The Greatest Dirt Late Model Drivers of All Time

By the Dirt Racing Trivia editorial team · Updated August 2026

Ask who the greatest dirt late model driver of all time is and you will start an argument, but you will hear the same names. Scott Bloomquist and Billy Moyer dominate the all-time win lists, Bloomquist with more than 600 career victories and Moyer with more than 800, and between them they defined roughly thirty years of the sport. Jonathan Davenport is the modern benchmark: in March 2026 he became the winningest driver in Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series history, passing Bloomquist, and his 2015 season is still the standard every big-money campaign gets measured against. Josh Richards and Brandon Sheppard rewrote the World of Outlaws record book behind them.

The reason the debate never ends is structural. Dirt late model racing has no single championship that settles anything. There are two national tours, a dozen strong regional series and a handful of enormous one-off races, so a driver can be the best in the country and never lead a points standing. The list below weighs three things: career victories, national touring championships, and crown jewel wins in the races everybody actually remembers. If you are new to the class itself, start with our dirt late model class guide or sprint cars versus dirt late models.

The greatest dirt late model drivers at a glance

Career win totals in dirt late model racing are compiled by teams and historians rather than by one governing body, so they vary slightly between sources. Where a reliable career total is not published we have listed the driver's national touring total instead, and where neither is firmly established we have left the column blank rather than guess. DTWC is the Dirt Track World Championship.

Scott Bloomquist

For most of the sport, Bloomquist is the answer. The Mooresburg, Tennessee driver built his own chassis, ran his own program and piled up more than 600 feature wins across four decades. He won four Hav-A-Tampa championships (1994, 1995, 1998 and 2000), the 2004 World of Outlaws Late Model title and three Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championships (2009, 2010 and 2016). At Eldora Speedway he took the World 100 four times, in 1988, 1990, 2001 and 2014, and won the Dirt Late Model Dream a record eight times, the last of them in 2018. He entered the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2002. Bloomquist died on August 16, 2024, at the age of 60, and his ideas about how a dirt car should be built still turn up in cars he never touched.

Billy Moyer

If Bloomquist is the answer on feel, Moyer is the answer on arithmetic. The Batesville, Arkansas driver started racing in 1977 and did not stop until 2019, and by the end he was credited with more than 800 career feature wins, a total no other late model driver has approached. He won the inaugural World of Outlaws Late Model championship in 1988, repeated in 1989 and added a third in 2005. His signature statistic is at Eldora: six World 100 victories, in 1991, 1993, 1994, 1998, 2000 and 2010, still the record more than fifteen years after the last one. He also won the Dream twice. A National Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer, Moyer raced against three generations of competition and beat all of them.

Jonathan Davenport

Davenport is the modern benchmark, and in 2026 he became the statistical one too. On March 6, 2026 he scored his 95th Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series victory to pass the late Scott Bloomquist as the winningest driver in series history, and he extended the record from there. He has three Lucas Oil championships, in 2015, 2018 and 2019, five World 100 wins and four Dirt Late Model Dreams, including three straight in 2023, 2024 and 2025. He also won the 2022 Eldora Million. His 2015 season remains the standard: 22 wins, the Lucas Oil title, and crown jewel victories in the Dream, the Show-Me 100, the North-South 100, the USA Nationals and the World 100, with earnings past $600,000.

Josh Richards

Richards set the benchmark on the World of Outlaws tour before Brandon Sheppard broke it. The Shinnston, West Virginia driver won four World of Outlaws Late Model championships, in 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2016, and added the 2017 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series title to become one of the few drivers to win both national championships. He sits second on the World of Outlaws all-time wins list with 78, made 506 series starts, and holds the series record for quick time awards. He shares the record for most series feature wins in a single season. Richards retired from full-time late model racing in 2022, still in his thirties, having done his winning early and relentlessly.

