Fast Talk presented by MD3 and Five Star Bodies
Fast Talk: Globe-grabbing RTJ's first World
After a dazzling, record-setting week at Eldora Speedway and Ricky Thornton Jr. claiming his first World 100, our roundtable unpacks everything in the weekly feature presented by MD3 and Five Star Race Cars Bodies (edited for clarity and length; complete World 100 coverage):
Discuss Ricky Thornton Jr.’s World 100 victory.
Kevin Kovac, DirtonDirt senior writer: The victory is the ultimate proof of Thornton’s superstar-level talent. Not that it wasn’t already clear from his spectacular performance record since becoming a Dirt Late Model full-timer five years ago, but Eldora is the measuring stick and he had been falling short on its big stages. So he set his mind to changing that narrative — don’t think for a minute that a driver as competitive as RTJ wasn’t aware of the talk that he couldn’t get the job done at Eldora — and he accomplished his goal by winning the biggest race in the sport. Thornton is elite, and, at 34, just three years older than Jonathan Davenport was upon his first Eldora crown jewel win in 2015. I’m sure thoughts of going on a J.D.-like run on now dancing through his head.
Todd Turner, DirtonDirt managing editor: There’s no doubt the Arizona native has crafted a top-level resume among the best in Dirt Late Model racing the last few seasons, but the lack of an Eldora crown jewel wasn’t going to work for him. Mission accomplished. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a case where one victory opens the logjam, elevating him to the list of most-feared competitors at the Big E. It was an interesting path to victory. Most Eldora polesitters who fade to fifth early are headed to the dustbin of history, but the persistent Thornton wrestled the lead from Davenport and cleverly prevented McDowell from continuing his late-race charge on a late restart.
Kyle McFadden, DirtonDirt staff reporter: Truthfully I’m not surprised. RTJ never put himself in the winning conversation until he came on strong in his heat race Saturday, but he knew what kind of car he had going into the 100-lapper. I’ve said it often and I’ll say it again: he’s been hands-down the best driver on half-miles this year and it’s really not close. Of course, Eldora is a different animal. But Thornton and Co. went hard to work all year to make their car cut through dirty air and steer all over the racetrack. RTJ could do both when it mattered most Saturday. Some might say, if it weren’t for the invert, he wouldn’t have won. Well, he still had to drive fifth-to-first in Saturday’s heat. And though he started from the pole, he fell to fifth early on and had to drive his way back forward again. Sure, I still believe that if Davenport didn’t cut down a tire, he was the car to beat. But that didn’t happen. Thornton earned every bit of this victory and everything he showed this year on the bigger tracks pointed toward that possibility.
Spence Smithback, World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series publicist: It’s crazy to think about how we’re talking about how a driver who has only been racing in the division full-time for half a decade “finally” won a crown jewel at Eldora, but it goes to show just how fast Thornton rose to the top of the Dirt Late Model world. With a Lucas Oil championship, a World 100, numerous other crown jewels and 67 national touring victories, Thornton could call it quits tomorrow with a Hall of Fame-worthy career. The last time we saw someone with that short of a career at the national level win the sport’s biggest race was Bobby Pierce in 2016, although I don’t think anyone expects Thornton to wait until 2033 to get his next one.
Were prognosticators way off base picking World 100 favorites?
McFadden: Don’t think they were way off base, but definitely off base to some degree. For starters, we underestimated Ricky Thornton Jr. on the whole. I think the pre-World 100 conversation should have been something along the lines of, RTJ is just too good to only have top-five in six World 100 starts, so it’s only a matter of time before he figures it out, right? We also undersold Nick Hoffman. He’s right on the threshold of breaking through at Eldora. Meanwhile, Bobby Pierce was disappointing all weekend along. Devin Moran, Brandon Sheppard and Hudson O’Neal were among favorites too, and all had their reasons to be ranked higher than RTJ entering the World. But they were never really in the mix.
Smithback: I don’t think so. I was one of many with the thought going in that anyone not named Jonathan or Bobby winning Saturday would be somewhat of an upset, with Thornton third on my list. Sure, he had won four of his last five starts going into the weekend, but Thornton had ridden a wave of momentum into Eldora several times before and failed to get the job done come Saturday night. There’s only one way to prove you can win at Eldora — and that’s win at Eldora.
