Fairbury Speedway
Ill-fated restarts flatten O'Neal's PDC prelim bid
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Hudson O'Neal's flat doomed him while leading a semifeature. (joshjamesartwork.com)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 24) — Hudson O’Neal went from cruising to victory to the middle of a firestorm in Friday’s second 25-lap Prairie Dirt Classic semifeature at Fairbury Speedway.
It was clear O’Neal’s Kevin Rumley-owned No. 6 had a flat left-rear tire with six laps remaining. The 25-year-old star from Martinsville, Ind., opted to stay on the track for two restarts, however, in the hope that he could still reach the finish and, if not hold on for a $5,000 triumph, grab a top-four transfer spot to Saturday’s 100-lap, $50,000-to-win World of Outlaws Late Model Series headliner. | RaceWire
Unsurprisingly to so many observers, O’Neal’s tire blew out on lap 20, ending his bid in a race ultimately captured by first-time PDC entrant Sam Seawright of Rainsville, Ala. O’Neal, who salvaged an eighth-place finish after pitting, could only shrug his shoulders over his fate.
“About 90 percent of me really thought that it was going to make it,” O’Neal, who had led from the start of the race, said of his tire. “But obviously, I wasn’t standing outside the race car. I couldn’t see it.”
It seemed most saw O’Neal’s tire didn’t agree with his assessment from the seat. That group included Dan Ebert of Lake Shore, Minn., the second-running driver who had an up-close view of O’Neal’s tire as the field circled the quarter-mile oval under caution on lap 19.
According to Ebert, he noticed that O’Neal’s tire was “three-fourths down” before the first of back-to-back lap-19 restarts, “but he took off and maintained.” Before another lap was completed, though, the caution flag flew again and Ebert saw O’Neal’s tire had deflated further.
“We’re parading around there and it's on the rim, on the wheel,” Ebert said. “I pull up alongside him and I’m like, ‘Hey, like, your tire’s flat,’ which I was surprised that they didn't pull him in or he didn’t pull in. It was wheel on the ground.”
Ebert, a 38-year-old Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series regular making his first attempt at the PDC, feared O’Neal’s restart would be compromised by the soft tire. He plotted a strategy he hoped would steer him clear of O’Neal.
“So I started on the outside (in the Delaware double-file alignment) the restart before and I didn’t do a good job, so I thought, Well, I’m gonna go to the bottom this time because a lot of times when you fuel up with a left-rear flat, you’ll go up (the track), so maybe I can come inside (O’Neal).
“Well, he come down crossed up in front of me (off turn four). I had to kind of check up and I got ass-ended (by Dennis Erb Jr.), turned around (on the homestretch). I went 360 (degrees).”
Somehow Ebert twirled completely around and kept going, but he was sent to the rear of the field for triggering the third caution on lap 19 with the WoO tour not having a “blend” rule in place. At any rate, the nose of Ebert’s car was damaged by a hit he absorbed from a passing car during his spin and he limped to a 16th-place finish.
Ebert couldn’t understand why O’Neal even restarted with his tire down so low. He was clearly frustrated over having his strong run abruptly short-circuited.
“I just feel like I … I don’t know,” Ebert said. “I wanted to try to make sure that I positioned myself to not get wrecked and be able to get around (O’Neal), but...
“The car was real good,” he added. “For my first PDC, I was pretty excited to make it, but it just wasn’t meant to be this year. I’m gonna go home now. We got a pretty short turnaround for Cedar Lake (next weekend’s USA Nationals). It’s just unfortunate.”
All attention was centered on O’Neal during the caution period following Ebert’s spin. It appeared he would have to pit with his tire down on the rim, but he stayed on the track.
“I was looking at my guys (signaling from the infield) and they thought it was gonna be OK,” O’Neal said. “So I just thought that whenever I got back going it would, you know, build back up (with air). It wouldn’t build back up to (normal) air pressure, but at least it would get off the rim.
“A couple guys pulled up alongside me and said I had a flat. I knew it was going down obviously, but yeah, just communicating with your guys and whatever we think is the best decision, and we thought we made the best decision and we didn’t.
“It only ever felt like it started to get rough riding, like I had a flat, about, I don’t know, the last lap or two of the restart right before the very last restart (following Ebert’s spin),” he continued. “Then it just deformed and blew apart.”
O’Neal fueled up on the cushion and tried to maintain his speed on his final restart as the leader, but Chris Simpson of Oxford, Iowa, moved ahead to lead lap 20 and O’Neal’s tire exploded in turn four before he came around to complete another circuit. Jake O’Neil of Tucson, Ariz., couldn’t avoid O’Neal’s slowing car in turn four and made contact that left him with significant body damage.
“Yeah, it sucks,” said O’Neal, who won Wednesday’s FloRacing Night in America-sanctioned One for the Road to kick off the PDC week. “I had to run over something (to initially cut the tire). That’s just all there was to it.
“It sucks that we got in this situation. I feel like we have the best car here, and I’d say now we’ve got a long road ahead of us tomorrow (in a B-main).”
There was plenty of pit-area discussion surrounding the fact that WoO officials didn’t black flag O’Neal as he paced around the track with the flat tire. Series direction Steve Francis said it’s not a decision the tour can summarily make.
“We don’t have a rule in there about that,” Francis said when asked if the series could have forced O’Neal to pit. “It’s the guy’s judgment. The driver knows he’s got at flat, he knows it’s on the wheel. We do not have anything in our rules, so how do we park a guy?
“We’ve never had a car to stay out on a flat. The guy is leading, there’s, what, six to go? If we park that guy and he could have won … I think he felt like he had a slow leak, but you’d have to ask Hudson what he was thinking.”
Both Francis and WoO race director Mitchell Hedstrom said there was “no debate” about whether they should send O’Neal to the pits during the lengthy caution period following Ebert’s spin.
“We never even talked about it,” Francis said. “It is what it is. We don’t have any rule for taking this guy out, so that’s all you can say about it.”
