The Dirt Track at Charlotte
Everything falls O'Neal's way for last-lap victory
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Hudson O'Neal (6) wins at the flagstand. (Zach Yost)
CONCORD, N.C. (Nov. 6) — Pulling off a dramatic, last-circuit pass to win Thursday’s 35-lap World Finals opener at The Dirt Track at Charlotte wasn’t really on Hudson O’Neal’s mind. Even after it happened, even after the 25-year-old star from Martinsville, Ind., nipped Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., at the finish line for a $15,000 victory, he still couldn’t believe it. | RaceWire
“I didn’t really think much about getting him,” O’Neal said while standing in the lower pit area during postrace technical inspection at the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series trailer. “I was more concerned about just trying to run second, truthfully.”
O’Neal’s roller-coaster race behind the wheel of the K&L Rumley Enterprises Longhorn Chassis had seen him go backwards from the third starting spot to sixth by lap eight and then back forward to second after he overtook Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C., on a lap-25 restart. It didn’t seem likely that he’d climb any higher with Sheppard blazing out front in the Rocket Chassis house car.
“Those first three or four laps after that (lap-26) restart, man, he put the afterburners on and he went ahead and went,” O’Neal said, impressed by Sheppard’s speed.
O’Neal noticed that “after about three or four laps we kind of evened out,” but he still was nearly three-quarters of a straightaway behind Sheppard with time running out.
Then Sheppard, 32, had to deal with lapped traffic for the final two laps. The wheel of fortune suddenly titled toward O’Neal, who was able to slip underneath a skittering Sheppard exiting turn four to beat the five-time WoO champion by a scant 0.100 of a second for his first-ever World Finals triumph.
“He was just a leader in a bad position,” O’Neal said of Sheppard. “You know, he was trying to race some guys and drive by ‘em, and I was just the right man in the right spot at the right time was really all it was.”
Circumstances played right into O’Neal’s hands. With Sheppard’s fleet pace stymied by a slower car, O’Neal had his opportunity.
“I moved out there one time whenever we got close (to traffic) — I think Tristan Chamberlain was our first lapped car — and, man, they were throwing a lot of sheet dust out across there,” O’Neal said. “And I was like, ‘Man, that can’t be good.’ So I moved down behind (Sheppard). I’m like, ‘I’m just going to commit to stay down here, and if somebody’s going to pass me, they’re going to pass me out there in the bad air.’
“Then I came off of two going down back straightaway on the last lap and I was like, ‘Man, I’m not close enough (to Sheppard).’ That was what I thought. He pulled off a little bit, and I was like, ‘Man, I don't think I have a shot.’ So I just went off in (turn three) and was like, ‘Just don’t miss the bottom, and, you know, maybe luck will have it and he’ll miss it a little bit.’ ”
And Sheppard did make a tactical error. Rounding turns three and four just above the slower Chamberlain, he lost traction, slid high off turn four and couldn’t stay ahead of the stuck O’Neal.
“Truthfully, my spirit didn’t get raised until we were about halfway through the corner, you know?” O’Neal said. “I hit it really good, probably the best I hit it the whole race, and I looked out there and I was like, ‘Oh, man, he’s hung out there.’ And then he just worked out.
“To be in those situations, it was really cool. Those things don’t happen all the time. He probably should have won and we probably shouldn’t have, but lapped traffic played into our hand and it worked out.”
Kevin Rumley, the renowned engineer who fields the iconic No. 6 machine that O’Neal pilots occasionally between his commitments with Todd Burns’s SSI Motorsports team, was a bit more confident than his driver during the race’s closing laps.
“I thought we had a good shot for a second, and then when Sheppy caught that lapped traffic they kind of stalled him out big time and I knew we had a shot (to win),” Rumley said. “Hudson knew exactly where to be.”
Sheppard was left to mourn his heartbreaking loss, one that kept him, and the Mark Richards-led Rocket1 team, winless in World Finals competition since they combined to capture the first feature of the weekend in 2018. He leaned on a four-wheeler parked alongside his No. 1 at postrace inspection and considered what had gone wrong.
