Lernerville Speedway
Tiny moments magnified in Thornton's Hillbilly win
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Ricky Thornton Jr. (20rt) struggled on the initial start. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
SARVER, Pa. (Aug. 30) — Ricky Thornton Jr. led every lap of Saturday’s 57th Hillbilly Hundred at Lernerville Speedway. Jonathan Davenport ran in second place for all but two early circuits of the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series feature. | RaceWire
Such statistical details don’t exactly point to an intriguing race, let alone a memorable one. But the marathon century grind nevertheless had its moments as the two Dirt Late Model superstars engaged in what amounted to a chess match that lasted for just over one hour through nine caution flags and one red.
Little things — the timing of a caution, a slight line change — were magnified on the icy-slick, 4/10-mile oval. Ultimately it was Thornton who came out on top for a $30,000 victory in the long-running Carl Short-promoted event’s first edition at Lernerville, turning the tables on Davenport, who on June 21 won the track’s Firecracker 100 over Thornton.
The showdown of division titans included one especially notable scrape on a restart with 10 laps remaining that effectively decided the outcome, but Thornton’s strength in the Davenport-centric conditions played a big role as well.
“I just feel like the track, it gets so slick, so technical, and really, I feel like that's where J.D.’s been a little better than us,” said Thornton, who won Lernerville’s Firecracker 100 in 2023 and ’24. “Just once it gets where there’s nothing to grab (hold of), and you have to, like, roll around the middle, I feel like we made a lot of improvements tonight.
“Here, you work on getting your car to steer, but then you gotta have traction. And I felt like last night (a fifth-place finish in the 40-lap preliminary feature) I got to steer really good, but I didn’t have the traction that I needed. Today, we just kind of did a few different things, and I felt like I could steer OK, I had good traction, and then I was like, ‘All right, just don’t do something dumb and cost myself with a lapped car or something like that.’”
Thornton, 34, of Chandler, Ariz., avoided making any catastrophic mistakes en route to securing his third win in four races and 13th overall triumph of the season on the Lucas Oil Series. He felt he “did a good enough job tonight where I got up front and I was able to kind of dictate” the action over Davenport, the 41-year-old from Blairsville, Ga., who looked everywhere on the track for a path that might carry him past Thornton.
Davenport said “there was a couple times” he thought he had found a lane to overtake Thornton, but, on a technical track surface where passing was a product of patience more than sheer speed and burst, he couldn’t seal the deal.
“The line he was running, like, he was really protecting the bottom, and, you know, he was doing what he needed to do because he really didn’t know where I was at,” Davenport said. “But there were several times that I had a run on him, and I knew that if I went to the inside that he was coming down and we’d crash. And there was nothing to lean on getting in the corner in the top, so I really couldn’t make any speed up entering above him.”
In the final analysis, both drivers thought a caution flag on the race’s opening lap — for a tangle in turn four just as Davenport was leading the field to complete what would have been the first circuit — was likely the most pivotal moment. Thornton counted his lucky stars that the incident triggered a complete restart because he had slipped from his outside pole start to fourth on that aborted first lap, while Davenport had vaulted from his pole position into the lead.
When the race restarted, of course, it was Thornton who outgunned Davenport to assume command. The race’s landscape would have looked far different if he RTJ had found himself forced to fill J.D.’s role as pursuer.
“J.D. did a great job on that first start,” Thornton said. “Like, he got himself turned, he got pointed, he took off in the mud and was able to get out front. (Third-starter) Devin (Moran) got only next to me, and then he kind of like went through the middle, so, like, he got me in dirty air and then that let Devin by and (Hudson O’Neal) by. So I was fourth after the first lap, and then that yellow came out and we were able to restart back where we were.”
Did Thornton think he would have rallied past both Dresden, Ohio’s Moran, who finished fourth, and Davenport? (O’Neal went on to struggle and make multiple pit stops on his way to a dismal 16th-place finish.) He didn’t rule it out, but he envisioned himself simply flipping finishing positions with Davenport.
“I honestly think maybe we could have ran second, but I don’t know if we would’ve been able to pass J.D.,” Thornton said. “I’d have been trying different stuff, trying to get around him. And I think it probably would have been the same thing as it was for me — like he gets out front and he’ll stay out front.”
That fact was what put Davenport in a rather foul mood following his runner-up finish. His mind kept returning to the opening lap, which he believed should have been counted under the Lucas Oil tour’s “leader-plus-three” rule for completing a circuit when a caution flag is displayed.
“I’ve not seen the video, but, I know that I was way past the flagstand when (the race director) said, ‘Caution,’ for the first lap,” Davenport said.
Davenport has raised issues before with Lucas Oil Series director Rick Schwallie about when laps are counted or not at caution flags. He feels there’s inconsistency with the calls and he’s lost spots multiple times after laps were counted, and Saturday’s caution was probably the biggest instance because it changed the complexion of his race.
“It’s just so slick here, so technical, and clean air means so much to these cars anymore,” Davenport said. “(Thornton) would’ve been moving around like I was (if Davenport had gotten the lead), and he might have passed me, but I don’t know. You just inch up on ‘em, and inch up on ‘em, especially in traffic. I mean, air still means a lot, there’s a little bit of grit blowing, and the car in front of you can move, you know, a half a lane and really sheer your traction and you’ll be sideways, too.
“It just sucks, but there ain't nothing I can do about it (other than) just bitch and moan like everybody thinks I do. I guess I’m one of the only ones that really express my opinion and tell you what I really think no matter if it’s good, bad or indifferent. It’s just the way it is.”
