Fairbury Speedway
Notes: Rumley ride takes O'Neal to tight victory
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Hudson O'Neal in the Fairbury infield. (Rocky Ragusa)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 22) — Winning Wednesday's 50-lap One for the Road feature at Fairbury Speedway obviously put a smile on Hudson O’Neal’s face. But he also was grinning a bit inside his helmet long before he had the $20,000 FloRacing Night in America victory safely secured. | RaceWire
The action the 25-year-old star from Martinsville, Ind., experienced at the front of the pack early in the race can have that sort of effect on a driver.
“I told my wife, I said, ‘It’s unbelievable how we were three-wide for so long,’ ” O’Neal said, recalling a lap 14-15 stretch that saw him racing three-abreast with Josh Rice of Crittenden, Ky., and Shannon Babb of Moweaqua, Ill., who each led laps and finished second and third, respectively. “If the checkered would have came out, we would have all been within like half a 10th of each other.
“It’s really impressive whenever you can do that. By the third lap, when we’re still all side-by-side-by-side, I’m like, ‘Gosh, dang, we are racing.’ It’s a lot of fun. We never laid a finger on each other either. FALS was on point.”
And so was O’Neal, who continued his superlative performance in his limited appearances behind the wheel of Kevin Rumley’s familiar No. 6 Longhorn Chassis. He recorded his seventh win among 13 top-five and 16 top-10 finishes in 18 starts this season with Rumley.
“It’s just a good, healthy relationship,” O’Neal said of competing alongside Rumley. “You know, a lot of people see that we run good now, but whenever we first started running together, we really didn't run amazing. It’s just been a couple years of a collective effort and spending a lot of days testing and racing together to get to this point.
“Obviously Kevin’s Kevin, and he's always working to get better, but it takes an understanding for me and him to communicate well and be able to be on the same page and have faith in one another. It’s just been really good. I really enjoy every time I get to come race with him and being able to bring my SSI (Motorsports) family along (because) they really enjoy this part of it too. It’s just very, very healthy.”
O’Neal appeared to be the class of the field in the race’s late stages as he defeated Rice by 2.037 seconds, but he did have to get up on the wheel after ceding the lead to the veteran Babb on lap 34.
“I think I got too civilized (running) in that middle,” O’Neal said. “I kept trying it because that was kind of where I took the lead at, and the more the tires wore off and the less the bottom threw material out, the middle just died. So finally, when he got by me in the bottom, I'm like, ‘Well, I know he's got softer tires on, so I'm not going to pass him back in the bottom. I got to go up here to the cushion and see if I can't make it happen.’
“And fortunately, that cushion was just good enough to be able to get back around him (on lap 37).”
Being “balanced in the middle, balanced in the bottom, balanced against that cushion” gave O’Neal confidence for the weekend’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series-sanctioned Prairie Dirt Classic.
“This is good as I’ve ever felt here, I think, being able to, like, roll that middle and be able to steer good enough,” said O’Neal, who has made four PDC feature starts in six attempts with a best run of fifth in 2023, though last year he won a semifeature and contended early before a scrape and battery trouble left him 13th in Rumley’s car. “So yeah, this is the best shot I feel like I've ever had to win a PDC.”
Checking another off
Ryan Montgomery has taken to calling his 2026 season with car owner Josh Wamsley a “bucket list year,” so naturally a trip to Fairbury for the Prairie Dirt Classic had to be on his agenda.
The 29-year-old driver from Fairmont, W.Va., made his first start at the famed quarter-mile in Wednesday’s FloRacing Night in America event, giving him a tuneup for the weekend’s PDC action. He needs every lap he can get because he’s not familiar at all with track conditions like Fairbury’s.
“I’ve come out here and run St. Louis (the Gateway Dirt Nationals indoor race), but that’s different dirt,” Montgomery said before the start of Wednesday’s program. “I’ve never been on this black dirt. It’s all new to me.”
Montgomery, who missed transferring to Wednesday’s feature by eight spots in the third B-main, can add tackling Fairbury’s surface to an array of fresh experiences he’s had this season. Teaming up with Elkins, W.Va.’s Wamsley has put him on a higher-profile schedule as they’ve chased bigger races and special events.
