MARYVILLE, Tenn. — Chris Ferguson won Friday’s first 30-lap Mountain Moonshine Classic semifeature at Smoky Mountain Speedway. The car he steered into victory lane, however, certainly didn’t look the part.

The Scott Bloomquist-designed Team Zero machine’s bodywork was battered, from a bent right-side door and quarterpanel to a nosepiece that was caved in. Its carburetor was stuttering. Its braking power virtually non-existent.

Was there anything else? There might have been considering the physical toll inflicted on Ferguson’s No. 22 by the reconfigured 3/8-mile oval’s hammer-down, rough-and-tumble track surface — on lap 19, for instance, he bounced so viciously rounding turns three and four that it was a wonder he was able to hang on — but, if the visible problems couldn’t stop him, nothing else managed to either.

While Ferguson, 33, of Mount Holly, N.C., acknowledged that he was “just holding on for dear life” in the event’s closing circuits, he made it to the finish for a $5,000 winner’s check and one of three automatic transfer spots into Saturday’s 60-lap, $50,000-to-win Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned finale.

It was Ferguson’s first triumph since his only other checkered flag of 2023, in March 5’s Southern All Star Series-sanctioned Ginger Owens Memorial March Madness at Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C., and it came over the same driver he led across the finish line in that early-season show: his 23-year-old cousin Carson Ferguson of Lincolnton, N.C., who trailed Chris by 1.073 at the race’s conclusion.

The Fergusons enjoyed a memorable evening, scrawling their family name all over the opener of the weekend. They timed 1-2 in their qualifying group (the first time they’ve done that since Carson shifted to regular Super Late Model competition in 2022), shared the front row for the start of the first 30-lapper (another first) and ran first and second for the entire distance in the semifeature (duplicating their previous one-two finish at Cherokee).

Chris kept the upper hand on his younger cousin, but it certainly wasn’t without challenges. The elder Ferguson noted after climbing out of his car during the postrace technical inspection at the Lucas Oil Series trailer that he very nearly saw some strategic guidance he gave Carson after qualifying blow up in his face.

“I kind of knew the bottom of the track in (turns) three and four was slick so it really wasn’t a good place to start,” Chris said on a night heat races were scrapped by officials during a nearly hour-long reworking of the choppy track conditions. Semifeatures were lined straightup by time trials. “What’s funny is, before this happened with the heats, we were both starting on the pole in heats and I gave him some advice. I said, ‘Hey, the outside’s faster on the start, so kind of run your guy up, that way you can get out of the slick.’ Well, then they say no heat races, and I’m like, ‘The guy on the outside of me is him now.’ ”

Chris relished charging to the race’s green flag with Carson alongside him. 

“Literally, there’s no one else I would rather start next to, because me and him, we’re cousins, we love each other, we grew up together,” said Chris, whose mother is a sibling of Carson’s father. “I remember when he was born — I was in the hospital that day. I look up to him and he looks up to me. 

“There’s no one else I’d rather be out here with, and truthfully, I wouldn’t mind if he won and I ran second. I love seeing him be successful, and in my opinion, he’s more talented than me. He’s gonna win a lot more races, too. I hope I have a little bit left in me, but I know he’s gonna get a lot more.”

VIDEO: Watch highlights from Friday night's Lucas Oil prelim features at Smoky Mountain.

As the less-experienced, up-and-coming driver of the pair, Carson also couldn’t help but smile when he looked to his left during the pace laps and saw his cousin right there. But when the action began, he attempted to view Chris as just another driver.

“It’s cool when you’re sitting on the grid together out there,” said Carson, who piloted his Paylor Motorsports Longhorn car. “But then when you’re racing you’re just kind of looking for lanes, and what’s smooth and what’s not, and what you can do on the starts. So once you get going, you’re always family, but family gets out of your mind when you’re on the track, so if we rub, we rub.”

And they did rub, ever-so-slightly brushing together on the opening circuit as Chris employed the exact maneuver he had told Carson would be necessary as a polesitter.

Carson thought Chris’s prerace instruction was somewhat moot because the track was extensively reworked after they qualified, but nevertheless, “he needed to muscle me up and I needed to muscle him down,” Carson said, “and we were rubbing coming to the green even through (turns) three and four.”

“He kind of actually beat me on the start but I entered wide on him and kind of rubbed him, because I knew going into one was gonna be everything,” Chris said. “As long as I could be to (the door) on him I could ride up in there deeper, and that’s what we did. And I knew, as long as nothing stupid happens, that’s the race.”

