Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Morey revels in North-South 100 podium
Luke Morey couldn’t believe he finished third in Aug. 8’s Sunoco North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky., the night it actually happened. When he returned to his Coltman Farms Racing shop in Maysville, Ga., the aspiring 18-year-old driver was even more astounded by his eye-opening performance.
As Morey, a native of Zeeland, Mich., now living in Denver, N.C., gave his Longhorn Chassis a thorough examination, the damage it sported from his involvement in the race’s massive lap-12 restart accident gave him pause. It went well beyond the crushed right-front fender the car sustained from ending up underneath Drake Troutman’s machine.
“I looked over it all afterward, and I took the whole right-front apart, and it was off a mile. It was all junk,” Morey said, remarking that the spindle and other assorted suspension components were bent significantly. “Our rear end was bent too, so I don’t know how we made it work. It was weird running that good and still having to do so much (repair) work to it when we got home.”
The condition of Morey’s car, of course, wasn’t the only aspect of his North-South 100 outing that left him truly in a flabbergasted daze upon climbing from his No. 49 on the frontstretch that evening. The weekend marked both his debut in Florence’s crown jewel event and the first-ever Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series starts of his young Dirt Late Model career. He showed little notable speed in the two preliminary programs, finishing 17th on Thursday and failing to qualify on Friday before a total overhaul of his vehicle woke it up for Saturday’s finale and he won a B-main to start 19th in the 100-lapper.
And, what’s more, in the giant wreck that swept up more than half of the 24-car field, Morey suffered an injury to his right wrist — his hand got stuck in the spokes of the steering wheel — that nearly prompted him to retire early.
“He told us that he was going to try (racing) for about five, six laps, and if he couldn’t drive, he’d pull in,” Aaron Morey, Luke’s father, said of a conversation he had with his son during a pit stop for hasty bodywork fixes after the crash. “He couldn’t twist his wrist.”
But the younger Morey pressed on, staying in the race essentially through “just all adrenaline in the moment, because looking back at it, I didn’t feel any pain in my wrist until I got out of the car.” His grit resulted in a career highlight, a run on one of the sport’s highest-profile stages that seemed to come virtually out of nowhere.
Yes, the 2026 North-South 100 will long be remembered as an epic home-track victory by Josh Rice of Crittenden, Ky., who outdueled superstar Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., in the closing laps to claim the $75,000 top prize and throw the capacity crowd into a frenzy. But Morey was an amazing story in his own right. A teenager in his third full year of Super Late Model action, he was right there in the mix down the stretch despite both mechanical and physical problems, just one tangle between Rice and Davenport from pulling off a monumental upset for the ages.
When Morey awoke in his team’s hauler, still parked in Florence’s pit area, the morning after the race, he realized that his wrist injury was likely more than just a sprain. There was swelling and he had trouble even moving the fingers on his right hand, so upon returning home he sought medical attention. X-rays revealed that he had fractured several small bones in his wrist.
Morey said doctors recommended that he sit out 3-6 weeks to let his wrist heal, but he was back in his race car just under two weeks later for last weekend’s Ultimate Southeast Series Marlin-Woods Memorial doubleheader at Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn. He has a hard brace on his wrist — a cast wasn’t needed — and raced with it without too much trouble.
“It was just kind of a matter of getting used to it. It was just a little bit uncomfortable,” said Morey, who finished second in Friday’s feature but was knocked out of Saturday’s finale after slamming into a slowing car as he was rallying from a tire change. “(The wrist) felt a lot better there, but anytime I shake someone’s hand and someone squeezes it, that’s when it does something my hand don’t like and it hurts.”
Those tinges of pain, though, do take his mind back to the sweet memories of the North-South 100, which still feels like it happened yesterday.
It was just all so unexpected. He spent the two preliminary nights “fighting something” with the car “and the last thing we thought was we were gonna make the show, so we were like, ‘Let’s just throw everything at it and try some stuff,’” Morey said. “Then we roll up and finish one spot out of the transfer (in a Saturday heat), so I’m like, ‘All right, we might as well go try to make the show now,’’ and we go win the B (main).”
“My whole goal for the feature was just to finish, and after that big pile up, I didn’t know,” he continued.
But in a rough-and-tumble race that would stretch for nearly two hours, Morey gradually moved forward. He cracked the top 10 on lap 51, the top-five on lap 80. A few circuits later he was suddenly poking his car’s nose underneath Rice and, in fact, briefly passed the eventual winner for third on lap 87 before ceding the spot back on lap 90.
Morey overtook Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, for third on lap 93 and stayed there to there to the finish. He was never, however, very far behind the battling duo of Rice and Davenport over the remaining circuits, which put a classic showdown right in front of his eyes.
“I was getting distracted by them racing,” Morey recalled. “I kept overshooting (turn) three just watching them. I knew it was like a once in a lifetime opportunity to see this. Seeing Rice slide Davenport and the fans just freaking out, that’s just crazy. But at the same time, I had to just kind of hit my marks to get on the podium.
“I was hoping they’d wreck each other there, so I was just trying to stay in my lane just in case they do wreck each other and I can get on through there.”
Morey ultimately was just a couple car lengths behind Rice and Davenport at the checkered flag even after taking a conservative approach, which in the final analysis was really his only choice due to his ailing wrist. He remarked afterward that he didn ’t really feel any pain during the race, but truthfully, “it hurt every time I had to turn right.”
