Batesville Motor Speedway
J.D. finds middle ground in winning crown jewels
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Jonathan Davenport leads the way at Batesville. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
LOCUST GROVE, Ark. — There are countless ways a driver can win a race, but for Jonathan Davenport, he’s developed a blueprint that’s enabled him to keep racking up crown jewel victories.
It’s well-known the Blairsville, Ga., veteran is one of the best tire-savers and managers of his equipment in the game. That was on full display during Saturday’s Topless 100 victory at Batesville Motor Speedway — an attrition-filled race that saw 20 of 27 starters visit the hot pit.
But there’s another component woven into Davenport’s smooth-driving DNA that goes hand-in-hand with his tire-preserving knack: His ability to command the middle groove of virtually any track he races on. It’s why he’s so dominant at Rossburg, Ohio’s Eldora Speedway, and once again Saturday, how he continues adding to his legacy with his 25th crown jewel triumph.
What’s especially impressive is that Davenport’s mastery of the middle groove, like Saturday at Batesville, comes naturally.
“I think it's more second nature. I just try to, like I said, just think through the whole race and not worry about what you're doing right at that time,” Davenport said of his mindset toward locking down the middle groove in long-distance races. “Just try to have a good track position, try to stay at least in the top-three, that way you're on the front row of every restart. And just got to constantly keep moving and make sure, you know, something else (on the racetrack) don't clean up.”
The blueprint Davenport tends to follow on his way to one crown jewel victory after another isn’t necessarily novel. His driving tendencies remind Devin Moran of the one driver that denied his father, Donnie, of many wins.
“Scott Bloomquist was the best at Eldora and he was pretty dang good here, too,” Moran said of Davenport on Saturday at Batesville. “They definitely have some resemblance on a lot of different things.”
The more former Batesville, Ark., racer and National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame inductee Wendell Wallace observed Davenport on Saturday at Batesville as a spectator, the more he also sees Bloomquist-like tendencies in Davenport.
“Well, you know, Bloomquist has done so much in dirt racing. And any kind of race there ever was, he won at and did that. You know, J.D. is definitely ranked right up there as one of the best, I guarantee you,” said Wallace, the 1998 Topless 100 winner and one of Bloomquist’s toughest rivals for many years. “There’s a lot of good ones out there that I've race with over the years. I hate to name one or two, you know, because there's a handful of them, a double handful of them.
“But it's so tough for some to win the crown jewel events. You know that, you see that, but some of these people seem to put the whole package together and think through the whole 100-lapper, you know, especially when it's abusive on tires and things. That’s just what he can do. Just what J.D.’s done at Eldora is just unbelievable to win the races and see what he's done there.
“I really think there may be a similar situation with how they drive and do things, (Davenport and Bloomquist). Naturally, you know, Scott never was a cushion banger or whatever. He made his car good enough, he could run the middle and do that and didn't really have to abuse his tires. I feel like Jonathan does the same.”
Davenport admitted to racing Saturday’s Topless 100 feature as if he were circling around Eldora’s egg-shaped layout.
“I was about to mention that before you said that, like you have to think through the whole race,” Davenport said when asked how much he approached Batesville track Saturday like Eldora. “And then once you get to the end, the lines can move so much, kind of like Eldora can. So it just added another degree of difficulty when it's so rough getting in (turn) one and up the front straightway here. So, yeah, I kind of run this race kind of like Eldora. You know, you get can't go too hard early and you have to have something left at the end.”
All three of his 2025 crown jewel victories — including June’s Dream XXXI and the Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa. — saw Davenport command the middle of the racing surface like Saturday at Batesville. And even when he won two of five Illinois Speedweek races in May at Spoon River Speedway and Fairbury Speedway, Davenport didn’t need to ride the cushion.
“I’m getting too old to run the cushion like I used to,” Davenport said back in May after his pair of Illinois victories, his first triumphs in the state since 2015. “I can do it every now and then, but I’ve never been one either to putt around the tires. Normally I hit the tires and knock the left-front off. The middle is the safest place and it’s where I like to be.”