Schwallie addressed Davenport’s complaint about the opening circuit following the race, showing him a video replay of the lap. The series official maintained that the caution call was made as soon as the cars tangled in turn four — before Davenport and three more cars passed the start-finish line to count the lap as the rules state.
Davenport did still have 100 laps to work with after his frustrating start, and he didn’t take any of them off in his chase of Thornton. He even noticed that Thornton was running on the thick cushion off turn four, so he attempted to hamper Thornton’s use of that lane by his own hand.
“Yeah, I’m always thinking, trying to do something,” Davenport said. “I mean, the middle part of the race kept having those cautions (there was just one caution over the final 57 laps), and Ricky was running like a slider line getting in and leaving four. Hell, I was going up there trying to knock that cushion off (during the cautions) because I thought, Maybe, if that would ever go away, then I would have a little bit better shot at him.”
Davenport said the cushion’s size made it difficult for him to stamp it down, “but hell, it don’t hurt to try,” he said. “I was doing everything I could to win the race.”
The three-time Lucas Oil Series champion’s strongest bid came on the single-file restart following the final caution flag on lap 91. He launched off the extreme inside of turn four, drew alongside Thornton through turns one and two and remained side-by-side with the leader heading down the backstretch. Contact with Thornton, however, caused the right-rear wheel of Davenport’s Double L Motorsports Longhorn Chassis to slip over the lip of the wall-less straightaway, costing him momentum that allowed Thornton to get away and win by 1.397 seconds.
Davenport took his best shot. It didn’t work out.
“On the last restart there, I just tried something a little bit different,” Davenport said. “I knew that Devin had been getting a really good start down there (on the inside of turn four), but once we got to one, you know, I could kind of momentum a little bit back off of two from him. So I just kind of was learning what Devon was doing, or what I thought he was doing, obviously.
“So, like, I got a really good start (on Thornton), and I was going to slide getting in one and I’m like, ‘Ah, I better not.’ I knew he was going to go to the bottom, so because I got a good start, I just timed it right and I went, you know, right under the back of him and got to the outside of him entering one. That’s the first time that I had had a run up the front straightaway to be able to do that, you know, enter the corner, not quite the beside of him, but I at least had clean air, I wasn't in his dirty air.
“And then I just nailed the corner. I went through there really nice and straight, and I didn’t slide and I didn’t spin my wheels and got just a little bit more momentum off the corner than he did. I knew it was going to be close, and I’m not up there just wide-open, but I was giving it way more throttle than I normally would right there, so he would hear me.”
Davenport said Thornton “knocked me off the back straightaway.”
“These things are hard to see out of, but I know I couldn’t see him when we made contact,” Davenport said. “I was focused on going up the back straightway as high as I could without going off the track. I feel like we were side-by-side. I was far enough I couldn’t see him.
“They made a little bit more of a crown down the back straightaway. You used to be able to run off just a little bit and come back on, but now it’s a little bit more of a V-shape and you kind of get bottomed out up there a little bit. I was hoping I could even back on the track and not go all the way to the back.”
Davenport paused, then added: “Only he knows if he saw me or heard me and didn’t give me any room, but, you know, it is what it is at this point.”
Thornton looked at the lap-91 restart as his second close shave.
“We took off, I saw him under me, so I kind of slid myself into one, that way he couldn’t slide me,” Thornton said. “Well, then by the time I slid across the racetrack and I went to get off turn two, I was like kind of looking over to make sure I wasn’t going to go off (the track). And about that time is when I heard him and he was next to me and, like, we just kind of met at the top.
“I didn’t know if it knocked him clean off the racetrack or what it was. But, like, we hit hard enough where he had to lift and stop almost, and that let me get back in front of him. And it was one of those deals where had we not made contact, he would’ve drove right by me.
“So it was, for as bad as it could have been, I’m glad it wasn't any worse. Like, we hit, it wasn’t super hard, but it was enough where he had to slow down. Had there been another five feet, he would’ve drove right around me. I was more worried about him sliding me, so, like for him to be able to turn to the bottom, stop, go to the outside, and still get that good of a run, that was pretty good.”
Summed up Thornton: “I guess we kind of got lucky at that one.”
It was the kind of break that seems to go a driver’s way when they’re on a roll. And right now, Thornton and his Koehler Motorsports team are streaking, heading to the World 100 at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, coming off his first-ever Hillbilly Hundred checkered flag and a $60,000 sweep of last weekend’s Rumble by the River at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway.
“We went back to the shop two weeks ago after Batesville (the Arkansas track’s Topless 100) and pretty much spent three days, tore this (Longhorn Chassis) down to nothing, re-bodied everything, redid everything, and we found a couple little things that we just had been overlooking,” said Thornton, who leads the Lucas Oil Series standings by 40 points over Davenport. “And normally it amounts to nothing, but, I mean, you got to be so perfect at these races that I feel like we’ve really gotten our speed back and hopefully can keep going.”
Thornton plans to run a brand-new Longhorn machine in search of his first crown jewel victory at Eldora, but he felt he learned something at Lernerville that he can transfer to Dirt Late Model racing’s most prestigious event.
“I think probably the biggest thing I can take from this weekend is not having to bury yourself on a curb,” Thornton said. “J.D. is just so good at Eldora where he drives off in the corner, goes across the middle and drives off. I feel like if any of us can get within, I don’t know, a second of how fast he is there at that, we’ll be pretty competitive.”
