Don O’Neal
When Don O’Neal cruised under the checkered flag at the end of the final Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series race of the 2014 season in the Dirt Track World Championship at the Portsmouth(OH) Raceway Park, he realized the fruition of a long awaited goal. The Martinsville, Ind. driver earned that national touring series title after a career filled with feature wins at virtually every level of the sport, but disappointments regarding the LOLMDS championship.
That final checkered flag proved to be a long time coming in more ways than one.
“It was a long season,” O’Neal admitted in an interview conducted at Cherokee Speedway. “I’d say the last three or four weeks of the Lucas Oil season weren’t actually that much fun when you get down to that points racing stuff. I’m glad it’s over with, but it was a great job by the whole team. I’m proud of them all.”
O’Neal believed that he had the ability to win a championship, but he also believed that time was beginning to become a factor. And now that the first title has been claimed, he has already set his sights on another.
“Being 50 years old, you don’t know how many years you have left in racing,” O’Neal said. “But God blessed us and hopefully we can turn around next year and have a shot at it again.”
The former UMP Summer Nationals champion moved from his longtime ride in the MasterSbilt house car during the most recent off season to the team owned by NASCAR star Clint Bowyer and its Barry Wright Race Cars fleet in a move he hoped would result in the fulfillment of his dream to win the LOLMDS championship.
Don O’Neal’s Clint Bowyer owned #5 BWRC.
“I said when we first started this deal that if we didn’t win a championship in the first two years I’d be disappointed,” the pilot of the #5 Dirt Late Model insisted. “But for it to happen in the first year was more than I really expected. I thought it would take at least into the second year.”
O’Neal and his team won seven LOLMDS features and posted 36 top-10 finishes in that series during 2014 en route to the title. Those wins included victories in three races that paid at least $20,000-to-win, including the Show-me 100 at Missouri’s Lucas Oil Speedway. He also posted a win in the now defunct NDRL Series during the past season.
As far as next year is concerned, expect O’Neal to race for another Lucas Oil title as well as stepping out on occasion to enter other major events.
“We’ll do all the same stuff.”
