Florence Speedway
Florence's Big One spoils 100-lap hopes for many
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Among the North-South 100 carnage. (Michael Moats)
UNION, Ky. (Aug. 8) — Dan Ebert was already distraught over his car’s sudden mechanical failure that ended what could perhaps have been a career-best performance in Saturday’s Sunoco North-South 100 at Florence Speedway. He felt even worse once he climbed out of his stricken machine on the frontstretch and glimpsed the carnage in his wake.
After the 38-year-old driver from Lake Shore, Minn., broke off turn four running second on a lap-12 restart, more than half of the 27-car field piled up in a massive accident that blocked virtually the entire straightaway. It was one of the biggest multicar crashes in recent Dirt Late Model history — certainly the largest anyone has seen in a crown jewel event for years — and Ebert knew his troubles triggered it.
“Just makes me sick to wreck the field like this,” Ebert said, shaking his head in frustration as he stood alongside his car watching safety crews clean up the mess.
The 2026 North-South 100 will of course be long remembered for Florence favorite Josh Rice’s stirring rally to capture the race’s $75,000 winner’s prize for the first time, but the early crash will go down as much more than a slight footnote. It undoubtedly had a major impact on the crown jewel event, eliminating such prime contenders as Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., who was bidding for his fourth straight and fifth overall North-South 100 victory, and semifeature winners Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., and Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn.
“It’s a little bit of a bummer for the fans because so many potential guys that could’ve won this ain’t out there now,” Marlar said in an interview on the track during the red flag for the crash.
A replay of the accident from the drone hovering over the speedway showed just 10 cars escaped the scene without being at least marginally involved. Most of those drivers had been on the inside row for the Delaware double-file restart, giving them a little more leeway to avoid the mayhem.
Ebert, who started from the pole position after winning the night’s dash for heat winners that offered a $5,000 first-place check, led the race’s first seven laps before ceding the position to Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga. He still held second for the feature’s first restart, on lap 12, and chose to head to the green from the outside of the row behind Davenport.
Exiting turn four, however, Ebert’s car noticeably hopped and abruptly lost drive. He wasn’t entirely sure at the time what had gone wrong, but it was a lift bar that broke on his Rocket Chassis; it dug into the track surface and also caused the driveshaft to snap.
“I took off,” Ebert said, “and then just everything exploded and I was dead in the water.”
Fourth-running Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, who restarted directly behind Ebert, was the first to make contact, the nose of his Double Down Motorsports car burrowing into the rear end of Ebert’s vehicle. Then the sixth-place Sheppard ran into Moran, but, while Moran kept going straight behind Ebert and would eventually stop in tandem with Ebert some 30 feet past the flagstand, Sheppard found himself spun sideways as the 10th-running Marlar’s nose lifted Sheppard’s rear off the ground.
“I ran into Moran and got turned from behind,” Sheppard said. “I thought for sure I was flipping, but luckily, I got up on top of Mikey (Marlar) I think and kind of rotated around. I was in the tuck position just hoping and praying.”
Sheppard’s Rocket Chassis house car twirled around while riding above Marlar’s No. 157. He came to rest sitting on the right side of Marlar’s car and the partially on the nose of Pierce, who restarted 14th.
“It was an accordion effect there for sure,” said Pierce, whose 25th-place finish was his worst in 10 career North-South 100 feature starts. “It’s just a bad deal. But the time I saw it, I was on the brakes, but I was still gonna hit Shepp hard. I took some hard hits, but I’m perfectly fine. The car’s not, however, so it sucks this is how it ended our run for fifth North-South and four in a row.”
Sheppard’s car, which was removed from the track between two wreckers, appeared to be pummeled even more than Pierce’s with its rear end broke in half, front clip bent and an array of other damage. Team owner Mark Richards and his crew worked on the car in the infield through much of the race’s first half before taking it the pits — and leaving its battered nosepiece, among other body parts, behind.
Marlar’s Rocket Chassis, which he’s campaigned for the past six weeks, sustained significant damage but he felt fortunate it wasn’t worse.
“I kind of turned left and missed the first (stackup behind Ebert), and then somebody else was turned left, had the same idea as I had, and then I got into Shepp,” Marlar said. “There was a car between me and Shepp (on the restart), which was Ricky (Thornton Jr.), but he somehow got out of it (shooting low).
“I thought it was over, and then I got hit that one last time and I said, ‘Oh, here’s the part where I’m probably going to like flip over and be on the roof after all this.’ I was glad that I stayed on four wheels.”
Marlar’s final assessment: “There was nothing nobody could do. There was nothing Dan could do. He just broke something there. Ol’ 900 horsepower and metal, sometimes it breaks, so he just broke and it just stacked everybody up and we couldn’t get stopped.”
Beyond Sheppard-Marlar-Pierce, cars were left strewn in batches all over the middle of the straightaway. Immediately behind the heavy-hitter trio, Max Blair’s car sat on the noses of Frank Heckenast Jr.’s backwards machine and Shannon Babb’s No. 18 with Zack Dohm, Hudson O’Neal and Dillon McCowan among those piled in. On the inside of the track, Dallon Murty’s car sat sideways on the nose of Drake Troutman’s Jerry Foster-owned mount with Luke Morey snugged up behind Troutman.
In the final analysis, six drivers — Ebert, Sheppard, Marlar, Pierce, Heckenast and Babb — were immediately out of the race. Several others tried to continue after hasty repairs but ultimately retired. And there were several who successfully patched up their cars and went this distance, included the 18-year-old Morey, who made a remarkable comeback to finish third in his first Lucas Oil points race despite battling an injury to his right wrist suffered in the wreck, Moran (led twice late before settling for fourth), Murty (placed sixth) and O’Neal (rose to the top-five before slipping to 11th in the finishing order after post-crash repairs that included replacing his car’s radiator).
The race was stopped for about 25 minutes while safety crews cleared the track of wrecked cars. The last car to be removed from the frontstretch was Ebert, who had to agonizingly watch the entire cleanup of the mess his mechanical misfortune had caused.
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