The Dome at America's Center
Trading sliders, paint (and zingers) at Dome
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Hudson O'Neal's car was left in a heap. (photosbyboyd.smugmug.com)
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (Dec. 5) — Thursday’s opener of the Kubota Gateway Dirt Nationals didn’t produce the typical cornucopia of controversy and mayhem that comes with racing at The Dome at America’s Center, right?
Well, Friday’s second preliminary program made up for the weekend’s relatively quiet start. | RaceWire
At the season’s lone indoor event, there was all the crashing, craziness and hurt feelings that fans expect from the rough-and-tumble competition on fifth-mile bullring constructed on the Dome’s concrete floor.
Following a 25-lap feature that saw Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., sidestep all the physical activity around him to advance from the ninth starting spot for a $10,000 victory, the massive crowd departed the building into the freezing St. Louis night satisfied that they had gotten the full Gateway Dirt Nationals experience.
“It was the normal Dome deal,” the 35-year-old Thornton said.
Emotions boiled over on Night 2, specifically a frenetic two-lap, mid-race stretch that eliminated two serious contenders (Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., and Kyle Bronson of Brandon, Fla.) in separate incidents that had them fuming at the pair of drivers (eventual runner-up Mark Whitener of Middleburg, Fla., and third-place finisher Brenden Smith of Dade City, Fla.) who they blamed for their demises.
The first to fall was O’Neal, the 25-year-old sensation making his fifth career Dome appearance. After spending the first half of the feature chasing front-row mate Whitener, O’Neal made a bid for the lead that resulted in a lap-13 caution — and a bitter O’Neal.
O’Neal went full-send with his SSI Motorsports Longhorn Chassis entering turn one, vaulting him ahead of the 45-year-old Whitener — a first-time Gateway entrant — between the corners. The slider carried O’Neal across the track and he made contact with the outside wall to slightly dull his momentum, but he was quickly back on the gas and exited turn two with Whitener underneath him in a crossover maneuver.
Whitener squeezed O’Neal into the backstretch wall, and the resulting damage forced O’Neal’s battered car to the infield with his right-rear tire exploding, breaking off part of the wheel.
O’Neal climbed out in disgust to assess the damage. He wasn’t pleased with what he saw and how it occurred.
“I slid him clean,” O’Neal said later while dressed in street clothes at his team’s trailer in the pit area. “(Whitener) ran my nose over on the (original) start, which I didn’t really think much about. We were racing hard. And then I slide him and clear him by two car lengths … probably slid too hard (and caught the wall), and the I got speed built back up around the fence and we were right-front to left-front (off turn two) and he’s just hard right.
“Whenever he hit me, he just shoved me up over on the fence and ripped the four-bar tabs and rods and wheels.”
Whitener didn’t take the responsibility for the tangle that O’Neal had laid on him.
“He slid me,” Whitener said, “and then when I was coming back, we was close, and then I got into him with the right-rear a little bit, and he just took me with him,” Whitener said after going on to finish second and lock himself into Saturday’s 40-lap, $70,000-to-win finale. “He lost momentum and I was driving back by him, and then when he was coming down, we kind of got together. He was going back by me because he was in the moisture and I was in the slick and he just caught me in the right-rear and just took me with him.”
With Whitener making his Dome debut, he brushed off O’Neal accusations by speaking of the extra contact that must be expected during the close-quarters racing.
“We was in the wall and off the wall, but this is the Dome,” Whitener said. “If he didn’t want to come here and race, he should have stayed with his car in a museum or something.”
O’Neal’s damaged ended his weekend. His crew chief, Jason Durham, said the accident “twisted everything” in the car’s rear suspension on top of crumpled bodywork, and he noted that the outer ring of the right-rear wheel broke off — a result that he noted happens when the wheel undergoes over 5,000 pounds of force.
The disappointing end for O’Neal added to his history of rough outings at the Dome, coming after a memorable run-in with Tyler Carpenter of Parkersburg, W.Va., that finished his 2022 weekend and a hard smash of the turn-one wall that curtailed his ’23 effort driving for Boom Briggs of Bear Lake, Pa., during hot laps on his preliminary night.