“I wanted to get up on the fence and try (the cushion), but I just couldn’t,” Morey conceded. “There one time I did but it was just too much discomfort, so I just tried to roll around the bottom, save my stuff.”
Morey admitted that he “was in shock passing (Brian) Shirley for like 15th” in the race, so finding himself on the podium with a Florence master in Rice and a two-time North-South 100 winner in Davenport was mind-boggling. The fresh-faced redhead largely kept to himself amid the mayhem of the post-race scene, just taking in the moment. After all, how many drivers end up with a top-three finish in their first career start in a crown jewel feature?
“Earlier that day, in the pits, we ran out of water (in their hauler), so Josh, he brought one of his water tanks and ended up filling up our truck for us for free,” said Morey, whose four previous crown jewel attempts (World 100 in 2024 and ’25, this year’s Dream and USA Nationals) resulted in DNQs. “He did a good favor there, so it was kind of a full circle moment to be on the podium with him later that night after watching him win the North-South.
“I didn’t talk to Jonathan. You can tell, in his head, he definitely should have won, so he was a little upset and didn’t look like he wanted to talk.”
Besides, Morey was a little awestruck standing so close to Davenport after following him across the finish line in a major event.
“I think it was only three years ago I was at Bilstein tests with my dad just watching Jonathan,” said Morey, whose father is a longtime employee of the shock company. “So to actually be racing with him and competing with him just three years later is pretty crazy.”
Morey’s car owner, Brett Coltman, had a flight scheduled to Cincinnati to attend the North-South 100 but didn’t make it, so his first chance to enjoy the top-three run with Morey came when the team returned to the shop.
“He was pumped,” Morey said. “Right when I got back to Georgia we went out and ate a nice steak dinner to celebrate.”
More post-event satisfaction came to Morey in the days following the race, but he didn’t need the adulation to understand the significance of what he had done.e significance of what he had done.
“I got a bunch of calls and texts and all that,” Morey said. “But it was just almost like a weight off my shoulders. This whole year we’ve just been kind of … we’ve been good, but not that good. It’s just, we've kind of been mid-pack at these national races, and to show people that we have what it takes — if it kind of goes our way and we get the car right, we can go out there and finish on the podium, even if there was a huge pile up or whatever.
“I feel like we kind of proved ourselves a little bit at Florence there, and then to follow up at Duck River … we really were good enough to win both races but it didn’t go our way either night. We’re definitely good right now and I know everyone sees it.”
Morey has had other highlights in his first season driving for the well-heeled Coltman, including a first-ever touring win in May 15’s Ultimate Southeast show at Princeton (W.Va.) Speedway. He also ran strong in a 15-race stretch of the DIRTcar Summer Nationals, tallying eight top-five (including runner-up placings at Camden, Tenn., and Macon, Ill.) and 13 top-10 finishes.
After spending the first two seasons of his Dirt Late Model career running a modest one-car, one-motor program fielded by his parents Aaron and Anji, he’s thankful that Coltman has given him the opportunity to expand his horizons. He has more resources, including two cars, at his disposal, and is racing for a living.
“It was definitely a bunch of pressure, you know, being in here (with Coltman Farms Racing) after Zack Mitchell and Tanner English and all the wins they have, and just how well-rounded they are and how much experience they got doing this stuff,” Morey said. “It’s definitely hard to kind of step in their shoes and fill in their spot, but I feel like we’ve definitely been getting better this year. I feel like anywhere we go we’re a contender, so I’m definitely happy with it.
“If this didn’t happen (with Coltman), I definitely would not be racing right now.”
There’s more ahead for Morey this season, though he’s had a bit of a speed-bump thrown into his preparation for the homestretch of ’26. As of Thursday, the car he crashed at Duck River was still sitting in the quarter-mile oval’s pit area, strapped inside the team’s trailer, because the hauler was stranded there awaiting mechanical repair. The truck’s turbocharger malfunctioned just a short distance from the track after the team departed on Saturday; a brief flareup under the hood even necessitated a call to the local fire department.
With problems finding the correct turbocharger delaying the repair of the toter home, it’s sat in Duck River’s pits all week. Morey returned home without the rig and spent time this week picking up parts at Longhorn Chassis in China Grove, N.C., that will be needed for his upcoming assault on the World 100 at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, but he’s had to scratch plans to enter this weekend’s Country Roads 100 at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va., where he won his first career Super Late Model feature last year in a preliminary to the event.
“We don’t know yet how much damage the car has (from the Duck River accident),” Morey said. “Hopefully it didn’t get the clip or anything, but I think it's just mostly body. I don’t really think I got the clip from watching the video. I kind of hit the wall slow, but there was some yellow from the wall on the frame so we just gotta look over it.”
Morey was hopeful that the hauler would be operational and back in the shop by Friday. He’s anxious to get to work on his equipment and continue an ascension in the division that took a giant leap forward at Florence.
“You know, he’s chasing a dream,” Aaron Morey said of his son. “It’s all been a process. And it’s cool when you see a kid — I don’t care if it’s your own kid or someone else’s kid — but just anyone that wants something so bad that they don’t go to prom, they don’t go to Friday night football games. They don’t want to do anything but race.
“It’s cool to see someone that has that drive get an opportunity from Brett Coltman. There’s a lot of them out there, but they don’t get many opportunities for kids like this, so it’s special. It’s so special.”