Brandon Sheppard

Sheppard owns the World of Outlaws record book. The New Berlin, Illinois driver has won five series championships, in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2024, more than anyone in the tour's history, and he leads its all-time wins list with more than 90. When he reached that mark he also passed Bloomquist to become the winningest driver in the combined history of the World of Outlaws and Lucas Oil national tours. Driving mostly for the Rocket1 Racing house car, he won the 2019 Dirt Late Model Dream, four Prairie Dirt Classics at Fairbury and four Dirt Track World Championships. His style is the opposite of flashy, which is exactly why the results pile up.

Brandon Overton

Overton spent years as the sport's most talented hard-luck story and then turned into its most feared big-race driver. The Evans, Georgia driver won three consecutive Dirt Late Model Dreams at Eldora across 2021 and 2022, including a sweep of the double Dream weekend, joining eight-time winner Bloomquist as the only drivers to win that race more than twice. He added the 2021 World 100, the 2021 North-South 100, the USA Nationals and the Gopher 50, and by the middle of 2021 he had already collected eleven crown jewel victories. Overton races a heavy independent schedule rather than chasing points, which is why his trophy shelf looks better than his championship record.

Ricky Weiss

Weiss is the best dirt late model driver Canada has produced. The Headingley, Manitoba racer, known as the Manitoba Missile, won five WISSOTA late model championships between 2010 and 2018 while building a career win total past 100, then moved south to race the national tours. In 2019 he became the first Canadian-born driver to win World of Outlaws Late Model rookie of the year honors, collecting thirteen podium finishes along the way. He has since become a regular threat at unsanctioned big-money shows across the United States. Weiss matters to this list because he proved a driver can come from outside the American dirt belt and win at the sport's highest level.

Tim McCreadie

McCreadie arrived from a different discipline entirely. Before he was a late model driver the Watertown, New York racer won 59 big-block modified features on the DIRT tour, and he brought that northeastern open-wheel touch with him. He won the 2006 World of Outlaws Late Model championship, then waited fifteen years for his next title and collected two at once, taking the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship in 2021 and again in 2022. He won the 2018 World 100 at Eldora, the crown jewel he had chased hardest. McCreadie's career is the argument for longevity: he has been a genuine threat to win on any given night for more than twenty years.

Dale McDowell

McDowell has been winning big races for so long that he has outlasted several eras of the sport. The Chickamauga, Georgia driver won the Southern All Stars championship in 1994 and the Hav-A-Tampa Dirt Racing Series title in 1999, then kept going as a front-runner on the World of Outlaws and Lucas Oil tours. He won the 2005 World 100 and the 2014 Dirt Late Model Dream, making him one of a small group to take both of Eldora's biggest prizes. His 40-plus Southern All Stars victories rank third on that tour's all-time list. McDowell entered the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2017 and was still racing hard afterward.

Don O'Neal

O'Neal's career is a lesson in patience. The Martinsville, Indiana driver finished second in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series standings three times before finally winning the championship in 2014, at age 50, which made him the oldest driver ever to win a national dirt late model touring title. He won seven series races that season. He ranks among the top five on the Lucas Oil all-time wins list with 46, and his crown jewel resume includes the 2011 Dirt Late Model Dream and the 2014 Show-Me 100. He stepped back from full-time racing in 2019, by which point his son Hudson was already winning at the same level.

Earl Pearson Jr.

Nobody has ever owned the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series the way Pearson did in the second half of the 2000s. He won the championship four years in a row, from 2005 through 2008, a run of consistency that has not been matched on that tour. In the middle of it he took the 2006 World 100 at Eldora in one of the most dramatic finishes the race has produced. He also won two Dirt Track World Championships and, in 2018, the Dirt Million at Mansfield for a career-best payday of $202,940. He ranks fourth on the Lucas Oil all-time wins list with 40 and entered the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2026.

