ELLISVILLE, Fla. — Only a few days into February and the most demanding stretch of the 2025 season might have already come and gone for Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series campaigners.

It’s not hyperbole to say that the last four days at All-Tech Raceway — Wednesday’s practice night included — tested the limits of virtually every team and challenged the sport’s top drivers like few tracks in the nation, throwing many superstars off their game.

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The three-day weekend at the uniquely challenging yet entertaining half-mile oval culminated Saturday in an early candidate for DirtonDirt.com Race of the Year as Devin Moran won a race that featured six lead changes with all three podium finishers having started 11th or worse.

Moran, who encountered his fair share of adversity throughout the weekend when he suffered a flat tire taking the white flag while leading Thursday’s feature, called All-Tech “a top-five track in the country” because it puts the sport’s best drivers to the ultimate test. For that reason, Saturday is one of the more rewarding wins of his career.

“It challenges you in more ways than one. It’s a tough place,” Moran said. “I like technical racetracks. I’ve grown to get a lot better at them. At first, when I started racing, I never raced on anything super, super technical. The more I’ve got on them, the better I’ve been. To win a really exciting race like that, it was a lot of fun and it was super satisfying.”

No driver, not even Ricky Thornton Jr., who looked so dominant Thursday, Friday and a majority of Saturday until he wrecked battling for third with two laps left, was safe from All-Tech’s wildly unpredictable nature. 

VIDEO: Ricky Thornton Jr. 'Still Loves All-Tech' After Crashing During Saturday's Finale

Virtually every big name driver ran into trouble at some point during the week, starting with Wednesday’s practice night when Shane Clanton, Jonathan Davenport, Dale McDowell and Hudson O’Neal got into All-Tech’s concrete wall.

O’Neal’s week didn’t end much better when he spun out of the top-three in the early going Saturday. Friday’s program will be remembered for Brandon Sheppard’s rollover in his race action; it was only the fourth time that the Rocket Chassis house car flipped over and first since Josh Richards’s 2015 tumble in the 2015 World 100. On Friday and Saturday, polesitters Garrett Alberson (no laps led Friday) and Brandon Overton (two laps led) couldn’t keep the lead for very long.

Saturday saw eight drivers in qualifying either tag, run into or downright clobber the All-Tech concrete wall, namely Mike Marlar and Brian Shirley, who both scratched from the evening’s action thereafter. Despite being heralded as one of the cleanest drivers out there, no driver tore up more equipment than Jonathan Davenport, who by Saturday had to scour the pit area to borrow a driveshaft, J-bar and other suspension parts.

Davenport ran into trouble four times at All-Tech: Once on Wednesday when he clobbered the wall in turns one and two and three times on Friday during qualifying, his heat race and feature.

“From practice night (we used) three driveshafts, three J-bars, eight shocks, four wheels, two upper (lower control arms), two (lower control arms), two spindles,” Davenport said as he rattled off all the pieces of equipment he went through this weekend. “So, yeah, it was rough.”

The three-time Lucas Oil champion not only agrees with the notion that All-Tech will be the most demanding weekend of the year, but it’s Davenport’s most challenging weekend he’s endured in recent memory.

“It’s probably been the toughest weekend for us in a while, actually,” said Davenport, who at the beginning of the race weekend Wednesday had been so aware of All-Tech’s temperamental, tricky character he couldn’t help but share his impressions with Kevin Rumley.

“I was telling (Kevin) Rumley out there about midpractice, ‘I don’t know what it is, but I’ve tore up more stuff at this track testing or practicing than I have my whole career put together than anywhere else,’ ” Davenport said. “And I just added to it. That’s just the way it goes sometimes at this place.

“I say it’s the most frustrating place in the country,” Davenport added. “I’ve said that to several people, several times.”

So what makes All-Tech so challenging for virtually every driver?

“It gets technical at one point, and just changes so fast, so many times,” Davenport said. “You don’t ever feel like you have your car set up properly every time you’re out there, especially when it gets black-slick.

“It was slick a majority of the places (Saturday), but in a couple places it was wide open. It’s crazy. You can’t steer, or you spin the tires, but at any other place, you could run wide open. Like you can’t get no rhythm here. There’s no line that you run. You just point to a place, slide and hit the gas, and hope it goes there.”