“I was good at the end still, but when we caught lapped cars they would just throw little, fine crumbs out across the middle where I was running and that would slow me down,” said Sheppard, who started fifth and led laps 13-17 and 18-34 (Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., briefly nosed ahead on lap 18). “I should have … when I got to the lapped cars, I needed to go back all the way in the bottom to stay out of that little dirtiness. I was hoping for a caution (to provide clear track), but at the same time, it’s like, ‘Man, they’re all in the lane in the bottom so I got to roll this middle and try to pass as many as I can.’
“But the problem is, they’re blowing them crumbs out of four up to the middle and I’d get to four and then I’d slip. I’d be good through one and two, and then I’d get around to four again and I’d slip.
“I really just thought on the last lap that I needed to hug (Chamberlain) tighter so that (O’Neal) couldn’t slip in there. The problem when I did that was, I was more in the dirty crumbs that they were throwing up, so that really slid me out. I’m just slipping because of the thumbs that I’m in. I should have parked in the bottom, but hell, any other time, ever, you don’t park in the bottom behind a lapped car.”
Sheppard paused. He shook his head in knowing frustration that he had let a victory slip from his grasp. It would have been his first full-field triumph since July 12 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., and first of any kind since Aug. 15’s semifeature score at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark.
“Yeah, you know, s--- happens, I guess,” said Sheppard, who has seven victories in 2025, including five in the Rocket1 and two in his family-owned No. B5. “Run second again, but whatever. The car’s good, the car’s really good.”
Indeed, making Sheppard more frustrated was the fact that his Rocket XR2 Chassis was on the mark once again. He’s been very pleased with the newly-designed machine’s performance late in the ’25 season.
“We’ve got a really fast hot rod for sure,” Sheppard said. “It’s just one of them deals, man. Our last half of the year has been so good, we just don’t have the wins to win the show for it. We’ve got speed, and we’re up front competing.
“We’ve got the car to where it’s really good and balanced, and we’ve been balanced really good. We ran third at the DTWC (Oct. 18’s season-ending Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio) and I really think we had a car capable of winning the race. I was going forward at the end. Mark is doing all he can do. I just have to get the job done.
“We still got two more nights left (at Charlotte). At the end of the day, the guys have just worked their butts off all year on this thing and made us so good. We’re super excited for (Friday) and Saturday and next weekend (FloRacing Night in America’s Peach State Classic at Georgia’s Senoia Raceway), and we’re ready to get next year going already, because I know we got a really fast car and a lot of good people behind us.”
A winner three times in World Finals action — in 2015 with Best Performance Performance Motorsports and 2017 and ’18 with Rocket1 — Sheppard recorded his first top-five finish in the season-ending WoO weekend since he logged runs outing of third and second in ’21. He said Richards’s team, which has won five times at the World Finals (including triumphs with Josh Richards in 2008, ’13 and ’16), buoyed his morale with words of encouragement immediately following the race.
“We all want to win really bad, but at the end of the day, this sport will humble you real fast,” Sheppard said. “We started slow this year and slowly just worked and built the program up. I can’t say enough about Mark and this team. They’ve really stuck behind me and haven’t given up on me. Me and Mark are really back to communicating where we were the last time I drove for him (2017-22). His confidence is high in me and mine’s high in him.
“We’re not dwelling on what happened. We probably had the best car, but we ran second. It was our’s to give it away, and I gave it away tonight, so we got to just keep our heads up, make good decisions again (Friday), to try to get to start up front again. Just hopefully they have the track as good as it was tonight. That’s the best Charlotte track I’ve seen in a long time.”
O’Neal, meanwhile, celebrated finally breaking through at Charlotte — and giving Rumley his first World Finals win since 2015 when Jonathan Davenport capped a historic season in the No. 6 with a checkered flag in the weekend finale.
“I had some real good runs with Mark in the Rocket1 car here (including 2022 during his debut weekend with the team when he led the first 27 laps of the 50-lap finale before finishing eighth), but I never really competed a ton for a win,” said O’Neal, whose best previous World Finals finish was fourth in 2023’s opener driving the Rocket1. “I never had a showing where we were the best car or anything.”
O’Neal ended the night feeling very good about his weekend in Charlotte with Rumley.
“The group that they have is so laid-back and so fun to be around that it’s relaxed an and very, very low pressure situation,” said O’Neal, who made his first start since marrying the former Tessa Sims on Oct. 25. “ If we run 20th, we run 20th, and if we win, we win, and it’s all fine and dandy and it’s fun. That's what I love about this.”