“It never ends. It’s crazy,” O’Neal said of his Dome frustration, though he has experienced some success with a preliminary victory in 2017 and an eighth-place finish in last year’s finale. “I haven’t really put myself in bad positions I feel like. Like tonight we’re racing for the lead with a guy that knows better, and he didn’t know better tonight. It is what it is I guess.”
It took only one more circuit for another emotion-stirring incident to upend the race. The Delaware double-file restart on lap 13 had second-running Bronson on the outside and third-place Smith on the bottom behind leader Whitener and they immediately went at it with Smith sliding slightly up on Bronson entering turn one and then Bronson drifting up into Smith in turn four. Smith, a 20-year-old making his Dome debut and his first start in his new national ride with Alabama-based JCM Motorsports, proceeded to cut underneath the 35-year-old Bronson on the homestretch and throw a slider at his fellow Floridian entering turn one.
When Smith across the track and snugged up to Bronson’s Kale Green-owned car, Bronson ran out of room at the top of the track and climbed the concrete Jersey barriers. The nose of his machine burrowed into the catchfence and came to an abrupt stop when it hit a pole; Josh Rice of Crittenden, Ky., and Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., clipped the rear end of Bronson’s car while passing by — nearly flipping Bronson over —before Bronson’s No. 40B was left sitting in a heap under red-flag conditions.
The Dome soon was thrown into a frenzy. The uninjured Bronson climbed out of his car and began making a beeline toward Smith, who was sitting in his car on the homestretch with the race stopped. The angry Bronson’s intentions were clear when, as he marched forward, infield reporter Blake Anderson offered him the microphone and Bronson called Smith a “straight pure bred” preceded by an expletive, then added “he needs his ass whooped” because “his daddy didn’t do it enough.”
It was classic Gateway theater and the crowd responded with a roar. Bronson’s moved his arms to whip up the fans even more as an army of photographers gathered inside the homestretch awaiting his arrival at Smith’s car.
Bronson was able to stick his head in Smith’s window and briefly grabbed the front of Smith’s helmet, but he was led away by event promoter Cody Sommer and other officials. He had one message for Smith that was audible on video (minus some colorful language): “You better be glad I like your daddy or I’d whip little ass.”
What followed was unique even by Gateway standards: Bronson and O’Neal met up in the infield to discuss how each had been wronged in separate incidents and conduct back-to-back interviews with infield reporter Chris Moore.
O’Neal told Moore that he “didn’t really get a chance to show my displeasure” with Whitener when the anger was fresh, but he got in a barb to rile the crowd, claiming that he and Bronson were done in by “a bunch of idiots, man.”
Bronson, meanwhile, broke down his tangle with Smith and reaction to it when asked by Moore.
“Listen, we’re in the Dome and I understand it’s slide or die, but it’s like, god damn,” said Bronson, whose only previous Dome action came I 2019 when he finished second in the open-wheel modified finale. “I left him a lane out there (in turn four) … I kind of slid up and crowded him seeing he was out there, drove back down. He tried to turn me on the back straightaway the whole damn time, tried to turn me in the fence, and he got there (in turns one and two) and he just wiped me completely out.
“I wanted to punch the little kid in his head, but he ain’t gonna fight so I ain’t gonna make myself look like a dang idiot. I just feel terrible for my guys, Kale Green Motorsports and Jesse and all my guys who help me. It’s a damn good race car to bring here and have it end like that.”
Bronson asserted that he wouldn’t forget the incident with a driver he’s familiar with because of their shared home state.
“I’m easygoing my whole life racing with them guys,” Bronson told Moore. “If you put a tire burn on them guys, they cry like a bitch. But they got my front clip today, and I’m easygoing. I’m just gonna get two of theirs. Life’s simple. You fight with the bull, you get the horns.
“I’m like one of them old dogs — somebody gives me back 5 pounds, I’m gonna give ‘em back 10, I promise you,” he added. “I needed that to fire my ass up and get back going here” into 2026.
The funniest part of the impromptu infield media session with Bronson and O’Neal? When Moore asked the two drivers if they “wanna just wrestle each other or something” in order to “get anger out” because they both were so upset. The brawny Bronson responded by picking up O’Neal and tossing him over his shoulder, producing laughs from both drivers and spectators.
