Ricky Thornton Jr. explained what happened after he made contact with Jonathan Davenport which nearly sent him completely off the track in the closing laps of the Hillbilly 100 at Lernerville Speedway on Saturday night.
On the final restart with 10 laps to go, Ricky Thornton Jr. shot to the outside of turn 4 as he did all night. Davenport initially went to the bottom as he had done all night, but as they were going down the front stretch he went to the top of turn 1 while Thornton went to the bottom. Davenport got a strong run out of turn 2 and pulled beside Thornton on the back stretch. However, Thornton came up the track and banged doors with Davenport sending his car off the edge and nearly off the track entirely. Davenport did a whale of a job of getting the car back on the track, but Thornton was able to slide him through 3 and 4 and took the lead and he never looked back.
In victory lane, Thornton addressed the contact with Davenport telling FloRacing, “That last restart I felt like I got a decent start. I saw JD under me so I’m like, ‘Drive into 1 hard, slide myself.’ I don’t know. He had a heck of a run off of 2 and by the time I heard it was already too late and I was into him. Obviously, I know he’s going to be mad, but you definitely don’t want to run a competitor off the track like that. Like I said, by the time I heard him we were already together. Really, I thought he was going to drive under me. Kinda sucks there gotta little bit of damage off of that, but overall great night.”
As for Davenport, he said, “I got a pretty good restart and I was going to try and slide him getting into 1. Just like a couple other times when I’d get a run on him I knew he was going to come all the way to the bottom so I was either going to crash us both or whatever. So I didn’t want to do that. So I moved back to the top and got a really good run. I doubt he saw me, but if he heard me, whatever, that’s-. He says he didn’t. Anyway, it is what it is. But like he said though whoever got out front was going to be really hard to beat.”
With the win, Ricky Thornton Jr. extended his point lead over Davenport to 40 points. The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series returns to action for the Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals at Knoxville Raceway in Iowa for three nights beginning on September 18th. In the meantime most of the drivers will be at Eldora Speedway this upcoming weekend for the World 100. Action begins on September 4th with a $12,000-to-win Twin 25 Prelim. Another $12,000-to-win Twin 25 Prelim will take place on September 5th before the $72,000 to-win World 100 on Saturday night September 6th.
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