Jonathan Davenport was one of the favorites going into Saturday night’s Knoxville Late Model Nationals, but he suffered a mechanical failure that ended his chances.

Davenport finished 5th on Thursday night after starting in 18th and was the hard charger for the night and looked very good. He followed that up on Friday night with a third place finish after starting in sixth. Those finishes set him up for a starting position on the front row in second outside of Devin Moran.

When the green flag dropped, Davenport was able to drag race past Moran and lead the first lap. The two would continue to battle side by side for the next couple of laps with Davenport leading the second lap, but eventually getting past by Moran on the third lap. Moran would maintain the lead through a number of cautions albeit Davenport looked very stout on the outside so much so that Moran went up to the top to block him and take his air on one of the restarts.

After a string of cautions and restarts, Davenport eventually took the lead with 67 laps to go in the 75 lap feature. He continued to pace the field until Moran was able to get past him with 55 laps to go. However, Davenport reclaimed it with 51 laps to go.

A few laps later and there would be another string of cautions, but Davenport would maintain the lead albeit Moran never let him out of his sight and eventually took the lead with 32 laps to go. After a caution with 31 to go, Davenport would lose spots to both Hudson O’Neal and Ricky Thornton Jr. A few laps later Brandon Sheppard was also able to work past him. He eventually was the cause of a caution with 22 laps to go and called it a night.

On Facebook, Davenport’s team revealed he suffered a mechanical failure. The team wrote, “We had a great race with Devin Moran up front through the first half of the $75,000 Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals and led on three different occasions for a total of 34 laps. Unfortunately, terminal mechanical woes sent the #49 pitside on lap 53 and dropped Jonathan to an 18th place finish.”

Speaking to FloRacing after the race, Davenport shared more details, “We had another part failure there pretty early in the race. It changed the car quite a bit, but it’s pretty cool, I think me and Moran never lifted like the first three laps.”

“Then we was running pretty good there. And then there towards- Probably 5 or 6 laps before I really started falling back, I felt the motor start laying down a little bit, but I really didn’t know exactly what it was. So I started watching my gauges and everything. And then it just continuously got worse. Well, it ain’t going to fix itself so I just went ahead and kicked it out of gear and shut it off,” he explained.

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