Eldora Speedway
Champ laser-focused in securing first Lucas title
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Devin Moran (99) battles for the lead. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
ROSSBURG, Ohio (Oct. 18) — Devin Moran was closing in on his first Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series title. He also was positioned to make a bid for his elusive first crown jewel victory at Eldora Speedway as he sat in second place for a restart with 12 circuits remaining in Saturday’s 100-lap Dirt Track World Championship. | RaceWire
Should he go all out for the grand double? Should he risk his shot at the $250,000 points crown to add a $100,000 race win as well?
Moran, 31, of Dresden, Ohio, considered the possibilities. He wanted both honors, but he feared that pushing to overtake Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., for the race lead could cost him the bigger prize he’s been focused on all season. The conflicting thoughts steered his mindset to the more cautious approach and resulted in a fourth-place finish in a feature won for the second straight year by Pierce, which was more than enough for Moran to clinch the title.
And Moran was fine with that outcome. In hindsight, he could’ve thrown everything he had at Pierce because his closest challenger for the championship, Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., was already more than a dozen laps down and headed toward an 18th-place finish following an earlier incident. His other threat, Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., was laboring outside the top 10 with a battered race car, but Moran didn’t know the points particulars sitting in the cockpit so his racing instincts took over and kept him from overdriving.
“It’s kind of like, ‘Well, I can try harder now, but at the same time, I don’t want to try too hard and mess my car up,’ ” Moran said when asked about his strategy after he saw Thornton and Davenport experience trouble. “That’s what happened at the end (following the lap-88 restart). I got myself all jacked up and fell back to fourth … I just didn’t want to mess up, and I got way too conservative and then it made me mess up.
“On that restart (eventual runner-up) Chris (Madden) went down the hill and took my air, which he did a great job, and I just got a little flustered and hit the cushion too hard and Sheppy (third-place finisher Brandon Sheppard) got by me. And then Nick (Hoffman) was right on me, and I was like, ‘All right, just chill out, finish your race. Let’s get through it all, and we’ll go from there.’ And that’s what we ended up doing.”
Moran was quite certain his Double Down Motorsports Longhorn Chassis was capable of winning the DTWC, a race his Hall of Fame father, Donnie, captured in 1988 at Pennsboro (W.Va.) Speedway. He started third and was strong throughout the distance, never dropping lower than fifth (and that was only briefly on laps eight and 95) and running second for laps 31-44 and 76-88.
“If I could have got to the lead before Bobby, I think I had a chance of holding him off,” said Moran, who lost second to the 13th-starting Pierce on lap 45 and then watched Pierce make his first move to the lead with a lap-50 pass of Madden. “He was just way more aggressive early in the race, where I was still being conservative. And once he got by me, I knew it was going to be really, really hard to pass him back.
“But I got to second (on lap 76), and I felt like I was really good. I wanted to run the race out and see how I was in lapped traffic. My car was really, really good the whole race. I could maneuver in (turns) three and four really, really well, but it’s just the way it goes. We won the championship. That’s what we came here for.”
Indeed, Moran’s sights were squarely set on that Lucas Oil Series title after back-to-back runner-up finishes, including a heartbreaking last-lap championship loss to Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., in the 2023 DTWC at Eldora that featured a winner-take-all format to cap the national tour’s first four-driver playoff. He entered Eldora’s season-ending weekend leading Thornton by 15 points and Davenport by 115 points thanks to podium finishes in all four of the Big River Steel Chase for the Championship events.
Moran’s steady playoff finishes contrasted with the results of his three championship rivals, who all experienced bouts with bad luck. O’Neal’s fortunes were so bad, in fact, that he was already eliminated from title contention when he arrived at Eldora (and his troubles continued with a 26th-place finish after he hit the backstretch wall on lap 29).
“We were the only one out of the top four that was the case for,” Moran said of his playoff consistency that included a third and second at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway and a victory and third-place finish at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway in Imperial. “That’s unfortunate for those guys, but we just took advantage of that misfortune for all of them.
“I feel like we’ve been so good, and so consistent. I felt like we had a really good car throughout the entire playoffs and that was the key for sure.”
The DTWC was more of the same. Thornton and Davenport couldn’t match Moran’s unflappable performance.
Thornton, 35, started eighth and climbed only as high as fifth — and for just a fleeting moment, on lap nine, when he was battling with Moran and Dale McDowell. That was actually the closest Thornton ever got to Moran as soon after he began struggling to stay off the wall in turns one and two. He stumbled and scraped the concrete on lap 20, did it again on lap 58 and finally, on lap 62, cut a right-front tire and cracked the first-turn barrier while running seventh to effectively end his hopes for a second straight Lucas Oil Series title.
The lap-62 incident forced Thornton to the pit area to repair a broken lower control arm on the right-front corner of his Koehler Motorsports Longhorn Chassis and patch together significant body damage, much of which came when Davenport clipped him as he came off the wall. He lost 13 laps before returning to the track to limp to the finish.
After climbing out of his mangled car at his trailer following the checkered flag, Thornton conceded that he struggled throughout the race. He couldn’t replicate the speed he had in winning Eldora’s World 100 last month.
“Just the track never slowed down as fast as I thought it was going to,” said Thornton, who said he'd “over-tightened” his car’s handling. “I couldn’t get through (turns) one and two like how I thought we were going to. I could run kind of across the middle and felt like I was OK, but it just wasn’t fast enough.
“So I don’t know … I started falling back early in the race. I had one restart and lost a couple spots, so then you’re not in panic mode, but you know you got to run a little bit harder. I was running harder and I bottomed out again in turn one and got in the wall, and I ended up slicing the right-front (tire). Then I just blew the tire getting into one (on lap 61).
