Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series
Lucas points chase tight heading to Pittsburgher
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
These drivers battling in 2025 are now facing off for the 2026 Lucas Oil title. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
Strangely enough, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series return to season-long points has produced an even tighter championship battle heading into October than last year’s playoff format.
Just 20 points separate Brandon Sheppard and Hudson O’Neal heading into this weekend’s Pittsburgher at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway, compared with Ricky Thornton Jr.’s 80-point lead over Devin Moran at this stage a year ago. | Lucas Oil title point margins
It’s the tour’s closest season-long championship battle entering October since 2017, when Josh Richards held 15- and 20-point edges over Scott Bloomquist and Tim McCreadie.
Moran, the reigning champion, isn’t out of this year’s chase, either. The Dresden, Ohio, driver trails Sheppard by 125 points with four races remaining after the Pittsburgher weekend was reduced to a Saturday-only show at Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Motor Speedway. Last year, Moran erased an 80-point deficit over the final three races to top Thornton by 85 points.
“It’s what dreams are made of, right? It’s what everybody wants to see,” said the 26-year-old O’Neal, who trimmed 30 points off Sheppard’s lead with a victory and a seventh-place finish during Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway’s Jackson 100 weekend. “They want to see this points battle come down to the wire, and it’s going to, in dramatic fashion. I’m sure it’s going to come down to the last race.”
The 2017 title race did just that. Richards entered the season-ending Dirt Track World Championship at Portsmouth (Ohio) Raceway Park trailing McCreadie by 40 points, then won the $100,000 finale to claim the championship as two flat tires relegated McCreadie to 17th.
A flat tire and an 18th-place finish Oct. 1 at Rome Speedway had left Richards 60 points behind McCreadie with two races remaining, but he rebounded with a third at the Pittsburgher and the DTWC triumph.
Bloomquist’s bid unraveled over that same stretch. He finished sixth at Rome, 18th at the Pittsburgher after a lap-13 wreck while battling Hudson O’Neal for 10th, and 12th at the DTWC after blowing a right-rear tire while running third on lap 92.
In a title race this close, one bad night can unravel a season’s worth of consistency.
Last year, a flat tire knocked Thornton out of the lead in Friday’s Pittsburgher opener. Moran went on to win while Thornton finished ninth, costing the Chandler, Ariz., driver 65 points.
“The biggest thing is just making sure you don’t have a bad night,” the 32-year-old Moran said in a Wednesday phone interview. “There’s a reason (Sheppard and O’Neal are) first and second in points right now: because they’re really good everywhere we go. ... I think them guys might have to have a little bit of bad luck, but as long as we do what we need to do and win a couple of these races, run top three, we definitely have a shot to still get the championship. In my opinion, we’re definitely not out, without a doubt.”
Though Sheppard’s once 135-point lead following July 18’s Silver Dollar Nationals weekend at Shelby County Speedway at Harlan, Iowa, has nearly vaporized, history still favors him.
Don O’Neal entered October 2014 with a 45-point advantage over Jimmy Owens and three races remaining, then held on to win the championship by 65.
The last driver to enter October trailing in the traditional season-long standings and win the title was Owens in 2011. He trailed Bloomquist by 40 points with four races remaining and by 65 with two to go before winning the penultimate event Oct. 9 at Rome Speedway, where Bloomquist blew an engine while leading on lap 14.
Bloomquist’s 22nd-place finish turned Owens’ 65-point deficit into a 50-point lead.
“Championships are won and lost on things like this,” Bloomquist told DirtonDirt that night.
Owens finished second to Bloomquist’s fourth at the DTWC, securing the first of three consecutive Lucas Oil championships and four overall.
Sheppard isn’t dwelling on missed opportunities to widen his lead, nor how he hasn’t won a series points race since July 16 at Shelby County Speedway and has averaged an 8.9 finish since then. O’Neal, meanwhile, has outrun him in each of the last four races and five of the last six.
“I’m not too worried about it,” the 33-year-old Sheppard said immediately following Saturday's eighth-place run at Brownstown. “The points will be what it’ll end up being. I’m not stressed about it.”
Only five of the Lucas Oil tour’s 18 season-long championships from 2005-22 were decided by fewer than 100 points, while six ended with margins of at least 400. The five championships immediately preceding the introduction of the playoff format in 2023 were decided by at least 275 points.
