CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (Jan. 11) — Hudson O’Neal wasn’t worried, but he had some concerns pacing the field during the second half of Sunday’s 40-lap Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout feature at Central Arizona Raceway.

“I was getting sick of all the restarts,” the 25-year-old star from Martinsville, Ind., said with a sigh.

And O’Neal had good reason to be exasperated over the series of caution flags that came after he overtook Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., for the lead on lap 11. Dealing with restarts on laps 16, 24, 31 and 34 — well, he knew one misstep on any of them could cost him the race.

It was a scenario all too familiar to O’Neal, who was leading the previous evening’s 50-lap miniseries opener until ceding the top spot to eventual winner Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., on a restart.

With the evolving surface conditions of the fast 3/8-mile oval proving to be a challenge, O’Neal saw the restarts as an impediment to his bid for victory.

“That was exactly what happened to me last night,” O’Neal said of the problems caused by restarts. “It’s so nerve-racking as the leader because you don’t know … if the racetrack changes just a little bit you don’t know that it’s changing, but them guys behind you have the opportunity to try (different lanes).”

Alas, there was no replay of Saturday for O’Neal, who navigated the restarts with aplomb to secure a $10,000 triumph for car owner Kevin Rumley. He waved off restart threats from first Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., and later Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn., who finished 1.745 seconds behind in second place.

“Thankfully,” O’Neal said, “we were good enough to be able to hold them off.”

O’Neal was more than good enough while flexing his muscle in the iconic K&L Rumley Enterprises Longhorn Chassis No. 6 for the second straight night. He felt he might have let Saturday’s $25,000 winner’s prize slip through his fingers — he settled for a runner-up finish — and wasn’t going to let it happen again.

Starting fourth, O’Neal bolted to second place on the race’s initial start and calmly began chasing Pierce. His opportunity to assume command came, not surprisingly, on a lap-10 restart and he seized, flashing underneath Pierce through turns one and two and then fighting off Pierce’s brief comeback attempt.

“Bobby took off really good, especially around that top, and I was just kind of pacing and trying not to burn the tires off of it,” O’Neal said. “I was trying some different lines there and really found something leaving two on that bottom and then was able to find it in three and four as well, enough to get me back by him.

“We had the restart at the right time. It really helped us, you know, kind of catch him by surprise in that bottom and make it work.”

The ever-changing nature of Central Arizona Raceway, a track that’s still an unknown quantity to virtually every driver in the Super Late Model field, kept O’Neal from coasting.

“I seen (Pierce) off of four whenever I passed him in the bottom of one and two, and he got up underneath me in (turns) three and four and I was like, ‘Oh, man, I better get to the bottom at both ends,’ ” O’Neal said. “And I did, and then that worked for a while. But it just kept getting rougher in three and four in that bottom where you couldn’t miss it, and that was whenever we had to start moving around. We had to move out in three and four again, and that cushion up there was treacherous. I jumped it one time and I about got in the fence.

“(The track) changes in a hurry. Especially if that bottom’s wet, it throws crumbs out across the racetrack, and then you pack them in and that’ll become some grip. In one and two, whenever I was around the bottom, I started moving out into them crumbs a little bit, and it was better than just being right up on those holes.”

O’Neal praised Rumley for giving him a superbly balanced race car, one that allowed him to excel two consecutive nights despite the varied conditions.

“It’s been so good,” O’Neal said of his machine. “To have success last night and be able to lead some laps and get some of the lap money (an extra $12,000) and run second, and then come out today to a different racetrack, qualify completely different, it was a little faster, and to still be able to be competitive and be comfortable behind the seat as well is so refreshing.”

Pierce was one rival who acknowledged O’Neal’s speed. The 29-year-old superstar with more Wild West Shootout victories than anyone — 16, including eight over the past 11 miniseries events in 2024-25 at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park — led laps 1-10 off the outside pole but slipped back as far as fifth before rallying to salvage a third-place finish.

“Hudson was good,” Pierce said. “You know, Rumley’s got a good package there with that car. He was just really getting off the corners really good. Like, entrance-wise, I felt decent, but I feel like he was getting off good.

“When he passed me (for the lead), I do think the track was kind of going through a transition where that middle-bottom maybe was a little better. The top, it just turns to kind of crumbs, so you got to be ready for that. And when I got passed, I hit two really good laps on the top, trying to get back around him, and I like I would catch him through one but then off of two, just, yeah, I didn’t have enough.”

O’Neal’s triumph was his first-ever in the Wild West Shootout, an event he last entered in 2019 at the now-closed Arizona Speedway in Queens Creek. It was the fifth victory in the miniseries for Rumley, who won three times with Davenport in 2015 at USA Raceway in Tucson, Ariz., and once with NASCAR champion Kyle Larson in ’24 at Vado.

With four more races on tap through Jan. 18, O’Neal is eyeing even more success before he heads east to reconnect with his SSI Motorsports team for Georgia-Florida Speedweeks action.

“I really thought the racetrack was great last night, but I think it was maybe even better tonight,” said O’Neal, who last year won four times in 11 starts driving for Rumley. “I think it’s going to be an interesting week. The track prep crew is getting better and better and fine-tuning their aspects and they’re giving us a great racetrack.”

O’Neal said he was “looking forward to our couple days off” on Monday and Tuesday. Along with Rumley, Rumley’s wife Jacqueline and others, they plan to take in some of Arizona’s flora and fauna.

“We’re going to leave in the morning and go up to Sedona and do some things up through there and then come back and do an observatory deal Tuesday night,” O’Neal said.

Jacqueline Rumley noted that their group has dinner reservations for Monday in Sedona, the resort town surrounded by red rock buttes, at a restaurant with an appropriate name: The Hudson.