Chris paused. “Something stupid did happen,” he added, “but we made it.”

The veteran Ferguson’s troubles began when he reached slower traffic midway through the race.

“I got into a lapped car a little bit,” Chris said. “I went to the outside of him off of two, and then he come up, so I tried to turn under him and he come down. I hit and it didn’t really do anything, and then about three or four laps later (the nose) started folding under, slowly but surely.”

To compensate for the nose damage, Chris had to “drive it harder,” he said. “You had to toss it up in there like you don’t care about your race car.”

Amid his aggressive approach, Chris’s vehicle developed brake problems.

“Right before that last caution (on lap 21) I pretty much lost the brakes,” Chris said. “I had a little bit, and then I would lose it. For the last restart I went to four-wheel brake because I seemed to have a little better pedal and I had a little when I took off. I was pumping it the last three laps, and then the pedal was going right to the floor at the end so I couldn’t have made it much further.”

Chris staved off his pursuing cousin by heeding signals he received during the lap-21 red-flag period from the Hall of Famer who designed the car he entered.

“Bloomquist come down to (the inside of turns) three and four and he was like, ‘Just run the bottom. They ain’t gonna pass you on the outside,’ ” Chris said.

Chris kept his mount circling the bottom of the uneven corners as best he could over the final laps. Carson could see Chris was struggling but couldn’t — nor wouldn’t, realizing he would be locked into Saturday’s finale with a runner-up finish — offer a serious challenge.

“I knew his car was ill-handling there,” Carson said. “He had kind of run through the middle the whole race and I was down low just trying to stay in clean air, and I kind of cheated my entry up a little bit through that long run (laps 5-18) and I felt like we were kind of coming back to him and then at the same time his nose was rolled under and he was losing brakes. On a track that you can’t pass, with him having issues and me kind of getting in a groove, there might have been something.

“Under the red I saw Scott (Bloomquist) and I saw (Chris’s) dad Bryan (Conard) telling him to get down and kind of ride the bottom, and of course the thought came across my mind to maybe go ahead and Hail Mary it up around the top and see if it sticks. But at the same time you got (eventual third-place finisher Jonathan Davenport) and (Devin) Moran and Hudson (O’Neal) and whoever else was back there, so you know they tried the top at some point but they had made it work to catch me. I just maintained because I knew finishing second would get us in the race tomorrow.”

The cousins exchanged a hug in victory lane, posed on the top-three podium together, and rehashed the race during the postrace technical inspection. Both drivers also assessed the track surface issues that made Friday’s program — the first time that Super Late Models ran on Smoky Mountain’s new, smaller layout — a trying one.

“I just think it’s the new dirt, a lot of water. It just never did pack, you know?” Chris said. “It’s a cool shape now, but they’re gonna either have to slow it down or get it smooth and slick where the racing’s really good. 

“I tell everybody this — I loved the old Smoky Mountain. When David Bryant was working on it back in the day, it would get slick, like black slick. In my opinion, anytime this place was black-slick it raced good, even when it was a half-mile. Even though it’s shorter now, as soon as it gets slick it’s gonna be racy.

“It was definitely fast tonight, but I think a lot of it has to do with turns one and two, it’s made for the longer straightaway, so when you have the same corner, and you’re running slower down the straightaway to it, you’re just gonna hold it wide-open in the corner so it’s made to go faster through it. Like I said, they gotta figure out some stuff with the dirt to get it smooth and slick, but as soon as they get it to that normal Smoky Mountain where it’s slick, I think it’ll be real fun, because it still has the transition banking in one and two and three and four has got a lot of character.”

Carson, meanwhile, would have undoubtedly preferred a smoother track, but he refused to disparage Smoky Mountain for the rough surface.

“No matter the track condition, I totally appreciate the effort that Roger Sellers and his whole crew done,” said Carson, who recently clinched his second straight Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals points championship. “To take on a task like (shortening the track) to try and answer the needs of all the complaining racers and teams and fans or whoever it may be, it takes a lot to do that. That’s a gutsy call.

“(Track owner) Roger (Sellers) is smart. He knows what needs to be done. He’s had how many rainouts this year? So this is like a trial run. I wish he could’ve had more trial runs before this weekend, but hopefully it’ll be better tomorrow and we’ll have a smoother racetrack. If it’s fast, that’s fine, but that rough, it was tough for 30 laps. It’d be real tough if it’s like that tomorrow.”