“This is our 31st race of the year and now 22 of them have been national (series) points events,” said Montgomery, who counts a pair of top-10 finishes in World of Outlaws Late Model Series competition among his notable outings this season. “We’ve been running against some real tough fields this year, like we are here. It’s been hard, but we’re learning a lot. We’re just trying to get better.”
Montgomery and his team, including his father Jeff, made the haul out to central Illinois a day early to make sure they could get parked in the tight pit area. They arrived early enough to head over to Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway for the completion of the FloRacing Night in America postponed by rain in May; they went as spectators, but they realized they could have brought their car and raced because all the entrants from two months ago didn’t return.
They did depart West Virginia in time to avoid some drenching rains that struck parts of their state. In fact, one of the team’s crew members had to fly home on Wednesday because his residence in Weston, W.Va., was affected by the serious flooding that hit parts of the area.
Win to be in
The 2026 season has been quite frustrating for Neil Baggett of Columbus, Miss., who has struggled to dial in his Rocket XR2 Chassis in his modest numbers of starts ever since his first appearance of the year ended in car-damaging crash.
“It’s just felt like something wasn’t right every time I raced,” said Baggett, who finally decided last week to take his machine to Rocket’s headquarters in Shinnston, W.Va., for a thorough examination.
When Rocket’s staff determined that the car needed a new front clip, Baggett was a bit surprised. But he realized it was indeed necessary once he returned to the racetrack Saturday at Whynot Motorsports Park in Meridian, Miss., for a Mississippi State Championship Challenge Series event. He promptly marched to a $3,000 victory.
“The car was so good,” Baggett said. “We were running a bent car all year.”
The 43-year-old driver’s first triumph of the season ended up propelling him to Fairbury. He expressed a desire to make the trip north to experience the bullring — and the PDC atmosphere — for the first time after having his car repaired, but his wife, Taran, whose position as teacher for gifted elementary school kids had her starting the new school year this week, gave him an ultimatum.
“She said, ‘If you win Whynot, you can go to Fairbury,’ ” Baggett said. “Well, I won it, so we’re here.”
Taran is along as well after receiving permission from her school’s principal to miss the final three days of the week. The Baggetts traveled to Fairbury in a caravan with fellow Columbus, Miss., racer Brian Rickman; both Baggett and Rickman failed to qualify for Wednesday’s feature.
Odds and ends
Bobby Pierce’s father and crew chief, Bob Pierce, was released from Omaha’s University of Nebraska Medical Center on Wednesday, one week after suffering a stroke that led him to undergoing emergency surgery that day and another procedure on Monday. Not surprisingly, the hard-nosed 74-year-old immediately returned to the racetrack to be by his son’s side — and he even put on his familiar pink shirt and was in the third-turn pit stands with his sticks to signal Bobby for the heat. Bob also did some shock work in the trailer, though UMP modified veteran Jeff Leka, who often provides Bobby extra crew help, stayed close by to make sure Bob didn’t disobey his doctor’s orders to not lift anything. … It was a quiet night, though, for Bobby Pierce. After a subpar qualifying run, the winner of last year’s FloRacing Night in America headliner had to charge through the B-main to transfer and was only able to climb to a ninth-place finish in the feature. … Kyle Strickler of Mooresville, N.C., failed to qualify in his first start since last month’s Dream weekend at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. He dropped a valve in his car’s engine at Eldora and has been waiting for its return. … Ashton Winger of Hampton, Ga., made a 10-and-a-half hour overnight drive to Fairbury after winning Tuesday’s Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals feature at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway, but he opted to sit out Wednesday’s program to gear up for the PDC action. … Bubba Roling of Clay Hill, Fla., also made the long trip from Senoia, where he finished sixth on Tuesday, to make his Fairbury debut. The 18-year-old missed a feature spot by two positions in the third consolation, but he performed well on unfamiliar turf, even passing his mentor, Capital Race Cars’ Shane Clanton of Zebulon, Ga., during the B-main.
