It appeared Hudson O’Neal had the momentum down the stretch of Wednesday’s FloRacing Night in America feature at Spoon River Speedway to grab victory. | RaceWire

O'Neal charged from the sixth starting spot to second, erased Jonathan Davenport’s 2.5-second lead and could drive his car noticeably deeper into the corners than the race-long leader. But all along, the Martinsville, Ind., driver knew his window to potentially pass Davenport would be slim because of his softer tire selections.

O’Neal anticipated potentially starting strong but not having enough oomph to close the deal in the final laps, and that’s exactly what happened as Davenport controlled all 50 laps.

“I pressured him there right after that (lap-32) restart for four or five laps and then he just started inching back away from me just a little bit. So, I mean, we will take. We can get a little bit better,” the 24-year-old O’Neal said. “The tires were so much different. I was really good, you know, for the first 30-35 laps, and then he was better the last 15, which was kind of to be expected. So, hey, we couldn't get him a little bit earlier and set the pace, but it’s part of it.

“When we had that restart, I was shoving up under him, and I thought, ‘Maybe we have a shot.’ And then I got my tires hot trying to get underneath of him there. He was able to get a little bit of a gap. I maintained on him there at the end, but I think that’s because he just got in some dirty air with traffic.”

O’Neal’s best chance to overturn Davenport would have been in lapped traffic midway through the running because softer tires made him more nimble. Either way, O’Neal “felt like he was pretty good out there in open racetrack.”

“I had a little softer tires on, so I couldn't move out there with him, but I don't know, like, maybe I could’ve used lapped traffic a little bit because I felt like I was a little bit more maneuverable with my softer tires in lapped traffic on that bottom,” O’Neal said. “We’ll take a second for our first night here doing Illinois Speedweeks and take it onto the weekend.”

O’Neal, who skipped Tuesday’s race at La Salle (Ill.) Speedway, also plans to pass on Thursday’s action at Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway to save his equipment for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series events Friday at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway and Saturday at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway.

“We were uncertain how La Salle was gonna be with it being closed for so long, but as it turns out, that might have been one of the best races that we’re gonna see all of Illinois Speedweeks,” O’Neal said. “We just figured that we'll just go on to Farmer City and keep our stuff fresh, focus on the points, and we’ll do our best there.”

Ten races into his tenure with crew chief Jason Durham, O’Neal now has five podium finishes. The last time he did that was June 28-July 22 when he posted six podium finishes in a 10-race stretch. Three of those top-three finishes then were victories, too.

“Yeah, now everything's going really good,” the SSI Motorsports driver said. “Seems like we got a good package here that’s able to take us to a lot of different racetracks, a lot of variety, and I think it's gonna continue to be good. We just still tweaking just a little bit at a time and we're gaining on it every day.”

What’s pointed O’Neal in the right direction is that he’s developed one of the best qualifying packages in Dirt Late Model racing under Durham, at least results speaking. Over his past 10 events, he has three quick times with an average qualifying position is 3.4.

In his first 15 races to begin the season, O’Neal only qualified fifth-or-better once and averaged a qualifying position of 10.1. Wednesday’s seventh-quickest mark in Group B at Spoon River is the slowest qualifying lap he’s registered of late.

“The biggest thing that's help us right now is we're qualifying really good. We qualified seventh tonight, which isn't amazing, but it set us up pretty good for a heat race,” said O’Neal, whose three victories have come April 11-12 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., and Jan. 28’s Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series event at Needmore Speedway in Norman Park., Ga.

“I think that's been the key. We've been able to start inside the front row or, you know, at worse third or fourth in a heat race, which is huge to compete for these races. You gotta start up front and that's really helping us a lot. So hopefully we can keep the qualifying efforts going and maybe that'll continue to set us up for better runs.”