Ricky Thornton Jr. admitted he had a chip on his shoulder heading into the World 100 feature after he felt snubbed by the media.

Thornton won his first World 100 and his first crown jewel at Eldora after he was able to work his way past Jonathan Davenport on lap 42 sliding him through turns 3 and 4 following a restart. He then controlled the race all the way to the end holding off a hard charging Dale McDowell and expertly taking away his line through 3 and 4 with 11 laps to go immediately after McDowell had drawn beside him through 1 and 2.

In the post-race press conference, FloRacing’s Michael Rigsby asked, “I want your honest opinion. Did you have like a little chip on your shoulder coming into Eldora?”

Thornton answered, “Yes and no. I feel like every time I come like I’m really good at prelim nights , but then I struggle and I’m like a fifth to 10th place car come Saturday. And I think it’s probably more me just overthinking stuff and thinking we need to take our car one way and tonight we went the other way and it was way better.”

“So I think I probably had a little chip just ’cause you see all the headlines, you hear all the announcers and everything else. It’s like, ‘Man, I’m not even good enough to even get talked about here. So I’d say a little bit of a chip. And you can’t really count yourself out. Obviously, I felt like if I did my job right and set the car up right we were going to be in good shape.”

Thornton’s World 100 was his 23rd of the season across various different disciplines including dirt late models, sprint cars, modifieds, and stock cars. In a dirt late model it makes it his 17th win of the season. Thornton will look to add an 18th win to his count when he heads to Volunteer Speedway for 2nd Annual Scott Bloomquist Memorial Scorcher as part of the FloRacing Night in America series. Thornton is currently third in points in the Flo series. He’s 114 points behind current leader Bobby Pierce and 27 behind Jonathan Davenport, who is currently in second.

After the Scott Bloomquist Memorial, he’ll be at Knoxville Raceway for three nights from September 18-20th as he aims to acquire more points and pad his lead in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series ahead of the series’ chase format. Thornton currently leads the standings by 40 points over Jonathan Davenport.

NEXT: Jonathan Davenport Explains How His World 100 Went South After Dominating The Beginning Of The Race