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Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series Suspends Cade Dillard After He Wrecked Garrett Alberson During Topless 100 Preliminary Race

August 19, 2025  ·
  John Trent

The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series announced that it suspended Cade Dillard for six months after he wrecked Garrett Alberson during the Topless 100 preliminary race.

Following a restart with 18 laps to go, Alberson got a run going into turn 1 and slid Dillard for the lead coming out of turn 2. Dillard appeared to slip up a little bit entering turn 1, but was able to gather the momentum back up and attempted to cross Alberson over, but ended up making contact with Alberson’s left rear and driving him into the outside wall. Somehow Alberson’s car didn’t flip, but helicoptered back down the track and was hit by Daulton Wilson.

Following the wreck, Dillard told FloRacing, “That Garrett, once again, proves how big of an idiot he is. Every time he buckles his helmet on he tears somebody up. He got me at Cedar Lake. Last week tore up Jake Timm. Every time you see him on the track, he’s tearing somebody’s stuff up. I’m not going to say it on here and go on a rampage and cuss, nothing like that, but you’re tired of racing with idiots like that. You work way too hard to get out here and put your stuff in a position to be upfront like this and every time I’m around him he hits my race car. So I hope they have to send his back to the jig. If he touches me again, I’ll total him out again.”

In a separate interview with FloRacing’s Kyle McFadden following the race, Dillard doubled down saying, “I mean, he spent half the corner right there in the middle. And we got our momentum up, and then I seen he’s coming up. I attempted to turn down, but once I’ve seen we’re making contact, no, I didn’t lift. Everybody just sees what happened tonight, but it’s been two or three times throughout the year we’ve got run over by the same 58 car. We just got to the point, I was over it. And the amount of drivers and crew guys that came over and talked about they’re glad somebody did it, I think there’s a lot of people that feel the same way.”

Dillard added, “I mean, typically, whenever under green flag racing, if you’re not anywhere close to the leader, typically, you don’t do something like that on a restart either. But you know, hindsight’s 20-20. It is what it is at this point. For years, I’ve got my butt chewed by my car owner for just getting ran over and never doing anything about it. And I went and told [Alberson] at Cedar Lake after he hit us lap one, turn one, that I was over that. Like I said, once I’ve seen that we were making contact, no, we definitely didn’t lift.”

“He did it to us at Wheatland, too. He’s just … a nice guy and his car has speed, just when he puts a helmet on, he just kind of turns into — I’m not gonna say anything bad there — just loses his mind a little bit, drives over his head a lot,” Dillard stated. “Once again, like I said, when you got that many other racers come by and talk about it, you know, I’d say there’s several people feels the same way.”

He then justified his actions by claiming he had warned Alberson after the USA Nationals, “Like I said, I warned (Alberson) at Cedar Lake, if you do anything stupid, there would be the consequences. He kind of messed around and found out there.”

In a press release, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series announced, “The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series presented by FloRacing announced penalties for Cade Dillard after an on-track incident and subsequent actions at Batesville Motor Speedway on Friday, August 15.”

Specifically, they noted, “After review, Dillard’s on-track and off-track actions were deemed aggressive, violating the conduct policy in section 1.4 of the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series presented by FloRacing rulebook. As a result, Dillard has been suspended for six months from any Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series presented by FloRacing competition.”

While the penalty report was issued early this morning on August 19th, McFadden reported that Dillard left Batesville ahead of the Topless 100 finale. It’s unclear when the suspension was enacted.

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Author: John Trent