Garrett Alberson, who led 32 of the 45 laps of the Cowboy Classic, shared that he was “heartbroken” after finishing third behind Hudson O’Neal and Devin Moran.
Alberson put together a great night early setting the fastest lap in qualifying, completely dominating his heat race, and then leading 32 of the first 45 laps. However, Hudson O’Neal found something in his car about halfway through the race. Following a caution with 21 laps to go, O’Neal restarted in third and after a brief battle with Ricky Thornton Jr., O’Neal was able to eventually clear him going down the back stretch with 18 laps to go.
He then set his sights on Alberson, whose car seemed to fade a bit compared to earlier in the race. He was only able to manage to gap O’Neal by a quarter of the straightaway compared to earlier in the race where he was pulling out to a nearly full straightaway lead. O’Neal would quickly close the gap took the top spot from Alberson with just 12 laps to go. O’Neal would check out after passing Alberson who fell into the clutches of Devin Moran and eventually lost the second spot to him on the final lap of the race.
In his podium interview with FloRacing following the race, Alberson looked clearly dejected when he was asked if there was anything he could have done to have held off O’Neal and Moran. He said, “I guess, maybe, protect that bottom a little bit longer or something. Man, it’s so hard to judge the pace of these things from the lead. It really is. I mean Hudson, Devin, Ricky, Davenport, all these guys are just so good at playing off your weaknesses and stuff like that, and I just got to get better at it.”
“Yeah, hate it for my guys. They’ve been working their butts off, but really proud of them. The car was really good. It’s a great place to start the weekend at,” he added. “I want to win these really bad. I know it probably doesn’t look like it sometimes watching it, but I really do.”
Speaking to DirtonDirt.com in the tech building, Alberson compared the feeling to getting passed by Ricky Thornton Jr. with just 2 laps to go in the same race last year after dominating it. He said, “I feel just about as heartbroken. I mean, you know, that would have been the first win [with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series] last year, but they’re just so hard to come by, when you lead laps it eats at you getting passed like that.”
He then shared more about what he missed during the race that he thought he should have done a better job on, “It’s a little hard to know where to be. I had gone down and run that bottom a couple of times, but I didn’t realize that was getting in that, like, drag-race mode. It doesn’t seem like all that often this thing goes into, like, full-on drag-race mode, and so it really wasn’t like super on my radar because I felt like I could do better just to keep my speed up. So yeah, when it went into drag-race mode like that, I think I’d already gotten beat right there. Then I was all right, you know, running second. But once I realize it was like that, I needed to be a little bit tighter probably to actually have a shot to go race against [Hudson O’Neal] again.”
Alberson concluded saying, “Yeah, it gets frustrating, you know, because everybody works hard. Everybody puts a lot into it, and I know I can do it. It’s just, like, sometimes just being in the right place at the right time just doesn’t seem to fall our way.”
While Alberson might have been frustrated in the moment he still put together a solid run and maintains his fourth place points in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series standings although his advantage over Hudson O’Neal has shrunk to just 25 points. He does have a 175 point lead over Brandon Sheppard and 190 point lead over Brandon Overton.
NEXT: Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series Shifts Georgia-Florida Speedweeks To After The Daytona 500