the weekend we’ve had, we just haven’t been quite where we needed to be,” O’Neal told FloRacing.com in his Saturday night post-race interview. “We kept working and working, my guys worked their tails off to get better and we had a great race car there(in the Jackson 100).”
O’Neal appeared to be on his way to victory in the main event, leading laps during the middle stages of the race, but Thornton passed him by on lap 86 then drove on to the checkered flag. That did not dampen O’Neal’s spirits enough to take away his love of his home state track.
“Unfortunately, I just didn’t have quite as good of a race car as Ricky did in lapped traffic,” he described. “I felt pretty good whenever I was out by myself and able to roll that top, but when I had to start getting out and get it behind people, I struggled a little bit. We’ll take second after starting tenth, we were able to pass a lot of good guys. I’m just happy we were able to lead some laps and compete for the win. It’s good to be back at Brownstown Speedway, I love everybody here and all the fans and everything. This is home and I appreciate all the people for coming out and supporting me and my team.”
The win allowed Thornton to add to his lead in the Lucas Oil standings.
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series will next race at Ohio’s Raceway 7 on September 29th then the following night at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway.
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