Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Another notch on the wheel for Moran
Devin Moran has already reached the rarified air of a national touring champion with his 2025 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series title. But at the still-ripening age of 31, he remains far from a finished product behind the wheel.
Even Moran, the Dresden, Ohio, born-and-bred son of Hall of Famer Donnie Moran, realizes there’s plenty about Dirt Late Model racing that he needs to learn and conquer.
“I feel like the longer I go and the more I race I’m just hopefully gonna keep getting better and better,” Moran said. “Because that’s kind of how my career has always went. I’ve just, year after year after year, I’ve been getting better.”
Moran’s continued progression — the next step in his evolution — was on full display Saturday at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa. His $50,000 victory the Lucas Oil Series-sanctioned Firecracker 100 was a milestone for the talented racer, not only because it was his first in seven attempts at Lernerville’s marquee event but it also demonstrated how far he’s come with his long-distance savvy and racecraft. In coming on late to overtake and then fend off Brandon Sheppard in the closing circuits, his combination of patience, smarts and aggressiveness was absolutely impeccable.
“This is definitely a big, big step for us,” Moran asserted while wearing a huge smile during the Firecracker 100’s postrace technical inspection in the pit area.
This wasn’t Moran’s first crown jewel triumph; he previously won 2018’s Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway (worth $30,000), 2023’s Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo. ($50,000) and 2024’s Silver Dollar Nationals at Huset's Speedway in Brandon, S.D. ($53,000). Those earlier three, however, came before he celebrated his 30th birthday and, when compared side-by-side with his Firecracker 100 performance, were of a different ilk.
Moran captured the PDC as a 23-year-old in just his second appearance at Fairbury, pulling somewhat of an upset by turning back challenges from Sheppard on the quarter-mile bullring. He won the Show-Me 100 on a rough-and-tumble track without even leading a lap after apparent victor Ricky Thornton Jr.’s penalty for a deck-height infraction elevated Moran to first place. And he led the 80-lap Silver Dollar Nationals from flag-to-flag from outside the front row, though he faced plenty of pressure from Sheppard and Bobby Pierce.
It wouldn’t be crazy to call Moran’s Firecracker 100 outing the best start-to-finish run he’s ever authored in a 100-lap race. It was that good, that impressive, and it came on a 4/10-mile oval that is well known as one of the most technically difficult tracks in the country.
Did Moran consider it his best drive to date? He wouldn’t go that far when the question was posed to him.
“I mean, it was a good one for sure,” Moran said. “I won Huset’s two years ago and it wasn't 100 laps, it was 80 laps, but I felt like that was a really good one. This was just a big, big win for sure.”
Two people who assisted Moran’s effort from the technical side went a bit further. His crew chief, 27-year-old Chuck Kimble, and VG Performance consultant Vinny Guliani, 39, both recognized Moran’s sublime drive.
“He ran a really good race,” Kimble said. “Did what he needed to do, when he needed to do it. Made sure he’s in good position. Every win is satisfying because we all work hard and that’s what we do it for, but that one’s up there.”
“I mean, he’s won some big races, but he really used his head that whole 100 laps,” Guliani said. “He knew what tires he had. He knew what tires the competition had. He knew how to pace himself. That was that was a master class on his part. He did an excellent job.”
Added Guliani: “He’s just matured as a driver. And I think you’re right, it’s the best 100 laps he’s put together in that kind of crown jewel situation.”
A longtime Dirt Late Model crewman who’s taken his engineering background and formed his own technical consulting business focused on Longhorn Chassis and Bilstein Shocks, Guliani has witnessed Moran’s progression over the years and counts him as one of his current clients. He attended Lernerville’s weekend to work closely with Moran and watched the young driver spin a masterpiece in the 100-lapper.
According to Guliani, it takes a special talent to emerge triumphant in a long-distance event at Lernerville. The balance a racer must strike between racing hard and saving their equipment is difficult to master.
“This place is really tough about keeping your tires good for the end,” Guliani said. “You gotta maintain the first 50 (laps), and that’s what he did, and then he ripped the second 50.
“You gotta learn to drive on the tone of the motor and you got to learn to, you know, maintain. I can only imagine how hard it is when people are passing you, you know? Like, during that race, a couple guys got by him, but he didn’t panic, and he knew the line his car needed to run the best in. And that’s the other thing — early in the race, there’s some other lines available that are not fit to his setup. His setup was the line that he was planning on running, so it takes a while for that to come in, you know? And this race is really tough about that because the line changes so much.
“You set up for the end, and it’s hard to do that,” Giuliani continued. “It’s hard to be committed to making those decisions on the car, and then the driving decisions, it’s hard to do that. But if you can commit to doing that, it pays off at the end of the 100-lapper.”
