The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, which kicks off its 2024 campaign Jan. 25-27 at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., once again will boast a points fund payout topping $1 million as part of the Big River Steel Chase for the Championship that for the second straight year will see the title determined in a unique manner. But unlike 2023 when the top four drivers in the standings raced for the $200,000 crown in a best-finish-wins battle during the season-ending Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, this time the Big Four will have their points reset to zero after Sept. 19-21’s Knoxville Late Model Nationals and then decide the championship by earning points over the final seven scheduled events.

Our 2024 Lucas Oil Series primer takes a look at the drivers set to hit the road with the tour and assesses the best and worst case scenarios for each of them (drivers listed alphabetically):

Daniel Adam

Hometown: Wade, N.C.

Age: 18

Team: Adam Family Motorsports

Series history: Rookie

Best case: Adam makes it through the entire season, gaining valuable experience, scoring a top-10 finish along the way.

Worst case: The jump to a national tour after just a single season of Super Late Model racing proves to be too formidable of a challenge for Adam, who decides to pull off the series to gather seat time running in the Midwest. He’s lived in eastern North Carolina in recent years but has relocated to his native Peru, Ill., near La Salle, which would give him an opportunity to enter many local and regional events.

Notable: By far the most inexperienced Super Late Model driver on the Lucas Oil roster — 2023 was his first full year in the headline class after he began running Crates and Limiteds the previous year — Adam has just three career Lucas Oil starts (all DNQs at last year’s East Bay Winternationals).

Garrett Alberson

Hometown: Las Cruces, N.M.

Age: 34

Team: Roberts Motorsports

Series history: Third year on tour (11th in points in ’23; Rookie of the Year and career-best seventh in points in 2022)

Best case: Buoyed by a strong start to 2024 in the Wild West Shootout at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park and a growing comfort level with the Longhorn cars he switched to midway through ’23, the native Southwesterner now living in Dubuque, Iowa, rebounds significantly from his struggle-filled sophomore season. He collects his long-awaited first-ever Lucas Oil Series victory, reaches double-figures in top-five finishes and matches his career-best points finish on the tour.

Worst case: Alberson not only falls short of reaching victory lane again on the series but only reaches his rookie-year top-five total of five, leaving him outside the top 10 in points and putting a question mark on whether he’ll continue following the series for a fourth season.

Notable: Alberson is winless in 124 career Lucas Oil Series starts since 2013. His best finish in a full-field feature is a third in Sept. 29, 2022’s Hillbilly 100 at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va., he’s led laps in one race (17 in Aug. 24, 2023’s event at Delaware’s Georgetown Speedway).

Max Blair

Hometown: Centerville, Pa.

Age: 34

Team: Centerline Motorsports

Series history: Second year on tour (Rookie of the Year and ninth in points in 2023)

Best case: Quickly adjusting to his third different team in as many years of national touring action, Blair wins multiple features and flirts with the top five in the points standings for a good portion of the season before settling for a three-spot improvement over his ’23 finish in the standings.

Worst case: Starting fresh with a team again — this time with an owner, Brad Spochacz, who has never fielded a national-level effort — results in Blair taking too long to settle in and find his rhythm. He’s unable to claim a series A-main or improve upon his ’23 points finish.

Notable: While Blair’s 64 career Lucas Oil Series starts do not include a full-field feature win (he did capture a semifeature on June 23, 2023, at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa.), he owns five victories in his 88 career starts on the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series.

Boom Briggs

Hometown: Bear Lake, Pa.

Age: 52

Team: Briggs Transport Inc.

Series history: Third year on tour (14th in points in 2023; career-best 12th in points in ’17)

Best case: Racing without a teammate for the first time since 2021, Briggs records not only his first career top-five finish in Lucas Oil Series competition but also his first-ever win — in a Firecracker 100 semifeature at Lernerville Speedway, setting off an all-night celebration among Boom Nation at his home-state track. In addition, he places 10th in the points standings.

Worst case: Making Briggs the focus of all his family-owned team’s resources doesn’t translate into greater success on the racetrack. His top-five drought on the tour continues as he finishes last in the points among the full-time drivers.

Notable: Briggs is attempting to run a full national tour for the 10th time in his career, including seven seasons as a WoO regular. He’s winless in a combined 431 starts between the WoO (329) and Lucas Oil Series (102).

