GIBSONTON, Fla. — Hudson O’Neal scored his first victory for Rocket1 Racing as the 22-year-old Indiana native went to the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series winner’s circle on Thursday night during the 47th annual Wieland Winternationals at East Bay Raceway Park.
Max Blair came home in second to equal his best career Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series finish. Dennis Erb Jr. was third with 12th-place starter Garrett Smith coming home fourth. Tim McCreadie completed the top five.
O’Neal grabbed the lead at the start of the race with Dennis Erb Jr. in second followed by current point leader Ricky Thornton Jr. Thornton took second on lap three from Erb, then ran behind O’Neal until he broke coming off a lap 10 restart ending his night. Blair, who started fifth then moved into second place after Thornton left the race.
Blair kept pace with O’Neal until the final lap when he closed the gap ending up just .363 seconds behind his fellow third-generation racer at the checkers.
It was O’Neal’s 19th series victory, but his first for his new team.
“I can’t begin to talk about it,” O’Neal said. “The worst part is that I know we have had it in us the whole trip and just little things just didn’t fall our way. I was able to get the lead from the jump there and I knew it was the best place I could possibly be with the way the track was moving around. It’s just better to be up front. I knew if I could just maintain a gap and get ahead of them before I caught lapped traffic. With those lapped cars it was tense. I kept waiting for someone to blast around the outside.”
Blair, who was seeking to become the third straight first-time winner finished in the runner-up spot.
“I just couldn’t believe I was racing with Hudson O’Neal for the win at East Bay,” Blair said. “That’s awesome. It was a good night. We’ve had a good car all week and the driver just can’t put a good lap together until tonight. We put a whole night together tonight, hopefully we can put together two more nights like this.”
Erb finished third.
“Hopefully we can build some good momentum from this for the rest of the week. We ran well the first two nights. We qualified good tonight to start up front. We were a little tight tonight and we will work on that for tomorrow.”
The finish:
Hudson O’Neal, Max Blair, Dennis Erb Jr., Garrett Smith, Tim McCreadie, Jimmy Owens, Shane Clanton, Tanner English, Garrett Alberson, Tyler Erb, Ashton Winger, Jensen Ford, Kyle Bronson, Brian Shirley, Jonathan Davenport, Mason Zeigler, Earl Pearson Jr., Chase Junghans, Ross Robinson, Tyler Bruening, Daulton Wilson, Wil Herrington, Spencer Hughes, John Henderson, Ricky Thornton Jr., Ross Bailes, Devin Moran, Brandon Sheppard, Kenny Collins, Brandon Overton.