On the other hand, saying Davenport is one dimensional by merely running the middle of the racetrack wouldn’t be true. With how Batesville raced Saturday, Davenport had to get extra creative with how he entered and exited each corner.
“It was a little different tonight, because normally, like, you can catch that brown, especially at the back straightaway, and there's so much more speed,” Davenport said. “But it just stayed slimy the whole time. So every time I try to pull down there, I'd actually get loose and start spinning, and obviously then I was hurting my tires worse.
"So, I would run through the black, keep running through the black, then every now and then I would move down there just to see if people had burnt it in. Because if they burned it in, then they're going to drive right by you. So I just get constantly having to move around, and then towards a little bit late, probably three-quarters through the race, I found a line in one and two that I thought was a little better, but you just never know.
"Like, I was going in really high above the hole and then I would come back down. It felt like it was OK. It felt like I was making better corner speed, but you just never know when you're out front. So I was just trying to change my lines up a little bit, trying to make the guy behind me guess, and trying not to teach him as much as what I was trying to learn. So it's just a process you go through. And then once we caught the lapped cars there at the very end, once (runner-up Chris) Madden got to second, obviously, I knew he's really good at conserving his tires. I could see the board. And so, yeah, just trying to keep him behind me and trying to block his air.
“It was all about just moving almost inches there for a little bit. I caught lapped cars, I feel like they were really slowing me down. And so I just I hand’t really ran the top in a long time, but I knew that if I didn’t, Madden would start going up there.”
Wallace was especially impressed with how Davenport managed his tires better than anyone yet stayed in attack mode separate himself from Madden down the stretch.
“That's what I felt like Jonathan did good the other night, doing that because, like I say, later in the race there, he got behind a couple of lapped cars and even though you're trying to pace yourself … you can see later in the race when Jonathan started picking up his pace,” Wallace said. “When Madden got a few car lengths behind, I felt like he picked it up the pace a little more, so he started using up in the racetrack more, especially getting into the corner and cutting back across, you know, changing his line.
“And I felt like that made more speed for him. Yeah, he had to do that to get by the lapped cars too. He just seemed to manage a race good, you know? Like, like a good veteran does.”
Though Wallace at 59 is the same age as former Monday Motorsports teammate and still-successful competitor Dale McDowell, he’s long retired from Dirt Late Model racing. He’ll race his modified “eight to 10 times a year just to satisfy the itch,” but other than that, he’s convinced his driving style couldn’t keep up with the younger likes of Bobby Pierce and Ricky Thornton Jr.
In Wallace’s eyes, Davenport’s smooth-driving ways are all the more impressive during an era where aggressive, cushion-riding driving styles are becoming more prevalent.
“I wish I could do it again one day, but we've done it. I'm too old now, you know, these younger just come in and seem to go,” Wallace said. “But it's a lot of fun to watch, you know, like Thornton and Pierce and all of them, you know. These guys are just, they’re super aggressive nowadays and it's a whole different style of racing it seems like from when we were there.
“But Davenport, he’s just so smart. He knows how to work the racetrack to his advantage there late in them races.”
As for Davenport, the one crown jewel there’s left for him to win is the Dirt Track World Championship.
“I'd like to win them all. That's my main goal, so we got to knock off the Firecracker this year,” Davenport said. “And I've still got the Dirt Track World Championship circled, and that's one that's eluded me for a long time. I ran second, I’ve ran third, I've led a couple of them, and something happened. I definitely want to win that one before I hang my helmet up.”
While Davenport is content with where his Double L Motorsports team is heading into the last half of the season where he’ll take aim at his sixth career World 100 triumph, he’ll use these two weekends at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway on Aug. 22-23 and Lernerville Speedway on Aug. 29-30 on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series to “do a little testing.”
“We’re gonna try to learn some things there and try some new stuff because it's so hard,” Davenport said. “We’ve been so good, so consistent. We've not really gotten out of our little box a whole lot since Speedweeks.
“So we tweaked a little bit, but we're going to go through a bunch of stuff at it this week, see if we can come up with something new, I don't know if it'll be better or worse, but we got to give it a try.”