Tyler Erb

Hometown: New Waverly, Texas

Age: 27

Team: Best Performance Motorsports

Series history: Sixth year on tour (eighth in points in 2023; best finish of fourth in ’19; 19 career wins)

Best case: Correcting his struggles of 2023 that dropped him to his first finish worse than sixth in the Lucas Oil points, Erb enjoys a win rate similar to his 2019 (six) and ’21 (seven) campaigns, earns his first-ever $50,000-or-more crown jewel victory and locks into the Final Four.

Worst case: Consistent contender status remains elusive for Erb, whose inability to win more than twice and string together top-five finishes leaves him outside the Big Four and disappointed with a seventh-place points finish.

Notable: With just a single Lucas Oil victory in 2023 — on Feb. 6 at East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton, Fla. — Erb saw his streak of multiple-win seasons end at four.

Tim McCreadie

Hometown: Watertown, N.Y.

Age: 49

Team: Paylor Motorsports

Series history: Ninth year on tour (fifth in points in 2023; champion in 2021 and ’22; 34 career wins)

Best case: No longer racing out of the Longhorn shop in China Grove, N.C., as the manufacturer’s house car driver, McCreadie rebounds from a down ’23 with a powerful season that sees him top his career-high in Lucas Oil wins (seven in 2020) and make the Final Four that he missed last year. His trademark consistency over the final seven races earns him his third championship in four years.

Worst case: Unable to regain his title-winning magic, McCreadie reaches victory lane only a handful of times and can’t accumulate enough points to crack the top four after Knoxville, leaving him with a second consecutive fifth-place points finish.

Notable: McCreadie’s two Lucas Oil checkered flags in 2023 came in semifeatures during the month of June, at Lernerville Speedway and Muskingum County Speedway in Zanesville, Ohio. He hasn’t tallied a full-field triumph on the tour since Oct. 8, 2022, at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala.

Devin Moran

Hometown: Dresden, Ohio

Age: 29

Team: Double Down Motorsports

Series history: Fourth year on tour (career-best second in points in 2023; eight career wins)

Best case: Picking up where he left off last year — 17 straight top-10 finishes to close the 2023 campaign and nearly snatching the Lucas Oil championship in the memorable finale at Eldora — Moran turns his second season with Roger Sellers’s Double Down Motorsports into the best of his career. He wins a half-dozen features to almost double his career win total, solidly locks into the Big Four and uses sterling consistency over the final seven races to outduel his three foes for a title that he clinches with a DTWC triumph at Eldora.

Worst case: Moran starts strong during Speedweeks, but a mid-season slump is too much for him to overcome and he doesn’t claim one of the highly-competitive Final Four spots.

Notable: Four of Moran’s eight career Lucas Oil victories have come during Speedweeks, including three in 2022.

VIDEO: Devin Moran reacts after coming up on sport short in last year's championship fight. 

Hudson O’Neal

Hometown: Martinsville, Ind.

Age: 23

Team: Rocket1 Racing

Series history: Sixth year on tour (champion in 2023; 21 career wins)

Best case: Continuing his development into a superstar, O’Neal rises to another level in his second season driving Mark Richards’s iconic Rocket Chassis house car. He reaches double figures with his win total, clinches a Big Four spot before even arriving at Knoxville, Iowa, for the cutoff race and shines down the stretch to join Earl Pearson Jr., Scott Bloomquist, Jimmy Owens, Jonathan Davenport and Tim McCreadie as a back-to-back tour champions.

Worst case: O’Neal goes through a summer lull for the second consecutive season — preventing him from exceeding his six victories in 2023 — and, while he makes the Big Four, he’s unable to defend his title.

Notable: O’Neal became the youngest champion in the history of the Lucas Oil Series in 2023; at 23, he was six years younger than Josh Richards — his car owner’s son — who was 29 when he won the 2017 title driving for Best Performance Motorsports.

Earl Pearson Jr.

Hometown: Jacksonville, Fla.

Age: 52

Team: Jason Rauen Racing

Series history: 20th year on tour (10th in 2023 points; champion in 2005, ’06, ’07, ’08; 40 career wins)

Best case: Despite landing a ride for his 20th straight season of Lucas Oil competition just a couple weeks before the start of the 2024 schedule, Pearson meshes quickly with longtime friend Jason Rauen’s Farley, Iowa-based team. He ends a win drought dating back to a $50,000 victory on Aug. 27, 2022, at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway while tripling his three top-five placings in ’23 and climbing to an eighth-place finish in the points standings.

