GEORGETOWN, Del. (April 25) — For nearly half of Friday’s 49-lap Melvin L. Joseph Memorial at Georgetown Speedway, the unquestioned Big Three of the 2025 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series — Devin Moran, Ricky Thornton Jr. and Jonathan Davenport — appeared acutely vulnerable.

Moran settled into third. Thornton slipped from the pole to sixth place. Davenport spun from contention in turn three after a scrape with Garrett Alberson while battling for fourth.

The door was open for a new face to snatch the spotlight from the national tour’s top trio. But guess what? After Brandon Overton, and then Daulton Wilson, looked so strong setting the pace, the status quo settled back over the series as Dresden, Ohio’s Moran assumed command on lap 28 and held off Chandler, Ariz.’s Thornton on the final circuit for a narrow victory worth $20,049.

Indeed, the beat rolls on for the Lucas Oil Series, which so far this season has been dominated by the triumvirate of Moran, Thornton and Blairsville, Ga.’s Davenport. They've combined to capture all 11 features — Moran winning five, Thornton four and Davenport two — contested since Tyler Bruening of Decorah, Iowa, won Jan. 17’s season opener at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga.

What’s more, Georgetown’s event marked the second straight 1-2 finish for Moran and Thornton and, if Davenport hadn’t been relegated to the rear of the field by his incident with the eventual third-finishing Alberson, very well might have been the trio’s third sweep of the podium in the last four races.

There’s no doubt that these three drivers leading the Lucas Oil Series points standings are operating at a higher level than their competition, though the 30-year-old Moran modestly downplayed their prowess following his first-ever triumph in the state of Delaware.

“Ricky’s been really good for a long time, J.D. is always good, and I’m finally trying to come into my own,” Moran said. “But I’m sure (Brandon) Sheppard and Overton and Alberson, these guys are right there, too, you know, and it could be a a flick of a switch and they’re gonna be winning and we’re gonna be running for fifth, sixth, eighth, so we’re just gotta keep working at it and keep piling on these wins.”

Moran is certainly on a roll. The victory was his second in a row (he claimed March 22’s stop at Indiana’s Brownstown Speedway) and third in the last four races and also demonstrated how he’s come of age with Roger Sellers-owned Double Down Motorsports.

Starting sixth on the sprawling half-mile oval, Moran calmly negotiated his way to third place by lap 10. He advanced to second on a lap-23 restart when he overtook Evans, Ga.’s Overton, who led laps 1-21, and surged past Fayetteville, N.C.’s Wilson for the lead on lap 28 with a powerful move through turns one and two.

Moran built an edge of more than 2 seconds at one point, but the rallying Thornton, who came alive to reach second with a lap-37 pass of Las Cruces, N.M.’s Alberson, closed up nearly to Moran’s rear bumper by the time a caution flag flew on lap 43.

“I had enough of a lead at that one point I was like, ‘Man, I don't think I want a caution,’ ” Moran said. “And then it came out and I was like, ‘Well, at least I got clean track. I can just make speed and kind of look around.’ ”

Moran needed every inch of the track, too, because, shortly after he ascended to the lead, he caught a rut that upset his Longhorn Chassis for the remainder of the distance.

“My biggest problem is I hit that hole getting into (turn) one and it messed up my whole right-front suspension,” Moran said. “It was just, like, so hard to drive after that. I could tell I wasn’t making good laps, wasn’t making consistent laps.”

Thornton, 34, found speed in the outside lane, positioning him to bid for his third win in as many trips to Georgetown over the past three seasons.

“We had had one restart (early in the race) when Overton started really late, and then he kind of went to the bottom and I slid real bad and fell back,” said Thornton, who was hampered on restarts by a stumbling carburetor. “I kind of just rode around there (just inside and outside the top-five), and then finally the top started slowing down a little bit. When guys started moving around, I felt like my car was good enough that I could go where they weren’t.

“I started doing that, and then I don't know if was about 15 to go or so, I feel like it stuck and really took off. I got all the way up to (Moran) and then a yellow came out, and then another yellow came out (on lap 46). I felt like I got back to him with two to go, but I thought he was gonna go high into three and he turned to the bottom. I guessed wrong … he turned into (turn) three so late, when I turned in, just trying to get air on the nose, he stayed low and I pushed and slid up.”

Thornton “lost a lot of ground coming to the white,” which proved critical on the final lap when he successfully ran his Koehler Motorsports Longhorn Chassis in the outside lane through turns three and four to pull right up on Moran. He ducked underneath Moran off turn four and built up plenty of momentum — more than enough to surge ahead into turn one, but at the start-finish line with the checkered flag flying he was 0.077 of a second behind the victor.

“I got next to him,” Thornton said, “but not enough to beat him.”

Moran breathed a sigh of relief after surviving Thornton’s onslaught.

“I guess my Racing Electronic earbuds are too good because I can’t hear anything, but I knew he was there,” Moran said of Thornton’s final-lap challenge. “(A crewman) kept telling me he was running on the top of three and four and I just I couldn't do it with my (damaged) steering and stuff, so I just was hanging as wide as I could and coming down. On the white-flag lap I just kind of came up the track and I was trying to make sure I blocked him from the run on the outside, and obviously he came down to the bottom (down the straightaway) but we got to the line first.”

As Thornton settled for a runner-up finish and Davenport absorbed a 15th-place result following his mid-race twirl, the drivers who came closest to changing the Lucas Oil tour’s ’25 narrative attempted to decipher where they had gone wrong.

Alberson, 36, had the rosiest outlook thanks to his solid third-place finish.

“To be right there within view of it was encouraging,” Alberson said of the tight Moran-Thornton finish.

The 28-year-old Wilson, seeking his first Lucas Oil Series triumph since his first-ever win on the tour in February 2024 at East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton, Fla., remarked that his Rattliff Racing Longhorn Chassis was simply “too tight” to hold off Moran. He settled for sixth.

“I was really good as long as I could control the pace,” Wilson said. “(Moran) looked like he could just charge the corner harder than I could later in the race. I don’t know if he was on a different tires than I was or not.”

Overton blamed his downfall from leading the first 21 laps to finishing seventh on an incorrect setup choice with the right-front suspension on his Riggs Motorsports Longhorn Factory Team entry.

“We were just talking, we did the wrong s--- on the right front,” Overton said. “We were OK when we could use the whole racetrack, but when you get behind them cars it’s different.

“And I didn't do a good job on that (lap-21) restart. Daulton passed me before I ever left the corner, and after that I just couldn't get going on the initial kick (on restarts).

“But we’re getting it better,” he added. “We almost put a whole night together, you know what I mean? We just we ain’t been to a big one (track) like this yet, so yeah, we’ll just keep working on it. I feel good about it. We just gotta do the right thing for the feature out there.”

Standing in his team’s trailer after debriefing with crew chief Anthony Burroughs, Overton offered a final thought about his, and the rest of the Lucas Oil regulars’, continued pursuit of the Big Three. He doesn’t see them as being invincible.

“It always turns around,” said Overton, who sits fourth in the points standings as the series heads to Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway on Saturday and Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway on Sunday. “It don’t matter. It’s way too early, you know what I'm saying? Once a couple more guys get where we can race with them, then it’ll be OK.”