Turner: If Davenport and Pierce were first-tier favorites, Thornton was second-tier with a handful of others. So no shocker, although outside his Baltes Classic victory, his preliminary performances were relatively pedestrian (by design, perhaps, in a strategy to get a feel for his car in traffic and sandbag to play the inversion game). Yes Pierce wasn’t a factor in the 100-lapper (and was fortunate to make the race), but Davenport obviously won two prelims and was right in the mix for his sixth World 100, while his fellow double-prelim winner Dale McDowell was his usual ever-present self. It’s Nick Hoffman, with third-place finishes in the Dream and World 100, who won’t be overlooked in future predictions. Ryan Gustin was perhaps the biggest surprise in the top-five, his first in an Eldora 100-lapper.
Kovac: I certainly don’t think so. While Bobby Pierce surprisingly didn’t seriously contend on Saturday, sometimes a star has a bad night at Eldora, especially one who’s still just 28. Davenport, though, was Davenport, and, if not for a slow leak in his right-rear tire that began before the race’s halfway mark, he might have been celebrating a record-tying sixth World 100 win. Those two were the No. 1 and 1A favorites, and deservedly so. And it’s not Thornton was completely off the radar in pre-race talk. It was mentioned how he was coming into the weekend hot with four wins in five starts, including one Sunday in Eldora’s Baltes Classic, but he wasn’t on the favorites list because of his history in Eldora’s finale. He just went out and showed he should now be included as one of the favorites for every Eldora crown jewel.
What driver made his season, made big strides or is feeling particularly upbeat departing Eldora?
Turner: Dale McDowell. Not that Shane McDowell Racing doesn’t expect to contend at Eldora, but the 59-year-old savors every moment in the twilight of his career. Had the silver-haired Chickamauga, Ga., driver completed a sweep with a 100-lap victory, it would’ve gone down as our Nicklaus winning the Masters moment (ask your father). Relative to our sport, Billy Moyer’s remarkable 2010 sweep at the Knoxville Late Model Nationals came at age 52. My age matches McDowell, and I’ve lost a step or two behind the keyboard, but McDowell’s ability to contend against drivers half his age — in races short or long — at Eldora is truly remarkable.
Kovac: I have to agree with Todd on McDowell, who checks all the boxes on this question. McDowell’s 2025 season certainly hasn’t been bad as he remains a contender wherever he races, but he had only won twice entering the weekend (a pair of Hunt the Front races back in the spring at Talladega and Smoky Mountain). For McDowell to come so close to sweeping the World 100 weekend sent him home in an incredible mood. Even if McDowell doesn’t win again this year, he’ll have a sweet memory to look back upon for his last season racing in his 50s.
Smithback: Ryan Gustin has plenty of positives to take from his top-five run. Between his $100,000 USA Nationals score last month and a new career best in the World 100, Gustin has turned into a formidable contender in the sport’s biggest events over the past six weeks. Consistency over the course of a season is still an issue that’s holding him back from racking up a double-digit win total and contending for championships, but he’s definitely trending in the right direction. If the Todd Cooney Racing team can establish themselves as nightly win contenders anywhere they go, there’s no doubt that Gustin is talented enough to be considered among the favorites anytime a crown jewel rolls around.
McFadden: Ryan Gustin’s fifth-place finish evoked mixed emotions when I chatted with him postrace. The USA Nationals winner was rolling early on, climbing from 12th to third, and inching toward Davenport and Madden. But he could never advance beyond third, losing the spot five laps before the lap-89 caution. Gustin’s won a prelim at the World before and already has a 100-lap crown jewel on his resume, so he’s someone that shouldn’t be counted out at Eldora moving forward. I think he learned as much as anyone Saturday, with his top-five finish boosting morale for the last stretch of 2025.
What else struck you at the sport’s biggest event?
Smithback: I don’t know how anything could strike me more than the sheer amount of people on the grounds last weekend, especially on Saturday. I’ve certainly never seen a crowd that big at a dirt track in my life. We’re fortunate enough to be in an era where there’s at least one marquee event happening somewhere in America almost every weekend, and it would be easy for Eldora to blend in with the rest of them. But with an atmosphere like that, we don’t have to worry about that happening any time soon. Trying to make my way through the seas of humanity all over the facility so I can do my job isn’t much fun in the moment, but it’s a problem I’m thankful to have.
