Mike Marlar went back-to-back at Atomic Speedway during the track’s season finale for The Night the Stars Come Out and he beat one of the best in Devin Moran, the newly crowned Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series Champion on both nights.

Marlar led from the get go and held off Jason Jameson early. Jameson would fall into the clutches of Moran less than 5 laps into the race with Moran working the bottom while Jameson ripped it around the top. On lap 6, Moran was able to dive underneath Jameson heading into turn 1 and slide him exiting the turn and take over the second spot.

On a restart with 32 laps left in the race, Jameson would try and reclaim the second spot with a slider through 1 and 2, but Moran countered with a crossover and slider through 3 and 4 and secured the second position.

Following another restart, Moran chose the low side instead of the high side and began challenging Marlar for the lead diving below him. However, Marlar was able to keep him behind him with the momentum from the top side.

On a restart with 21 laps to go, he attempted to dive below Marlar again, but Marlar kept him in check by taking the slider line away through three and four and allow him to gap Moran by about two car lengths. That lead would extend to around 4 to 5 car lengths over the next 10 laps, but Moran stayed with striking distance. It looked like he was going to make a move with 6 to go as the two got into lap traffic, but the lap car of Justin Cooper dove to the inside and cut down on Moran’s nose causing Moran to jump to the high side. The move appeared to hurt Moran’s car slightly as Marlar was able to extend the gap to around 7 to 10 car lengths. And he would win by about a half straightaway.

Moran, who finished second on both nights, spoke with FloRacing about what he needed to beat Marlar, “Just not quite enough. You know, Mikey was really good. So congratulations to him and Burdette on his championship. So that’s pretty cool.”

“Was  really good in the bottom of three and four early in the race and the moisture just kind of went away down there and once that happened it was kind of get in line behind Mikey and momentum. But really felt like this Double Down Motorsports Longhorn was really good tonight just missing a little bit.”

As for Marlar he spoke with Jacob Hord about how he was able to best Moran both nights, “I think Devin, all weekend was on me pretty close. We were really close in time. I was able to just qualify here better each day and get myself in position to get that lead on the start. But that was key to the weekend for sure. … I knew he was right there. Don’t slip up. But it was a good weekend for us for sure.”

Marlar also explained how he navigated through lap traffic, “Well, it’s all about timing. And you try to time it where you catch them in the right spots. So sometimes what we’re doing is the lap before we’re backing up that way when we hopefully catch them on corner entry. The worse time to catch them is get to them on corner entry. You want to have a head a steam on corner entry usually. For me it works best. So I was just trying to time them right and I knew don’t slip up and don’t mess up. And air is a big thing in our sport so when you get behind the lap cars your car kinda gets hung up with air too. So a lot going on there in a driver’s head. I was just lucky that made all the right decisions and kept ole Devin there behind me.”

Caught up with @MikeMarlar after his “Night the Stars Come Out” win at @AtomicSpeedway pic.twitter.com/8nlEE053Yu

— Jacob Hord (@HordRaceWatcher) October 26, 2025

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