Guliani noted that Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga. — a 24-time crown jewel winner and last year’s Firecracker 100 winner who didn’t enter this year’s event — is “the best” at setting his car up and focusing his driving strategy on the second half of long races. He sees Moran developing those qualities with all the repetitions he’s had over the past decade, including 71 crown jewel feature starts. (Moran has 26 top-five finishes in those 12 acknowledged crown jewel races, including the infrequent Eldora Million, with the USA Nationals the only major in which he hasn’t tallied a top-five.)
“Listen, you gotta put yourself in position over and over and over to get comfortable doing that. You know what I mean?” Guliani said of the secret to crown jewel success. “And Devin’s done that. He’s put himself in position to win these big races.
“He’s an excellent, excellent driver, and he’s got a ton of upside still, a ton of big races ahead of him. I’m just happy to be his buddy and get to go racing with him every now and then.”
Moran viewed Saturday as the night when his accumulated laps at Lernerville finally reached a turning point. He’s run well at the track in the past — in 2024 he won a Firecracker 100 semifeature and finished second (albeit a distant runner-up) to Thornton in the finale — but something clicked to get him over the top.
“You just gotta come race here a lot, you know?” said Moran, who is in his third season driving for Double Down Motorsports and team owner Roger Sellers. “When that cushion’s on, it’s on, but when it falls off, you better get off of it quick. So it definitely was kind of weird. Like the top lane-and-a-half tonight … actually kind of the whole track, fell off a little bit compared to what it usually did, so (the cushion in turns) three and four, you really couldn’t utilize it a whole lot. And then one and two, it was just enough of a berm up there that you could kind of bounce off of a little bit, but you couldn’t really lay into it hard.
“So, yeah, I just was trying to find my line the whole race. I got messed up on a restart and got back to like seventh (after starting fourth); I felt like my car was good, it’s just, things didn’t work out. And then the next one I got right back up to fourth and just started picking ‘em off.
“You can’t overreact,” he added. “You go over the top and it ruins your whole race. It only takes a split second to ruin your race here, so you just gotta be careful. You gotta drive hard, but be methodical and try to just have a good balance of all of the above.”
Moran passed Sheppard for the lead on lap 80. He spent the rest of the way repelling Sheppard’s bids to regain command, making the final circuits seem like they would never end.
“I don’t think I was breathing the last 15 laps,” said Kimble, who was signaling Moran from the infield.
Moran felt fortunate to have chosen a 3-compound tire for his car’s right-front corner, going harder than the 2-compound rubber on the right-front of Sheppard’s Rocket Chassis house car.
“Honestly, I think I could just go harder than he could,” Moran said. “He never really committed to that top of one and two, and I could get up there and just gas on it. I think that was the biggest thing. And then in three and four, like, I felt like I could get such a run down back straightaway I could actually gain a little bit in three and four because of that.
“I felt like my tires definitely helped. I mean, it was still daytime out (when the feature began), you know? So we kind of knew what the track was going to do. I was hoping for no rain the entire race, and thank goodness it didn’t.
“When I passed him, I felt like my car was really, really good,” he continued. “I was like hitting it, and coming off and hitting it, and then like I said, when (the cushion) went off (too high), I was just kind of searching a little bit and then watching Chuck a little bit. I was getting nervous for sure, but I just zigged when we needed to and zagged when we did, and it worked out for us.”
Moran’s sixth Lucas Oil Series victory of 2026 was his first since April 24 at Georgetown (Del.) Speedway, snapping a span of 10 winless starts on the national tour. But it was satisfying for other reasons as well, including proof to himself that he’s maturing into a driver who can get the job done on the sport’s biggest stages.
“Bobby (Pierce) has always been the person right out of the rip,” Moran said of the sport’s No. 1-ranked driver. “He’s just always been really good, and I feel like my style of racing is way different. I can get up on the wheel and do everything he can I feel like, I just I have to be a little more methodical about it. I gotta think about what I’m doing and make sure I’m doing it right, where he does a little more on natural instinct I feel like.”
Moran's triumph also came with a throng of supporters to join in his celebration. While his father Donnie opted to stay home and Sellers on a vacation cruise, his wife, Lakia, had the couple’s 3-month-old daughter, Poppy, in her arms to greet Devin in victory lane and his mother, Brenda, was in attendance. Dozens of other family members, friends and fans were there as well, which turned his postrace visit to Lernerville’s secondary pit-area victory lane — where people from the stands are allowed in to take pictures with race winners — into a lengthy episode.
But Moran didn’t mind the extra time spent with his fans. He savored all of it.
“I grew up, I never really came over here, and then, when I started running the (World of) Outlaws in like 2017 for Tye (Twarog) is when we really started coming over here and racing,” Moran said. “I just fell in love with the place. It’s an amazing racetrack. It always races good.
“I’m an Ohio guy, but I have a major, major, major fan base over here in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. So I just can't thank the (track-owning) Tomsons and Lernerville enough for an amazing racetrack and then all the great support from all of them. This is definitely a crown jewel without a doubt, so I’m super excited. It’s a race I definitely wanted to win for a long time.”
