Ninety straight green flag laps of leading the field. The is the running count for Indiana's Hudson O'Neal as he led all fifty laps to win Friday night's Lucas Oil Late Model Series race at East Bay Raceway Park and increase his front running total to ninety after having led all forty laps on Thursday night for his first victory of the week.
While the win was an impressive one, it was not without its struggles as he had to fight off two significant challenges to call the victory his as both Devin Moran and Dalton Wilson made things a challenge for the driver of the Rocket house car. But in the end, it would be O'Neal sitting in victory lane for the second straight night.
Pre race, the pit area was at a fever pitch level of activity as now deep into a full week of nightly racing, things are happening as drivers are changing cars, fixing damaged cars and either replacing or repairing motors, rear ends, drive shafts and so far just about everything but the drivers.
Jonathan Davenport, Spencer Hughes, Ashton Winger and Wilson were among others that changed cars for the Friday night show while Brandon Sheppard was busily changing a motor in his car. After taking a night off, both John Tweed and Mike Benedum returned to racing action on Friday while others including Danny Snyder, Blake Spencer, Perry Brown, Billy Boyd Sr, Shane Clanton, Tyler Riggs and Freddie Carpenter became new non participation members, some probably for the rest of the week. Surprisingly, even at this late date of the week, three new drivers showed up as Matt Cosner, Carson Ferguson and Chase Osterhoff all made their first starts of the week. Thus the sixty two entry list was determined.
But the biggest news of the week, perhaps even more important than the racing itself was the fact that for the first time this week or perhaps for the last two weeks, the track prep crew finally figured out that magic formula to turn East Bay Raceway Park into the track that most people knew and were waiting for to reappear.
The formula was a simple one and most surprising that it took them so long to figure it out. The secret, more WATER. That, and for the first time seen here this season, they dug the track up, thus allowing the water to get deeper into the racing surface and not just be kicked off as soon as the cars started to hot lap. Thus it produced a racing surface that was fast and tacky and had multiple grooves and made watching racing here so much more pleasurable. And I'm sure it is much more fun for the drivers to run on when if they are fast enough, there are places that they can pass, not just play follow the leader. It probably didn't hurt that it was a humid day too In fact, for the second straight night, lightning flickering in the Northeastern skies but didn't ever threaten the racing here.
Everyone was on their "A " game on Friday including Lucas officials that finally limited the drivers to one hot lap session and didn't wear the track out before the real racing even started. Even the speakers in the grand stands sounded better on Friday so it was a solid night by all. Strange though, that it should have taken most of the week for this convergence of events to happen.
The solid preparation of the racing surface showed up early. Garrett Smith and O'Neal were the quickest qualifiers of the two sections with O'Neal quickest overall at 14.706 seconds as the fifty ninth car to take a qualifying lap!
Six heats and three B Features would set the running order for the feature with the heats by far the best of the week with some great battles and very intense eight lap bursts of power and speed. They had the crowd salivating for more. A thirty car field would once again take the green for the main event. Stormy Scott would opt to go to the tail of the field and I believe the reason that he did so was because of a hand injury he suffered in a wall banger on Thursday night. Scheduled to start nineteenth, he instead opted to start in the back and do a "start and park."
O'Neal would start on the outside pole and grab the early lead over Garrett Smith, Devin Moran and Ryan Gustin. While O'Neal would get just a little breathing room early, the battle for second was really good. Unfortunately, as the pack came up on a lapped car, Gustin got tied up, had to slow down and both Smith and Tanner English ended up coming together, which took out two drivers in the top five.
Only a few laps later, another stack up among top running cars saw Brian Shirley spin and collect Jimmy Owens and Kyle Bronson. This restart would see O'Neal get his first serious challenge as Moran got around Gustin for second and then raced up beside O'Neal for the lead. They were side by side but O'Neal fought off the challenge and then opened up a lead again as Gustin put on the reversers and started fading back in the field.
After Tyler Erb slowed with a flat tire, the last eighteen laps of the race would go nonstop and two of the sports young and upcoming drivers would put on a show as first Ashton Winger and then Daulton Wilson would both charge to the front, with Wilson eventually getting past Winger for second. In the last ten laps and just as O'Neal caught traffic once again, Wilson really started to cut into the lead of Hudson.
It truly looked like he just might have a chance to steal the win on the last couple of laps but he stuck it too hard into turn three and got into the wall and by the time he had straightened out, O'Neal was long gone. Hudson would drive home unchallenged for the win, worth twelve grand, while Wilson just barely fought off Winger to hold on to third. Moran and Ricky Thornton Jr, with a steady drive up through the field, would complete the top five. Nineteen cars would complete the race with only Garrett Smith a lap down after starting on the pole.
Just when you thought there could be no way that more people could fit into this facility, the crowd on Friday was even more immense than even on Thursday night. It was announced on Friday that next year's final Winter Nationals would be held from February 4-10 but that there would be one special event to conclude the racing here at East Bay. On October 10-12, 2024, a three day event will be held paying fifty thousand dollars to win that will conclude the racing life for East Bay Raceway, first opened in 1977. So far, there has been no information available on what Speed Weeks in 2025 will look like.
With the abrupt rainout of Saturday night's finale, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone at East Bay for their help the last couple of weeks. From all the employees of East Bay Raceway Park, to the UMP officials that helped with Modified week to all the officials from the Lucas Oil Late Model Series, thank you. It has been a most enjoyable couple of weeks that feel like they just flew by. We all saw lots of good racing and with only one rainout in two weeks, we were blessed although raining out the finale for the Late Models really stung, especially after it seemed that the track prep crew had just located the secret sauce that made this place special.
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