Jonathan Davenport revealed why he believes he is so successful at Eldora after winning his third straight Dirt Late Model Dream and in doing it in convincing fashion with an over 10 second gap between him and second place finisher Bobby Pierce.
Davenport started the race in 13th after finishing third in Heat 1 earlier in the night. A little over 15 laps into the event he hadn’t made any forward progress and had actually lost a spot and fell to 14th after getting passed by Josh Rice. However, he would get back up to 13th after working his way around Max Blair with about 80 laps to go.
Following a caution that was brought out by Jason Jameson, Davenport had a really strong restart moving up to 8th by running around the bottom. He continued to hug the bottom and worked his way up to 7th and then with 75 laps to go he passed Bobby Pierce to claim the fifth position. He made his way up to fourth before a caution with 68 laps to go came out for Hudson O’Neal. On the ensuing restart Davenport moved up to second getting around both Shane Clanton and Chris Ferguson.
After a restart with 61 laps to go due to a caution brought out by Jimmy Owens, Davenport worked his way past Dale McDowell through the middle of the track and took the lead. After a caution with 52 laps to go for Bobby Pierce, Davenport would maintain his lead, and would extend it over over 3 seconds with 40 laps to go over second place Ricky Thornton Jr.
That lead would evaporate due to a caution brought out by Daulton Wilson with 34 laps to go. However, a little over 10 laps from the ensuing restart he extended his lead over second place Dale McDowell to 4.1 seconds. He extended that lead to 8.5 seconds with 10 laps left. When all was said and done he had a 10 second lead over second place Bobby Piece and there were only 8 cars left on the lead lap.
In his post race interview, Davenport would hint at his secret success sharing, “We run a Cornett [Racing Engine] this week. That’s the only thing that we’ve ever changed on this car.”
He would elaborate on this point during the post-race press conference, “Like I said, I’ve just been here so many times. Just like Scott [Bloomquist]. He come here so many times with the same exact car. He wasn’t bouncing around. He built his own cars. So, he always knew what he was, what he had, and had notes from there. And I took a page out of his book. That’s the reason I took one car and I just dedicated it to this place. And now I can go back and look at lap times and I just flip through my notebook all the way, you know, back to 2021, you know.”
“This sport definitely progress a lot each year, and you change stuff,” he continued. “But, you know, I always try to add in something that I’ve learned through the prelim races and sometimes it works and sometimes it don’t. It’s always nice to have that big thick notebook to go back to.”
Davenport’s win was his third Dirt Late Model Dream in a row and his fourth overall. He also won the event back in 2015 after Scott Bloomquist was light at the scales.
What do you make of his secret for success at The Dream and at Eldora?