Jonathan Davenport secured a second place finish with the World of Outlaws on Friday night at Smoky Mountain Speedway and he explained how he made it happen and why he came up in a position short.
Davenport blitzed his way through the field after starting in eighth following the redraw. By lap 13 he was bearing down on Pierce who got stuck behind Ahston Winger and a number of other lap cars. On Lap 15 Davenport got a huge run down the backstretch and got to the inside of Pierce, but Pierce ran through the middle and kept him pinned down. Davenport was unable to make it stick and had to get out of it and conceded the lead to Pierce. Pierce would maintain the lead and would never really be challenged the rest of the race despite Davenport and Nick Hoffman staying within striking distance.
In his post-race interview with Hannah Newhouse of DirtVision, Davenport said, “I was just going wherever they wasn’t. We went with a little different tire combination, started so far back. I knew short race. I didn’t figure there’d be a lot of cautions how slick the pace was. So we gambled a little bit and it paid off. It got us close.”
“I need the lap cars to work out a little bit different a time or two,” he continued. “And then I thought I had a decent run on Bobby one time and I was going to slide him and he decided to go to the bottom that lap. And I almost took us both out. That would have been a bad slider. Just slowed up enough-. I figured I was going to spin out. Anyway luckily we didn’t do that. We salvaged a second. … If I hadn’t of screwed up in the heat race and got a better start, we could have started in the front two rows and possibly have won.”
Davenport would reiterate much of that while speaking with DirtonDirt.com after the race as well. He told them, “I think the track was getting more and more narrow, the closer I got to the front there. And my tires were dying, too, and I know Bobby always looks at (crew chief and father) Bob (Pierce) and they do a really good job of definitely moving him around. He does a good job seeing him, Bob does a good job telling him where to go. So you just gotta get there as fast as you can.”
“I really thought had a pretty good run — I don’t even remember, hell, I slid so many cars there — I think I had a pretty good run there, but he decided to go to the bottom that lap, so I just tried not to take us both out,” Davenport added. “I knew we had a really good car, but I knew it was a short race and we were starting far back. So we just gambled on tired to try to get there as fast as possible.”