Florence Speedway
O'Neal redeems Circle City loss at Florence
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
Hudson O'Neal celebrates at Circle City. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
UNION, Ky. (May 2) — Coming up short on your home turf can be disappointing for any driver, and that was certainly the case for Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., when he departed Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis on Friday night.
After leading the first 40 laps, the 25-year-old driver ceded the lead to Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., in Friday night’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series feature at Circle City — a quarter-mile bullring just 39 miles north of his Morgantown, Ind.-based SSI Motorsports shop. | RaceWire
But Saturday’s Ralph Latham Memorial at Florence Speedway was vintage O’Neal. Leading all but two laps of the A-main, he took home the checkered flag and the $25,000-to-win prize, a redemptive victory after a tough loss in his home state’s capital.
“We just didn't take advantage of our opportunities last night,” O’Neal said of his runner-up finish at Circle City during postrace technical inspection at Florence. “We had a little bit of a mechanical failure with our brakes. I don't know if that would have changed the fact that we'd win or run second, but it definitely didn't help us any. We felt like we needed to get better, so we made some adjustments today to try and get better for the slower conditions and we went in the right direction.”
And O’Neal did just that, from start to finish. After setting quick time, he won the first heat race after a rough-and-tumble start, captured the pole position, and quickly got around Jason Jameson of Lawrenceburg, Ind. — a Florence fan favorite who led for just two circuits.
“I think we had a good piece all night,” O’Neal said. “We had a good starting spot and didn't lead all the laps, but was able to take the lead back from Jameson there early and then we just tried to stay on top of the racetrack.”
That didn’t mean the win was easy. Behind O’Neal, Thornton and Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, battled for the runner-up spot. To preserve his tires, O’Neal stayed in the track’s lower grooves for the first half of the 50-lapper before getting signaled by his crew to move up to block any move by Moran, who got around Circle City’s winner after contact with the frontstretch wall.
“I flirted with it,” O’Neal said of the track’s cushion. “I tried it once or twice, came back down, and then finally I moved back up there one time and then I figured out how to run it and made some good laps up there. I figured Devin and them were going to be close. I felt like I was losing some time and I didn't know how close they were going to be. I thought they were going to be close enough for a slider.
“I knew that eventually somebody was going to go up there and make that cushion happen,” he added. “And I just didn't know when that time was going to be, and you had to be careful because you couldn't run it the whole time or you were going to burn your tires off, so you had to maintain around that bottom as long as you could and then my guys told me it's time to go.”
After O’Neal tapped the wall off turn four during two of the last three laps, he admitted he was concerned his tires were fading away and another victory was slipping through his grasp.
“I felt like maybe I used them a little much,” O’Neal said. “Not necessarily used them up, but running through that grit and crumbs early and race around that top, I felt like maybe it was chewing on them a little bit more than what it normally would, so I had that in the back of my mind. I tried to just be as careful and as easy as I could, and we had enough.”
O’Neal took the checkers by a 1.060-second margin ahead of Moran, capturing his first national tour victory at Florence since the Latham Memorial in 2018.
“On the last lap, I was kind of maybe waiting on (a slider from Moran),” he added. “I tried to enter off in there as hard as I could without putting myself at risk. and I was just like looking at my left side. I'm like, ‘’Where it at? Where it at?’ And I just wanted to make sure I tried to get as much of the cushion where I could come back across if that was the case, but I never seen anybody.”
O’Neal is looking forward to the next week of racing action in Illinois. He’ll take a short two-day break in Indiana before a Castrol FloRacing Night in America tripleheader at LaSalle (Ill.) Speedway, Spoon River Speedway in Banner, Ill., and Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway.
“I think our package is OK,” O’Neal said. “I think we'll take the exact same thing out there and hopefully have some speed. But, yeah, we're gonna see some big cushions and probably some wet muddy conditions at times especially with the rain it looks like we're going to have next week. It's going to be interesting, but we're up for the challenge, and hopefully we can carry our speed over.”
The win was O’Neal’s fourth tour victory and his 11th overall so far in 2026 — and his first checkered flag since an April 11 win at North Georgia Speedway in Chatsworth, Ga. while piloting the Kevin Rumley-owned No. 6. Posting finishes of second and third, respectively, at Georgetown (Del.) Speedway and Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway — in addition to Saturday's triumph — gives him the Lucas Oil series points lead and momentum as the tour enters its summer grind.
“It feels good,” O’Neal said. “But besides, it feels good to just to be heading in the right direction, to be consistent. And I feel like wherever we go right now, we have some speed to be able to contend for a win or have a good run to be on the podium. That's all we can ask for. So as long as we can keep that speed up, we'll be OK."
