Brownstown Speedway
O'Neal getting back in the Brownstown groove
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
Hudson O'Neal in victory lane. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
BROWNSTOWN, Ind. (Sept. 25) — Since winning the Jackson 100 in 2019, the annual weekend at Brownstown Speedway has been a source of futility for Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind.
The 26-year-old SSI Motorsports driver and Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series regular has an average finish of 9.83 since 2020, and he had a particularly rough outing in 2025. | RaceWire
Desperately needing points to stay in the hunt for last season's Big River Steel Chase for the Championship, O’Neal spun after contact with Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz. during the C.J. Rayburn Memorial, finishing 22nd. Contact with Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas during last year’s century grind won by Thornton caused him to fade to 17th.
Those back-to-back finishes essentially ended his championship hopes on the opening weekend of the Chase at a track where he was expected to gain ground against Thornton, Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., and eventual series champ Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio.
O’Neal is hoping to put bad luck behind him, and Friday’s race held in honor of the innovative chassis builder from Whiteland, Ind., has him excited to come out of the weekend on top of the series standings. O’Neal led all 40 laps, starting from the pole, taking the lead and pocketing the $10,000 winner’s check.
“I’ve always been kind of spotty here, so it's really nice to finally get a good balance,” O’Neal said during postrace technical inspection. “This place is so technical and it demands a good race car and a balanced race car and if you can get that, you‘re normally OK. I've got so many laps around this place. If I could get balanced, I might be OK. It was just very, very nice to finally get that balance that we felt like we needed.”
Finding that extra touch of balance came at a place that doesn’t resemble Brownstown’s quarter-mile oval very much: Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. O’Neal's fifth-place run during the track’s World 100 two weeks ago gave him and crew chief Jason Durham some insight that propelled hm to victory lane at Brownstown — and hopefully his first series title since driving for the Rocket Chassis House Car team in 2023.
“You gotta have a good balance and you gotta be open to steer especially later in the race here,” O’Neal said. “We knew whenever we kind of got that little bit of balance and being able to steer (at the World 100), that would help us when we go to places like this. It's amazing how the racetracks can be so different, but have a lot of similarities, too, you know, and we kind of put our finger on a few (setups) that we think is going to help us.
"We just keep working at it. I think we're obviously pretty good, but, you know, obviously we always want to be better and we want to get better. I think we're at a level playing field now and we've caught back up to everybody. If we can find just something gives us a little bit of an edge, I think we'll be really good.”
O’Neal’s only challenge during Friday’s preliminary event was the start. After taking the green flag, he was able to beat second-place starting Davenport to the corner in turn one. Series points leader Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill, attempted to pass O’Neal on the bottom, raising initial concerns that Sheppard could snatch an early lead.
“Yeah, I was really nervous whenever I seen his nose in there, because all it would have taken was for me to slip one more time and he shot off in there and then it'd be really hard to pass,” O’Neal said.
Sheppard pulled even with O’Neal down the backstretch, but the freshly-watered track’s upper half gave O’Neal momentum off turn four to take a lead he wouldn’t relinquish.
“I was more worried about that top, you know, getting a run,” O’Neal said. “I knew if I could just kind of stop J.D., then whenever I seen Sheppard, I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ Whenever I got back out (in front), I passed him and then I'm like, ‘All right, let's calm down here. This top's going to prevail for a while.’ And I think it did.”
“We were really good there,” said O’Neal, who narrowed the gap between himself and Sheppard to 25 points ahead of today’s $50,000-to-win 100-lapper. “I felt like, you know, I don't know how much better them guys were at the end or if it was traffic or exactly what it was, but I'm going to assume tomorrow we're going to have a little bit faster of a racetrack for a while. I felt pretty balanced early whenever there was a little bit of mud. I was maybe just a little snug, but all in all, it felt like we had a good piece.”
The Brownstown crowd, which has adored O’Neal since he began his career in the Crate Late Model division as a teenager, cheered as he crossed the finish line, comfortably ahead of Sheppard and Thornton, last year’s Jackson 100 winner.
“A lot of the faces I see in the pits and stuff today are the same faces I seen in 2015 whenever I started racing here weekly, you know? So, it's so cool to come out the scales and go down the first straightaway doing a victory lap,” O’Neal sad. “Everybody's standing up and cheering and it's just something you don't ever get anywhere else, you know? So it's very, very cool. I’m very, very humbled to have the fan base that I do here and thankful that it's such a warm welcome whenever I do come home.”