Davenport added that All-Tech’s “black slick” isn’t like the prototypical track in the Southeast “where your front tires have as much grip as your rear tires.”

“Your rear tires have way more grip than your front tires here (at All-Tech), which makes you push all the time,” Davenport said. “If you do slip the rear tires, you have no rear grip either. Technical and frustrating all at the same time.

“I can hardly make the same lap twice here,” he added. “It’s not because it’s you. The track’s changing constantly and you just need to steer. That’s the biggest thing we do with these cars here is we steer off the right-front tire, or we try to.”

Brandon Overton says All-Tech is like the half-mile version of East Bay where the track changes constantly. The Longhorn Factory Driver who finished seventh on Saturday after starting the feature from the pole buys into the notion that All-Tech will be the most demanding weekend on the Lucas Oil circuit in 2025.

“Yeah, for sure,” Evans, Ga.‘s Overton said. “It’s not that I can’t drive around here. Like in the heat race, I kicked their ass. It’s just hard for me. I guess this is the way I’ll say it. Where I grew up racing, you really have to pay attention to your car and you really have to dial it in, right? Then, out there, there ain’t no dialing it in, because if you dial it in for one condition, it’s going to suck in the other condition. That bothers me. Even the guy that’s winning, he probably feels like s--- out there.

“I’ve never been good here anyway. It doesn’t hurt my feelings. I’m ready to get the hell out of here.”

Moran and Thornton, the winners from All-Tech, embrace the half-mile’s trickiness.

“This place is demanding. To be really good, your car has to be good,” Thornton said. “You have to be really good. If you miss your line by a foot here, it’s two or three tenths (of a second per lap). It’s crazy. On that one restart (on Friday when he went from second to fourth), that’s what I did. Missed my line, got in bad air, lost my nose, and you have your parachute down the straightaway. It’s why I love this place. It’ll continue to be my favorite place no matter how I run because it is different. You run so hard here but so methodical at the same time.”

The ebbs and flows that Thornton eludes to were apparent Friday where Alberson, Moran, Overton, and Thornton all led in a race that had six lead changes. It was almost like a high-paced game of basketball where the last driver to find the best line and go on one last run to the finish would win the race.

“That’s a good way to put it. I never thought about it that way. It kind of is,” Moran said. “You get your momentum rolling, like early in the race I got by Ricky. I found a good line, then he found a good line and got back by me. And then I found a good line and then got back by him.”

As Davenport pointed out, “we had three totally different racetracks (this week) for sure.” Thursday’s was slower with the main groove around the bottom. Friday produced a new track record, which Alberson claimed, and fast-paced racing. Saturday was on the faster-paced side, but wider than Friday’s racing surface and with two sizable holes in turns one and three,

“That got to where it got really wide with that slimy, black, slick s---,” Davenport said Saturday. “And then there were some holes to give it character and they kept throwing slime out of them, and then once it got packed in for a couple laps, there’d be traction. Then you run through it and then it would be gone. Then you’d have to run through the holes some more to throw out more slime, and run through it. It was just a crazy race, for sure.”

Davenport actually thought the holes in the racetrack created such entertaining racing on Saturday.

“I think the holes helped, yeah,” Davenport said. “If the holes weren’t there, maybe it would’ve rubbered up? I don’t know. It was good anyway.”

After having no troubles en route to victory Friday for his second win in as many days at all-Tech, Thornton set the record straight when it came to the track’s demanding nature

“I thought it was an awesome racetrack,” Thornton said. “You could run around the bottom, you could run through the middle, you could Hail Mary around the top, you could run through the holes, you could do whatever you want. I’m sure there’s a bunch of guys who will get on Facebook and talk s--- about the racetrack, but their (driver) just needs to get better.”

Moran follows Thornton’s train of thought that, simply put, professional race cars like them ought to enjoy a good challenge.

“I thought every night was good,” Moran said. “Thursday was obviously a little too dry. Friday was obviously a little too wet. And I thought they hit the nail on the head tonight. I thought they did a good job with the track. Everybody wants to criticize it, and I don’t know why because (track owner) Wendell (Durrance) worked on it and gave us a good race every night.”