Garrett Alberson led flag to flag during last night’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series race at Lernerville Speedway for the Hillbilly 100, but he faced a significant challenge from Devin Moran late in the race.
Following a restart with 36 laps to go in the 40 lap feature, Jonathan Davenport looked like he would challenge Alberson for the lead as he worked his way past Ricky Thornton Jr. to claim the second spot and closed in on Alberson’s bumper and maintained a 2-car gap for a handful of laps as they started working through traffic. The field would be reracked with 26 laps to go following a caution for Tyler Erb and Davenport would fight off a challenge by Thornton, and by the time he got within striking distance of Alberson, the caution came out again, this time for Boom Briggs with 14 laps to go.
On the ensuing restart Davenport lost multiple positions to both Hudson O’Neal and Moran. While Davenport was going backwards, Moran was moving forward. He had moved his way up to fifth from eighth before the restart, but quickly worked his way into second getting around Tim McCreadie, O’Neal, and Davenport. With 8 laps to go, Moran was challenging Alberson for the lead drawing beside him coming out of turn 4 and then getting his nose in front of him going through turns 1 and 2. However, by the time they exited turn 4, Alberson had gapped him by 3 or 4 car lengths and had brought his car from running the top of the track to the bottom and middle. After a couple laps of running towards the bottom and the middle, Alberson would go back to the top to finish out the race and bring home the checkered flag.
In his post-race interview, Moran told FloRacing, “To come here and start eighth and get to second was awesome. Kudos to Garrett for running a great race. I thought I had a chance there in 1 and 2 and I showed my nose. I should’ve never showed my nose because I once I did he moved down for 3 or 4 laps and just messed up my momentum. They did a good job and so did my guys. We’ve been working really hard fighting through a lot of adversity this year, but they’ve just provided me with a really great race car here the last couple of weeks.”
In his own interview, Alberson made it clear that breaking Moran’s momentum was exactly what he planned, ” kind of took a lane over there, and when you do that, you kind of try to break a guy’s momentum. I hope I didn’t crowd anybody too much. I just had to change the momentum a little bit and then get back to what I was doing, being a little more disciplined with what I was doing in three and four so I wouldn’t lose my speed across the center. Man, this is awesome.”
With the results of the Hillbilly 100 opener, the Big River Steel Chase for the Championship continued to tighten. Ricky Thornton Jr. extended his points lead with a fifth place finish. He now has a 20 point advantage over Jonathan Davenport, who fell to 7th on the final restart. Moran is 415 points behind, but he extended his gap over Hudson O’Neal and Brandon Sheppard. He has a 25 point advantage over O’Neal who is in fourth. O’Neal also extended his advantage over Brandon Sheppard with a third place finish. He now has a 255 point advantage over Sheppard. Meanwhile, Alberson, who is currently 6th in points, shaved off 40 points to O’Neal. He’s only 295 points out of the fourth position now.
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