Chub Frank

Frank is on this list for a different reason than most of the names above him. The Bear Lake, Pennsylvania driver started in street stocks in 1978 and spent fourteen consecutive seasons as a full-time World of Outlaws Late Model regular, an independent running against factory-backed teams and outlasting nearly all of them. He collected 16 World of Outlaws victories. The one that defines him came at Eldora in 2004, when he won the World 100, the race every driver in the pit area wants most. He retired from World of Outlaws competition in 2018. Ask a longtime fan about the sport's toughest racers and Chub Frank's name comes up quickly.

Freddy Smith

Smith was the sport's dominant figure before the modern touring era existed. Known as the Southern Gentleman, the Kings Mountain, North Carolina driver began racing in 1966 and finished with 785 career victories. He won five Dirt Track World Championships, in 1983, 1985, 1991, 1993 and 1998, which is still the record for that event. He won the inaugural Dirt Late Model Dream in 1994, then the richest payday in the sport's history, while racing with a broken thumb, and won it again in 2000. Smith was inducted into the very first National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame class in 2001. He died on October 14, 2023, at 76.

Jack Boggs

Boggs is the driver older Kentucky fans still measure everyone else against. He won more than 400 features and specialized in the races that paid the most, taking three Dirt Track World Championships in 1984, 1990 and 1995 and three North-South 100s at Florence Speedway in 1986, 1992 and 1994, a Florence record that stood until Bobby Pierce broke it decades later. He capped that 1995 season by winning the World 100 at Eldora. Boggs was a posthumous member of the inaugural National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame class in 2001. His career is a reminder that before the national tours consolidated, regional stars could beat anybody.

Donnie Moran

Moran is the other half of the Eldora conversation. The Dresden, Ohio driver won the World 100 four times, in 1989, 1992, 1996 and 1997, a total bettered only by Billy Moyer and Jonathan Davenport, and he added the 1996 Dirt Late Model Dream. His most famous night came in June 2001, when he won the Eldora Million, the richest dirt late model race ever staged, and became known thereafter as the Million Dollar Man. Moran is a National Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer, and the family name is still on the entry list: his son Devin Moran won the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship in 2025.

Bobby Pierce

Pierce is the best dirt late model driver in the world right now, and the record supports it. The Oakwood, Illinois driver, nicknamed the Smooth Operator, won World of Outlaws Late Model championships in 2023 and 2025 and ranks among the series' all-time win leaders. He has won the World 100 twice, in 2016 and 2024, took the Dirt Late Model Dream in 2026 after more than a decade of trying, and owns the North-South 100 record with four wins, in 2016, 2023, 2024 and 2025, including the first three-peat in the race's history. He also won back-to-back Dirt Track World Championships in 2024 and 2025 and the Show-Me 100 in 2017, 2025 and 2026.

Hudson O'Neal

The second-generation driver from Martinsville, Indiana has already done something his father never did quite so young. O'Neal won the 2023 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship in the tour's first playoff format, settling it with a last-corner pass of Devin Moran, and in the same season he won the 53rd World 100 at Eldora, the race that certifies a driver as the real thing. He passed 35 career Lucas Oil victories early in 2026 and has added a Late Model Knoxville Nationals win. He is still in his twenties, which is the most intimidating thing on this page for everybody else.

Ricky Thornton Jr.

Thornton took the long way. He built his reputation on modifieds and open competition before becoming a full-time late model threat, and once he arrived the wins came in floods. He won the Dirt Track World Championship in 2021, then claimed the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship in 2024. In September 2025 he passed Jonathan Davenport on lap 42 and led the final 58 laps to win the 55th World 100 and its $72,000 prize, his first Eldora globe despite only one previous top five in the race. By March 2026 he had reached 50 career Lucas Oil victories. He is the driver most likely to rewrite the current pecking order.

The crown jewels, and who has won the most

Because there is no unified title, the crown jewel races are how dirt late model greatness actually gets measured. The World 100 at Eldora Speedway, run since 1971, is the biggest of them all: Billy Moyer holds the record with six wins, Jonathan Davenport has five, and Scott Bloomquist, Donnie Moran and Jeff Purvis each have four. Nick Hoffman won the 56th running in 2026.