“I went down the front straightaway and I could almost feel (the tire going), and by the end of the straightaway you can’t really slow down or not make the corner so I just tried to almost spin myself out and slowed down a ton. I tried my best to hit the wall and get going so someone wouldn’t clobber me. I probably didn’t kill a car because of it.
“It just broke the lower on the right-front,” he continued. “Had a bunch of toe-out and all that. We tried to fix it enough to get back out, but it wasn’t going to be be drivable, so we came back in, fixed it right, and went back out 10, 15 laps down and just rode around.”
Needing to finish ahead of Moran to grab the title, Thornton wasn’t able to get there and settled for a $200,000 runner-up finish in the standings, 85 points behind Moran. It marked the second time in three years he was the tour’s winningest driver (this season he won 14 times) and had his championship aspirations dashed in the Chase-ending DTWC due to car-damaging incidents, but he didn’t rue the playoff system in his post-race comments.
“The years I've lost it, I’ve cost myself by running into something,” Thornton said. “The first year I ran into Jimmy (Owens) and killed the right-front lower, and then tonight I was trying too hard to try to make something happen.
“But I tell my guys, ‘It’s going to be 100 percent all the time.’ I was trying and we just came up short.”
Thornton noted that failing to win the championship means he’ll “lose a lot of perks that come with it” — specifically extra showup money with the series next year — and said “it’s another stat for your legacy you don’t get to have,” but he still was proud of his campaign.
“We had more wins than any of them, and that’s what we set our goal out to do, is have a bunch of wins and just try to be the best,” Thornton said. “I felt like we put together the best year, start-to-finish, and then Devin put together the best last five and that’s when I counted. So congrats to him, and we’ll be ready for next year.”
Davenport, meanwhile, had only an outside chance at claiming his fourth career Lucas Oil Series title considering his deficit, so his full determination was on winning the race. He might have had a shot at it, too, if Thornton’s car hadn’t ended up in his path on lap 61.
The 41-year-old superstar was a surprising non-entity for the race’s first half, falling back as far as 18th after starting 12th. He was still wallowing in 15th when he pitted on lap 54 in an attempt to revitalize his Double L Motorsports Longhorn Chassis.
“It wasn’t a plan, but we had a plan B,” Davenport said of his pit stop. “We went ahead and made sure we had another set of tires ready, and then I went out with a little bit different setup and I was just kind of riding there at first. I didn’t really feel great, and then I moved around a little bit and I knew at that point we wasn’t too good, so then I just wanted to ride around to almost the halfway point and then I was going to come in and change (tires).
“I signaled to (crew chief) Cory (Fosvedt) what we was gonna do (during the lap-54 caution), so we had the plan, we came in, we changed all three tires (excepting the left-front), made one little adjustment … and hell, we were already almost up to seventh there (seven laps later). So I think it was going to work out … or we was going to make it exciting anyway.”
Davenport’s downfall came when he couldn’t avoid Thornton’s wall-slapping car on lap 61. He caught just enough of Thornton’s machine to completely rip apart the right-rear bodywork of his car, forcing him to the pits for a hasty patch job so he could at least finish the race in 14th place.
“I seen (Thornton) and (Josh) Rice both get in the wall (a few laps earlier),” Davenport said. “I didn’t know if (Thornton) got it with the right-front or not, but I knew it knocked his right-rear in so I knew he was going to be married to the top at that point. So the lap before (Thornton’s accident) I went in on the top and drove down, kind of doing my normal deal in one and two, and I passed the Rice down the back straightway.
“I planned on doing the same thing to Ricky so I just followed him in, and right as I slowed up to turn down the hill he hit the wall. When he did, it bounced his ass end out. I couldn’t slow down enough and I just barely caught him. We needed a foot there, and that cost us probably 50-grand for sure in points money (he could have passed Thornton for second) and then who knows? We might could’ve got up there and got to race with Bobby.
“I don't know where (Pierce) was running at the end, but it got really slick in this end (turns three and four),” he added. “I’m sure he was probably running the cushion in that end (one and two), but I was still good enough that I was going to be able to turn down in and probably run a different line.”
As Thornton and Davenport mourned their fates at their trailers after the race, Moran parked his car in the pits just behind the winner’s stage and was swamped by an ever-building crowd of people. He celebrated with his car owner Roger Sellers, his Chuck Kimble-led crew, his family, friends and fans. It was a moment a long time coming for a driver who’s been racing since he was 14 years old.
“Right after the race I saw dad and he had tears in his eyes,” Moran said of his father Donnie, whose bushel of crown jewel victories at Eldora includes the 2001 Eldora Million. “I said, ‘You might be a millionaire (winner), but I’m a Lucas Oil champion.’ So it’s something that’s extremely special. I know he won the STARS championships, but a Lucas Oil championship is pretty freakin’ amazing.”
While standing in the emptying pit area over two hours after the DTWC’s conclusion, Moran offered perspective on his accomplishment. He’s a student of the sport and realizes that winning a championship on one of Dirt Late Model racing’s two national tours is no small achievement.
“On the way up here, me and (wife) Lakia, we were counting how many (national) champions there were total,” Moran said. “And there was nine with Lucas (since it launched as a full national tour in 2005) and I think 12 with the World of Outlaws, so 21 total. And I make 22 out of 40-some seasons realistically. Pretty cool to be in that group of people.”
Then Moran hailed Sellers, the team owner from Sevierville, Tenn., who hired Moran prior to the 2023 season.
“He’s the best car owner in the business. That’s just plain and simple,” said Moran, whose national touring series history includes six seasons with Lucas Oil and two with the WoO. “He does an amazing job, and he put a great group of guys together. His main goal was to win the Lucas Oil championship and we got that for him this year and hopefully we can start piling some more wins up too.”