Even the tour's all-time closest finish apart from the playoff format — Jonathan Davenport’s 55-point triumph over Bloomquist in 2015 — wasn’t as close entering the finale. Davenport carried a 140-point advantage into the season-ending DTWC before Bloomquist’s victory and Davenport’s 12th-place finish narrowed the gap.
This year’s battle, however, has been compelling from the start.
Hudson O’Neal emerged from Georgia-Florida Speedweeks 20 points ahead of Moran, who took the lead at the next race with his March 27 victory at Brownstown.
O’Neal pulled even with Moran after May 1’s event at Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis, then built a 175-point lead following May 22’s Show-Me 100 prelim. Sheppard narrowed that advantage to just 10 points following June 27’s Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa.
Sheppard’s July 9 victory at Iowa’s 34 Raceway propelled him into the points lead. O’Neal pulled even the next night at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., but Sheppard reclaimed the top spot there July 11 and has held it since.
“We’ve had a great year. We continue to have a solid year,” said Sheppard, the five-time World of Outlaws Late Model Series champion seeking his first Lucas Oil title. “There’s going to have to be a little luck on one side or the other. We’ll have to make good decisions. Win as a team, lose as a team.”
While Sheppard was more reserved on his approach to the tight points battle, O’Neal made his priorities clear: keep track of his two title rivals and simply outrun them on a nightly basis.
“We don’t need to think about winning at this point,” O’Neal said. “We just need to make sure that whenever we’re running eighth and Sheppard’s running seventh, we need to focus on trying to get by Sheppard. That’s our mindset at the moment. We want to win races and we want to be good, but at the same time, we’re racing the 1 and the 99.”
Moran’s 125-point deficit leaves him with considerable ground to cover, but also more reasons to take chances. Brownstown offered an example of how a gamble can pay off: Brian Shirley won the Jackson 100 on softer tires that Sheppard and O’Neal avoided because of the potential points risk.
“If we’ve got some ideas on the car or different things like that, it’s like, well, we’re not going to get passed for fourth in points, and the only thing we can really do is go forward,” Moran said. “So if we have some ideas, some things we want to try in the car, we don’t have to be so afraid to try them, because we definitely don’t have as much to lose as what Huddy and Sheppy do, I feel like.”
O’Neal and Moran are also seeking to add a season-long points championship to their resumes. Their only Lucas Oil titles — O’Neal’s in 2023 and Moran’s in ’25 — came under the playoff format.
“Yeah, I want this one really, really bad because it’s all season. It adds a little bit more tradition to it,” O’Neal said. “Regardless, I don’t take anything away from my other one. But I want this one right here, right now, because I think it’ll be really self-gratifying for our team to know how hard we had to work all summer to kind of get to where we are today.
“You dream of being in these positions to be able to contend for a title, and we’re just blessed to be a part of it.”
Of the three contenders, O’Neal sounds the most cautious heading to Pittsburgh’s half-mile, where the SSI Motorsports driver finished 21st in last year’s finale.
“We were terrible there last year. I mean, absolutely awful,” O’Neal said. “I’m not going to say that I don’t have confidence going, because I think we’re good and we’ll be OK, but we were really bad there last year. Hopefully we’ll have a little redemption this year.”
Sheppard, meanwhile, says he “feels pretty good about it” because “we’ve been pretty good in the past.” He finished second in Friday’s portion and fifth in the 70-lap PPMS finale last year.
Moran brings unquestionably the strongest Pittsburgh track record, at least recently, with five consecutive podium finishes and two victories at the monster half-mile two hours from his Ohio home since 2023.
“I love Pittsburgh. I love Eldora. And the last time I was at West Virginia Motor, we won,” Moran said, referring to Sept. 6's Hillbilly 100 victory at the third-mile oval in Mineral Wells, W.Va., the site of this year's DTWC.
With four races remaining, the return to a season-long points battle has delivered both the weight of a full season’s work and the suspense of a championship still up for grabs.
“The fans are in for a treat, I think,” O’Neal said. “Hopefully we can continue to run good and continue to creep in on it. Just to have a chance is all we can ask for.”