The Dirt Late Model Dream, also at Eldora and first run in 1994, belongs to Scott Bloomquist, who won it a record eight times between 1995 and 2018. Jonathan Davenport has four, including three straight from 2023 through 2025, and Brandon Overton won three in a row across 2021 and 2022. Bobby Pierce won the 2026 edition and its $100,000 top prize.

The Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Missouri is the sport's biggest Memorial Day weekend race, and Jimmy Owens is a four-time winner. Bobby Pierce won it in 2017 and then back to back in 2025 and 2026. The North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Kentucky belongs to Pierce as well: his four wins, in 2016, 2023, 2024 and 2025, broke a tie with three-time winners Jack Boggs and Jimmy Owens, and included the first three-peat in race history. Josh Rice won the 2026 running.

The Dirt Track World Championship is the oldest name on the list, and its record still belongs to Freddy Smith, who won it five times between 1983 and 1998. Brandon Sheppard has four wins at Portsmouth Raceway Park, and Bobby Pierce won it in both 2024 and 2025. Only a handful of drivers in history have won all five of these races, which is why a crown jewel sweep like Davenport's 2015 season gets talked about for decades.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the greatest dirt late model driver of all time?

There is no official answer, but the debate almost always comes down to Scott Bloomquist and Billy Moyer. Bloomquist won more than 600 features, eight national touring championships and a record eight Dirt Late Model Dreams at Eldora, and he changed how the cars themselves were built. Moyer won more than 800 features and holds the record with six World 100 victories. If you weight modern competition most heavily, Jonathan Davenport has the strongest case of anyone still racing.

Who has the most career dirt late model wins?

Billy Moyer, with more than 800 feature victories across a career that ran from 1977 to 2019. Freddy Smith is credited with 785 and Scott Bloomquist with more than 600. Because dirt late model racing has no single sanctioning body, career totals are compiled by teams and historians rather than by one official record keeper, so figures differ slightly between sources. On the national tours the leaders are Jonathan Davenport with Lucas Oil and Brandon Sheppard with the World of Outlaws.

Who has won the most World 100s at Eldora?

Billy Moyer, with six, in 1991, 1993, 1994, 1998, 2000 and 2010. Jonathan Davenport is next with five, followed by Scott Bloomquist, Donnie Moran and Jeff Purvis with four apiece. Bobby Pierce has won it twice. The 2026 running, the 56th, went to Nick Hoffman. The World 100 has been held at Eldora Speedway since 1971 and is widely considered the single most prestigious race in dirt late model racing.

What are dirt late model racing's crown jewel races?

The core five are the World 100 and the Dirt Late Model Dream, both at Eldora Speedway, the Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Missouri, the North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Kentucky, and the Dirt Track World Championship. Most fans also count the USA Nationals at Cedar Lake, the Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury, the Knoxville Late Model Nationals and the Silver Dollar Nationals. Winning several of them in one season is the rarest achievement in the sport.

Who is the best dirt late model driver right now?

Bobby Pierce, on current form. He won World of Outlaws championships in 2023 and 2025, has won the last two Dirt Track World Championships and finally added the Dirt Late Model Dream in 2026. Jonathan Davenport is still the biggest crown jewel threat in the sport and became the all-time Lucas Oil wins leader in March 2026, and Ricky Thornton Jr., Hudson O'Neal and Brandon Overton all win big races regularly.

Keep going

Every name here has a story worth chasing further. Our driver profiles cover the stars of the class in more depth, the glossary of racing terms will decode the language the broadcasts use to describe them, and Find Tracks will point you at the dirt ovals near you where the next Bobby Pierce is currently running fourth in a crate late model. When you want to test what you know, the trivia question archive is waiting, or you can just play Dirt Racing Trivia.