McFadden: It truly gets bigger every year in stature. I saw quite a few people post on social media that Saturday was their first World 100 they’ve attended. In that same vein, I saw quite a bit of open-wheel folks that I follow on social media approve and praise of the event, and how it’s a can’t-miss spectacle. Crowds all week long were impressive. The racing, I thought, was worth the price of admission. Though Davenport and McDowell swept their prelims, it’s not like they drove away with them. Then Saturday of course, we got a first-time winner in RTJ, who in my mind has helped grow our sport because of his far-reaching influence coming from modifieds and drawing more interest from open-wheel fans because of his passion for sprint cars.
Turner: The record-setting throng that witnessed it. Those aerial shots are mind boggling. That the World 100 drew the track’s biggest-ever crowd says volumes about Dirt Late Model racing's health and Tony Stewart’s commitment to the majestic Earl-Baltes showplace, providing validation for a form of racing that still flies under the radar among the mainstream. It also struck me that Stewart gave us a number — 22,000 — to put a little into perspective of bigger numbers I’d heard years ago at Eldora. Big crowds flocked into the place in my earliest visits there 35 years ago, but clearly we’re cramming in more people than ever. More grandstands coming?
Kovac: I don’t want to repeat Todd again, but man, that sold-out crowd for Saturday’s finale was just astonishing. The drone shots showing the lines of cars backed up waiting to enter the grounds that stretched far into the distance in both directions on Route 118 — one report said a mile and a half! — boggled the mind. And those SOLD OUT signs that were hung in windows of the ticket and pit sign-in booths proved just how many people were there, because it takes an extraordinary situation for any promoter to stop selling even standing-room tickets. (It also drew jokes about how the late Earl Baltes would’ve found room to stick more fans.) As someone who makes their living in Dirt Late Model racing, seeing Eldora so jammed made me smile. I know I’m going to show an aerial shot of Eldora’s packed stands, pits, parking lot and camping areas to anyone who has no idea about this Dirt Late Model division that I cover.
Consider a weekend result, recent happening or upcoming event.
Kovac: I was surprised to see just 12 cars show up for Sunday’s Fall Clash event at The Action Track in Kutztown, Pa. I had looked at the show as being one of the more interesting new Dirt Late Model races on the 2025 schedule because Kutztown is just a fifth-mile oval, but obviously, the small layout must not have been as attractive to the racers. Of course, Late Model teams in the eastern-central Pennsylvania area are most accustomed to racing on big half-miles, so a bullring that’s closer to the size of the Dome’s track and will produce tight-quarters racing might not be something that floats their boat. I just wish enough teams for a full field would’ve given the place a try. (Trever Feathers, by the way, won the 60-lap race that was slowed by a single caution.)
McFadden: I was also a little disappointed to see only 12 drivers supported Jim Bernheisel’s Fall Clash event at quarter-mile Action Track USA in Kutztown, Pa., on Saturday. Maybe if the event was held on a Saturday rather than a Sunday and away from World 100 weekend, perhaps it’d do better? The crowd looked solid. The racing looked entertaining, and how could it now around a micro sprint track that’s just big enough for Dirt Late Models? Based on the highlights I saw, I thought the experiment worked. It’s just too bad there wasn’t a full field supporting it.
Smithback: As the first national touring events in the Southeast since April and the only ones on the schedule this weekend, we should be in for a fun pair of World of Outlaws events at Needmore and Senoia. Needmore put on a solid show during Speedweeks at the start of the year, and Senoia always delivers whenever the big boys come to town. The cancellation of the Southern Thunder events this weekend is certainly unfortunate, but with both that tour and Hunt the Front both idle, it will mean no lack of regional standouts for the Outlaws to go up against this weekend.
Turner: Brownstown Speedway is where I fell in love in Dirt Late Model racing, and the wall-free layout on the track’s slicker surface of days gone by is still my favorite style racing. But Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Ind., is where I realized that I could also love Dirt Late Models hammering a juiced-up surface on a wall-confined, high-banked track. That’s why it’s great that Tommy Helfrich’s track has a midweek FloRacing Night in America presented by Kubota coming up on Sept. 24, and I hope the track gets to show off its best self.
