Tim McCreadie
The racing so far during Georgia-Florida SpeedWeeks has been quite entertaining and Monday’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series affair at the Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala, Florida certainly held up its end of the bargain. While it may not have necessarily been the race of the year so far, it certainly provided a candidate for the finish of the year.
With two circuits remaining in the 40-lap feature, Devin Moran had tracked down reigning Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion Tim McCreadie with the intent of nabbing the $10,000 winner’s check in the closing moments of the event. Coming to the white flag, the winner of 14 feature races in 2021 went high through turns three and four but McCreadie slid up the track and took that line away. Moran then dove to the bottom during the last trip through turns one and two.
At the exit of turn two, Moran maneuvered in front of McCreadie causing the driver of the No. 39 machine to lift as the cars drove onto the backstretch. Entering three and four for the final time, Moran went high leaving the low line open to his pursuer. On the exit of four, Moran appeared to bobble as his car ran against the track’s cushion. With the checkered flag waving, the two cars made contact on the front straightaway as McCreadie crossed the finish line while Moran slid across just behind to finish second.
It was McCreadie’s first win of 2022. Moran had previously won the Lucas Oil season-opener at Golden Isles Speedway last Thursday night then finished in the runner-up position on both Friday and Saturday at the Brunswick, Georgia facility.
Following the race, both drivers expressed their views of what happened to MavTV Plus reporter Conner Wade.
“I just freaking gave away another race, I feel like,” Moran declared. “I did what I could to get by Timmy. I knew they were telling him to go to the top, but he was going in the wrong end. I took advantage of it but I should have just hit the bottom on the last lap. I gave him a chance to blast me and he did but he did what he had to do to win so we’ll just fix everything up. We’ve got a really fast Tye Twarog Racing Longhorn. We’ll straighten out the body and make sure nothing is bent. Hopefully Bubba can provide us a track like this again tomorrow night because this is about the best you could do here and it was pretty badass.”
Devin Moran
McCreadie entered turn three on the last lap trailing by a fairly significant margin and was trying to make up the distance by taking the shortest way around the last set of turns. He had not been able to see Moran’s bobble off of turn four.
“Out of four, I didn’t know he had stopped by the wall,” McCreadie explained. “I was trying not to clip the infield there. When I looked up, he was there. I lifted but I couldn’t slow down. What are you going to do? I lifted over there(off of two) because it might have been the same if I didn’t get out of the way. It’s the way it goes, we got a win.”
McCreadie stated that he been on the receiving end of last lap contact before so he was not particularly apologetic about how the last lap played out.
“It’s just hard racing,” the 47-yer-old driver said. “That’s what they always tell me when it happens to me- it’s good, hard racing. I don’t like racing like that. At the end of the race, I was searching and I probably should have moved. He did a hell of a job moving around. Like I said, I don’t know what happened over there, he had me cleared by ten cars then all of a sudden, I almost thought he broke or something. He was parked there and I was like ‘Oh s**t, I’m going to run over him’. I didn’t mean to do, like I said. I can’t be perfect all the time. It’s been a decade since I’ve been aggressive so maybe I need to start doing some more of that.”
Asked if this finish would serve to motivate his team for upcoming races, Moran said that would not be necessary.
“I don’t think we need any motivation. I mean, we’re running good. We show up to the races to win every night no matter what. We’ve just got to get a little bit better and I have to put myself in better position and be a better race car driver.”
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