Hudson O’Neal shared his perspective on what happened between the contact between him and Bobby Pierce that resulted in O’Neal suffering a cut tire and ending his chances at a win.
On a restart with 9 laps to go, Hudson O’Neal got a huge opportunity to snag the lead from Pierce after he had been stalking him for much of the race. He dove to the bottom scraping the inside berm to get to the inside of Pierce. Pierce was able to pull ahead by half a car, but heading through 1 and 2, O’Neal stuck the bottom while Pierce drifted up high. The two drag raced down the back stretch.
In 3 and 4, O’Neal threw a slider that stymied Pierce’s momentum and prevented him from executing a crossover. When he did try to get underneath O’Neal, O’Neal drifted down to block him. Unfortunately, the two made contact with Pierce’s right front making contact with O’Neal’s left rear and cutting it down. With the flat, O’Neal’s chances of going back-to-back were ended and he had to settle for a 10th place finish after drawing a caution and getting the tire changed.
On Facebook, O’Neal shared that “a little contact with the 32 knocked the valve stem out of the LR.”
He provided more details about the contact to FloRacing’s Kyle McFadden, “I definitely think we had a good run on Bobby there on the restart. I slid him getting into three and four, I tried to protect a little bit, and just, really, a freak deal. I think his front bumper got into my left-rear tire and cut the valve stem out of it.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault,” he said. “It was just hard racing, just trying to do what we got to do to win.”
O’Neal also explained why he decided to move down the track to block Pierce after he slid him, “I was trying to protect a little bit, not trying to let him get a run back on me and slide me getting into one. I really wanted the bottom getting into one as well. Just good racing, man.”
He added, “Whenever I slid him getting three, I knew he short slid, too, a little bit trying to run into there with me because I heard him, so I was like, ‘OK, well, this probably killed my momentum. I thought I had time to get down before he gets down there and goes back by me. Just a little bit of misjudgment. All in all, just is what it is. I’m happy it didn’t affect his race or anything. We’ll be back Friday and hopefully we can win two or three of the next ones.”
“It is what it is, man. We’re here to race hard and it sucks that’s the way it ended. All in all, just good, hard racing,” O’Neal reiterated.
Pierce addressed it in his podium interview after finishing 2nd, “Me and Hudson had a good battle there going on, but then he came down, I was there, kind of messed up my nose. Sucks to see he got a flat tire. We pry could have raced it out good. Maybe him and Ethan for the win, I don’t know. Come home second, we’ll take it.”
He made similar comments to McFadden, “Yeah, it sucks to cut Hudson’s tire down. … We got hung up for a second, and I guess it cut his tire down and it bent my bumper up a little bit.”
The Wild West Shootout is back in action for night 4 on Friday, January 16th. Hot laps are expected to start at 3:30 pm MT. All the action can be seen on FloRacing.
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