COLUMBUS, Miss. — What a difference 24 hours makes.
Hudson O’Neal’s weekend at Magnolia Motor Speedway got off to a tumultuous start on Friday night with engine trouble in qualifying. With no points to worry about, the K&L Rumley Enterprises team sat out the remainder of the night to change the powerplant and prepare for Saturday’s program.
That decision paid off almost instantly on the final night of the Duel at the Mag, as O’Neal topped the charts in qualifying and won his heat race in commanding fashion. But the bad luck wasn’t over quite yet.
While racing it out toward the front with the likes of Jonathan Davenport, Dale McDowell and Ashton Winger, the No. 6 suffered some nose damage that the crew elected to fix in the work area under a Lap 25 caution, sending O’Neal to the rear with 35 laps remaining.
Within a dozen laps, O’Neal was already back in the top 10, and he got the cautions he needed late to prevent the leaders from getting out of range. A restart 17 laps prior to the finish put him right on Davenport’s tail, and he soon got to the inside of the No. 49 while Bobby Pierce pounded the cushion in a three-wide battle for the lead.
He couldn’t make that move stick, but he kept working the inside and eventually prevailed over Davenport. O’Neal had one more scare when the nose folded in again coming to the white flag, but he managed to hold on long enough to score the fifth win of his career with the World of Outlaws Late Model Series presented by DIRTVision and his second of 2026.
“I just tried my best to stay in that bottom and under caution, just roll around that inside and keep the load off the left-front to keep it out of the dirt,” O’Neal said regarding his plan to minimize the impact of the damage. “I thought our race was over whenever we pitted. We weren’t very good for the first 10 or so laps, and then it just felt like the slicker it got, we just kept coming around a little bit. We were a little too tight early in the race and just kept getting better and better as it went on.”
Davenport knew he had a shot on the last lap with O’Neal’s issues, but his Hail Mary attempt in the final set of corners wasn’t enough to earn World of Outlaws win number 19.
“I thought I had a run on Hudson there the last lap coming off [Turn] 2,” Davenport said. “I knew if I could hit [Turns] 3 and 4 just perfect, but I was going to have to give it everything. I just went in there and got a little too tight and got in the fence and let Bobby by. Anyway, wasn’t concerned with second there, we were going to try to win.”
Pierce put together an impressive charge of his own, as he needed a Last Chance Showdown win to punch his ticket to the feature before climbing from 17th to second. Behind Davenport in third, Nick Hoffman and Tyler Erb rounded out the top five.
The finish:
Feature (60 Laps): 1. 6-Hudson O’Neal[2]; 2. 32-Bobby Pierce[17]; 3. 49-Jonathan Davenport[1]; 4. 9-Nick Hoffman[9]; 5. 1-Tyler Erb[11]; 6. 12-Ashton Winger[5]; 7. 28-Dennis Erb Jr[4]; 8. 58V-Daulton Wilson[23]; 9. 9M-Tim McCreadie[14]; 10. 14-Trey Mills[10]; 11. 11-Austin Smith[19]; 12. K3-Spencer Hughes[21]; 13. 19R-Ryan Gustin[13]; 14. 59-Dillard Hatchett[22]; 15. 74X-Ethan Dotson[8]; 16. 1Z-Logan Zarin[26]; 17. 09-Michael Leach[18]; 18. 20TC-Tristan Chamberlain[16]; 19. 16-Sam Seawright[7]; 20. 17M-Dale McDowell[3]; 21. 22*-Drake Troutman[6]; 22. B1-Brent Larson[25]; 23. 97-Cade Dillard[15]; 24. C6-Oakley Johns[20]; 25. T1-Todd Morrow[12]; 26. 19-Dustin Sorensen[24]