Worst case: The late pairing with Rauen contributes to a slow start and Pearson never finds a consistent rhythm, leaving him winless for the second straight year and a 10th-place finisher in the points standings for the third time in the last four years.

Notable: Pearson’s 40 career Lucas Oil Series victories is fifth on the tour’s all-time win list and, if Jonathan Davenport doesn’t run the whole tour in 2024, puts him as the winningest driver among this year’s regulars. He hasn’t won more than one feature in a season, however, since his five-victory 2018 and was winless in ’21 and ’23.

Tony Jackson Jr.

Hometown: Lebanon, Mo.

Age: 41

Team: Capital Race Cars

Series history: Rookie

Best case: Drawing upon his years as a successful regional touring racer — he’s a former MLRA and MARS champion — and benefitting from season-long technical assistance from longtime national driver Shane Clanton, Jackson shows flashes amid growing pains in his first run on a national tour with the Capital Race Cars house car. He nabs a victory and several top-five finishes en route to running away with Rookie of the Year honors and finishing seventh in the points standings.

Worst case: Jackson struggles to put up strong finishes as the lone Capital campaigner on the series while visiting new territory, prompting the team to contemplate dropping off the series.

Notable: Jackson owns the most regional touring titles (five MARS, two MLRA) of any expected regular on the 2024 Lucas Oil Series, but he has just three top-five finishes in his 49 career Lucas Oil stars, including a career-best runner-up finish on July 20, 2013, in the tour’s Silver Dollar Nationals at I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Neb.

Ross Robinson

Hometown: Georgetown, Del.

Age: 33

Team: Dutchstar Motorsports

Series history: Third year on tour (13th in points in 2023; career-best 10th in points in ’22)

Best case: Robinson clinches a successful season on April 26 when he wins his first-ever Lucas Oil Series feature at his hometown’s Georgetown Speedway, setting off the most emotional victory lane scene of the tour’s ’24 campaign. The confidence he gains in his backyard carries him to a couple more top-five finishes and a 10th-place finish in the points standings.

Worst case: Robinson doesn’t turn the corner with his national touring program, leading him to pull off the tour to regroup with regional competition.

Notable: Robinson is looking for his first top-five finish in a full-field Lucas Oil feature; his only top-five runs in 99 career series starts have come in semifeatures at Muskingum County Speedway (fourth in 2022, third in ’23).

Ricky Thornton Jr.

Hometown: Chandler, Ariz.

Age: 33

Team: SSI Motorsports

Series history: Fourth year on tour (tied career-best third in points in 2023; also third in ’22; Rookie of the Year in ’21; 23 career wins)

Best case: Thornton barely slows down from his record-setting 2023 season, rolling up more than a dozen victories — including multiple big-money crown jewels — and sits atop the points standings at the cutoff point for the Big Four. He proceeds to rip through the final seven races to capture the championship, gaining a sense of redemption after his dominant ’23 campaign was marred by an early incident in Eldora’s DTWC that cost him the title.

Worst case: Thornton doesn’t reach double-figures in the victory column and fails to win the championship despite making the Big Four.

Notable: Thornton won four times in first three tours of duty on the Lucas Oil Series. He doubled that total in the first 17 races of ’23 and went on to capture 23 total A-mains, including four semifeatures.

Daulton Wilson

Hometown: Fayetteville, N.C.

Age: 26

Team: Justin Rattliff Racing

Series history: Third year on tour (career-best seventh in points in 2023)

Best case: The close-but-no-cigar bids for victory finally end for Wilson, who makes an early breakthrough to earn his first-ever Lucas Oil triumph during Speedweeks. He wins twice more during the season and contends for a Big Four berth before settling for a sixth-place finish in the standings that continues his steady improvement on the national level.

Worst case: Wilson can’t unlock the door to victory lane for a third consecutive season and slips to the back end of the top 10 in the points standings.

Notable: Wilson’s status as the driver most likely to win a career-first Lucas Oil feature in 2024 is well-deserved: he rang up six runner-up finishes last year and led 108 laps.

Other possible Lucas Oil Series regulars — if they get off to strong starts — include three-time champion Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga. (has not committed to running the series beyond Speedweeks), Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga. (though he has indicated he’ll run a “hit-and-miss” schedule), Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill. (he hasn’t ruled out switching from the WoO tour), Tanner English of Benton, Ky. (contemplating which national tour to run), Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., and potential rookies Ethan Dotson of Bakersfield, Calif., and Drake Troutman of Hyndman, Pa.