Don O’Neal wasn’t necessarily looking for opportunities to race again at the start of this year.

Owning and operating his own business, O’Neal’s Salvage and Recycling, and fathering his 24-year-old son Hudson as he’s grown into one of the sport’s best drivers, the 60-year-old O’Neal had been perfectly content being four years removed from the driver’s seat.

“I was completely fine watching him,” the Martinsville, Ind., racer said in a phone interview Thursday evening. “I spend a lot of time at our business that I really enjoy doing, too.”

But then his good friend, veteran chassis builder Tader Masters, made him an offer he had to entertain. And O’Neal’s superstar son, Hudson, didn’t let his so-called retired father push the opportunity to the wayside.

“Tader wanted to do some racing and, really, Hudson kept saying, ‘Dad, you need to do something. You don’t do much with work and you watch me, and that’s about it,’” O’Neal said. “So we decided to maybe have a little bit of fun and see if we can’t enjoy it.”

That quote-unquote little bit of fun the elder O’Neal speaks of is his return to the cockpit, specifically the MasterSbilt No. 71 house car, the very ride he occupied from 2009-13 and briefly in 2020. As it turns out, O’Neal’s comeback in Sept. 25’s Castrol FloRacing Night in America event at his stomping grounds, Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway — his first race since Sept. 2020’s Jackson 100 at Brownstown — isn’t merely a one-off start.

The 2014 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion is not only back aboard the No. 71 MasterSbilt house car at this weekend’s 45th annual Jackson 100, but the former national touring campaigner is keen on putting together a part-time schedule — somewhere in the ballpark of 15 events — for the 2025 season.

“I would say yes,” O’Neal said when asked if he’s looking at running a part-time schedule from here forward. “I don’t want to get too carried away with it. Whatever is close, you know? I’d like to do Florence (Speedway in Union, Ky.) and stuff like that.”

For clarity, O’Neal isn’t compelled to put together a Chris Madden-esque schedule revolving around Eldora Speedway’s crown jewels or other popular, big-paying events on the Dirt Late Model calendar moving forward.

“I don’t see Eldora (on our schedule) or anything like that, but we’ll see how comfortable I get before I say anything about Eldora,” O’Neal said. “That’s a little bigger animal.”

O’Neal was in position to qualify for last month’s Castrol Series feature at Brownstown, starting third in the second B-main that transferred the top three to that night’s main event. But O’Neal lost three spots on the initial start of that 10-lap consolation race and eventually fell two positions shy of a transfer spot in what would’ve been his first feature four years to that day.

“We just didn’t have a very good showing at the Flo race, but it is what it is,” O’Neal said. “That’s the one thing we said: No matter what the outcome is, at the end of the night we’re going to be happy and smile about it, and go to the next one, whatever that might be.”

The genesis of O’Neal pondering his return to the driver’s seat happened back in April during a test session for son Hudson and his nephew, Shelby Miles, at Paragon (Ind.) Speedway. The test was mainly for Hudson breaking in the new Longhorn Chassis for his own race team that eventually served as a stopgap between his Rocket Chassis departure in mid-March and SSI Motorsports arrival the second week of July. But that night, the elder O’Neal tested Miles’s Dirt Late Model “because he’s a little more my size.”

O’Neal made smooth, clean laps and couldn’t deny the rekindled itch to return to competition. He noticed that he could still drive a Dirt Late Model like he remembered — “Yeah, that really hasn’t changed,” he added — but there are a few variables that have. One sticks out above the rest.

“I’ve noticed the biggest change is my age, that’s what’s really changed,” O’Neal said through a laugh. “We have a small motor in it right now. We have a big motor, but I told them to not worry about it, and we’ll get a little better. Maybe we’ll think about putting the bigger motor in. As I said, we’re just trying to enjoy ourselves. But we do want to be competitive, too, at the end of the day.”

As of this week, O’Neal has a 402 cubic inch Jay Dickens Racing Engine powering the No. 71 MasterSbilt house car, an operation “that maybe we can play around with and have a little fun doing.”

O’Neal does a have a brand-new MasterSbilt chassis he’s employing this weekend at the Jackson 100. He’s hoping to get it up to speed, fast enough that it gives him hope and excitement for whatever the 2025 season could bring.

He also added that the Masters family “might take (the car) somewhere down the road after the Jackson to make some laps in it, and go from there.”

“If we want to go somewhere, we’ll go,” O’Neal said, quite simply, regarding a future race schedule. “If not, then we won’t.”

O’Neal even raced at Brownstown last weekend, placing fifth in the $2,000-to-win program behind Derek Groomer, Kent Robinson, Chad Stapleton and Jared Bailey. If there are any lulls in his progression back to the driver’s seat, O’Neal’s quick to say “it was certainly me.”

But he does feel “like we learned a little bit of something, and even back at Brownstown at the regular show on Saturday, I felt like we made some gains.”

“We’ll hopefully make a little more gains this weekend,” O’Neal said. “The biggest part is seeing how we get in the year here, to see how much speed we have and see if we can be competitive.”

If anything, O’Neal’s thrilled to partake in this weekend’s record-paying Jackson 100, a whopping $50,000-to-win event.

“It’s really awesome. It’s how great all the fans are at Brownstown,” O’Neal said. “That’s one part I sort of missed after going there to the Flo race, and what I really enjoyed was the fans, just how great the fans are at Brownstown.”

On the longer term scope, O’Neal said that the one incentive that’s enticed him to partner back up with the Masters family is that the team could take a trip to Australia next March. O’Neal doesn’t know logistics or where they’d potentially race, but the possibility of perhaps racing in Australia for the first time excites him.

“Tader said something about wanting to go to Australia,” O’Neal said. “I’ve never been, so maybe that’s something we can get away and do.”

O’Neal simply calls Masters his “buddy” and one of his good friends that he vacations with pretty much every year. Last year, he and their families went on a cruise together and this November the two are doing the same, taking out of Baton Rouge, La.

“We’re like family,” O’Neal said. “We go on vacations and stuff together, and we have one in November we’re going on. He talked to me about it, and I said, ‘Let’s try it.’”

But above all, O’Neal wants to enjoy whatever he or people would like to call this part of his racing career. The biggest component is he’s no longer racing for a career, his legacy being firmly established in the sport’s Hall of Fame, and financially, his business keeping him well afloat.

“Back when I raced for a living, you try to make money, for sure, to raise a family, until we got our businesses going and stuff,” O’Neal said. “It’s a lot different, it feels a lot different now than what I’ve ever had to do. With a top-notch team, you’re supposed to win.”

That said, O’Neal’s top priority in this latest return to action, whether he’s competitive or not, is to enjoy himself.

“The last couple years I raced on the road, it wasn’t fun,” O’Neal said. “I didn’t enjoy it. That’s the biggest thing. I sure don’t want to get back into the traveling part. … Hopefully I can have fun racing and doing it. I’ve never raced before where I haven’t had pressure and just to go to have fun. That’s what we’re going to try and do.”