Bronson’s weekend was brought to an early end by the crash, which bent the front clip of the Longhorn Chassis he drove for the first time after making a one-off deal with South Carolina’s Green, who also fielded a Dome entry for Carson Ferguson of Lincolnton, N.C. Tension around his pit stall remained evident after the race as a large group of observers gathered to watch his crew load up the wrecked car and anxiously waited to see how Bronson and Co. might react when Smith passed by after his time in postrace technical inspection.
Police working the event for the Dome as well as building security stood watch near Bronson’s trailer when Smith finally appeared inside a small Kubota tractor, which transported him back to his pit stall to avoid confrontation with Bronson’s group. Smith was quickly ushered away into his trailer when he reached his pit stall, but the crowd had followed him there and some Bronson and Smith crew members briefly exchanged words before they were separated by police.
Smith found himself in a rare spotlight considering his third-place run was the best of his young career in a high-profile event, and he brushed off the controversy.
“I like Kyle, me and him are buddies,” Smith told Anderson during victory lane ceremonies. “I don’t know if he’s gonna feel that way after that deal, but I kind of feel like that’s how you have to race here. I feel like me and him were kind of trading back-and-forth doing the same type of deals, so really, honestly, it’s kind of just how this deal is. I hate that he got the short end of it, but it’s just of it I guess.”
In another interview during postrace inspection with FloRacing’s Derek Kessinger, Smith elaborated.
“We had that one restart and me and Kyle were kind of racing, and he slipped up a little bit getting into one and I filled the gap, which I feel like you have to do here,” said Smith, who locked into Saturday’s finale with his third-place finish. “It’s the Dome, you can’t give in anything … and we went down into turn three and I feel like I got done a little wrong, we both kind of slid up, I hit the fence, he was in my door, and then we went to turn one and I slid him back.
“I get he’s mad. I would be, too. It’s part of it. But honestly, my left-rear quarterpanel hit him in the right-front fender. I think it was clear. I watched the video like four times down in the infield — he like climbed (the wall) and climbed the fence. I’d have been pissed if I was in his situation too, so I get it.”
The rear deck of Smith’s Rocket Chassis was annihilated from fierce combat during the race, but he didn’t expect to make it through the race unscathed.
“My boys told me to bring it with nothing but the roof on it,” Smith said.”If I was gonna make the show, they wanted me to make it with nothing left on it. I’m about halfway there judging by the looks of it.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to drive this 19M car,” he added. “It is bad-ass fast.”
Smith also addressed his red-flag encounter with Bronson during his remarks to Kessinger.
“He’s telling me to get out of the car and I’m like, ‘I’m second now, I’m not getting out and wasting that,’” Smith said. “But I get it. He come to the (car) window and told me some stuff I can’t really say on camera.”
When he spoke with Kessinger in the pit area, Bronson offered the R-rated comment Smith wouldn’t repeat. (It’s on the video of Bronson’s interview with Kessinger for anyone who’d like to hear it.)
The driver who might have best summed up the testy racing and angry back-and-forth of the night was Whitener, another Floridian who's a close friend of Bronson and also knows Smith and his father, Shan. It was Whitener, in fact, who, as he sat in his car during the red flag after Bronson’s accident and saw Bronson marching down the track, tried his best to prevent his buddy from attacking Smith.
“I was trying to keep him calmed down before he tears the kid's head off, you know what I mean?” said Whitener, who made some hand motions to Bronson from his cockpit. “Like, ‘Don’t go there and tear his head off. We got tomorrow night.’
“Listen, he’s got to help me drive home. I don’t want him to leave early. He came with me. He helped me drive here. We hunt by each other, so I went to his house and we hunted a couple of days and then we came here.
“We’re buds,” he continued. “I mean, I was looking forward to throwing a slide job, him throwing one on me. Like, it could have ended up the way Huddy did, but me and him's good. We’d have got out good. That’s just racing.”
And then Whitener embraced the philosophy a driver needs to have when they compete in the Gateway Dirt Nationals.
“Listen, the guys don’t want to race like that, they shouldn’t have come to the f------ dome, right?” Whitener said. “This is the Dome, you know what I mean? Like, I didn’t come to make friends. I brought mine.”
