All-Tech Raceway
Scrapping RTJ heads back to shop for reset
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Ricky Thornton Jr. on Saturday at All-Tech. (Heath Lawson)
ELLISVILLE, Fla. (Feb. 21) — Ricky Thornton Jr. never thought he’d welcome the end of a weekend at All-Tech Raceway, a track that’s historically been one of his best. Yet when Saturday wrapped up the season-opening tripleheader on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, the Chandler, Ariz., superstar was already eager to move on.
Rather than heading roughly 60 miles south along I-75 to Ocala (Fla.) Speedway, Koehler Motorsports opted for a reset, hauling 550 miles north to its Mount Airy, N.C., shop to regroup before the series resumes Thursday with points-paying action at Ocala’s 3/8-mile tri-oval. | RaceWire
Thornton said there’s “a chance” the team could see the track again before Thursday after he bent the chassis on his primary car during a qualifying incident Saturday, when contact with the wall soiled his time trial effort.
Before Thursday’s opener, Thornton had won five of his last seven Lucas Oil starts at All-Tech, with the only non-wins during that stretch coming after issues derailed top-three runs in the Saturday-night finales in 2024 and '25. This time, finishes of 14th, seventh and 18th put Thornton in unfamiliar territory at All-Tech where he’s typically a fixture up front.
“I wouldn't say we're way off,” Thornton said Friday. “We just need to be that little bit better. Volusia, I felt like we got better and better the more we ran. I feel like we're getting better here, just the dirt's so different in these places compared to normal that our normal notes aren't very good.”
Thornton and team know where the majority of issues lie, and that’s qualifying. At All-Tech he qualified 10th in Group B on Thursday and ninth in Group B on Friday before he could only take one lap Saturday because of his second-lap spin, which put him 18th of 19 cars in Group A. Last year at All-Tech, he qualified fourth, second and first in his respective groups.
There’s little doubt that Thornton and his all-star race-day crew of head wrench Anthony Burroughs and general mechanics Justin Tharp and Zach Frields will eventually figure it out, perhaps as soon as Ocala this week. Even two years between their last Georgia-Florida Speedweeks trip together, Thornton’s still getting acclimated with Burroughs and Tharp.
He did show signs of normalcy Thursday and Friday, like when he drove up to sixth from 16th in the closing laps, only to have the final restart shuffle him outside the top 10. On Friday he gained 11 spots from the 18th starting position. Then, on Saturday, it was too steep of a hill to climb once he had to start last in his heat race after deploying the backup car.
“Yeah, we definitely got better. I feel like we haven't been an absolute horrible,” Thornton said. “We just haven't been good. Like, I haven't been good enough to pass, where, normally, I feel like I'm really good here. Because like I can get out of line and take off. Definitely got way better in the feature (on Friday). I was able to early run around the top in three and four.
“Obviously with me going from sixth to 14th on that restart (Thursday) kind of killed a decent run we had. … I was on the bottom. I got a good start and I about ran into the car in front of me, so then I lifted. When I did that, I turned myself into the infield tire. So then I clobbered the tire, knocked the nose the rest of the way down. And then after that, I couldn't steer.”
Fortunately for Thornton and his Koehler team, Lucas Oil only takes a driver’s five best finishes among nine points-paying events. That’s not including Tuesday and Wednesday at Ocala and March 4 at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga. Thornton enters Ocala’s avocado-shaped oval having won there the last three Speedweeks and four of the last five seasons.
He’s yet to win at Golden Isles, but he’s hoping an extra practice night and four nights of racing will allow plenty of on-track opportunities to find a winning groove at the high-speed 4/10-mile oval in South Georgia.
“Just the way these five nights of the nine count, you gotta salvage the best ones you can, that way, whenever something does happen, you’re not (in a) crazy (position),” Thornton said. “But overall, we're getting better.”
Without a victory since Jan. 10’s Wild West Shootout at Central Arizona Raceway in Casa Grande, Ariz., Thornton’s winless streak has escalated to 12 races now, his third-longest since 2022. He went through a 14-race drought in 2024 (Aug. 16-Oct. 11) and a 39-race drought in 2022 (July 1-Nov. 12), thought the latter was before his breakout 34-win campaign.
Even amid this slump, Thornton’s not worried his futile Speedweeks so far will have any bearing on the season ahead. He’s not anxious about the notion that he’s falling behind his competitors, namely five-time winner Hudson O’Neal, four-time winner Brandon Overton, two-time winner Brandon Sheppard and Devin Moran.
“I mean, in reality, everyone's been fast. It’s just who can put stuff to each other on the right nights,” Thornton said. “Obviously, Devin's been really good. He was terrible at Volusia. So, it's just, you got to make sure that you put yourself in the right positions. I feel like we probably had a top-three car (Friday), and I just put myself so far behind early that it cost us.
“Not having any yellows kind of hurt us a little bit. I always feel like you can come to Speedweeks and you can be really good or really bad, but it really doesn’t matter for the rest of the year. Out here is so different.
“Obviously, once we leave here and we get to Atomic and Brownstown (the last weekend of March on the Lucas Oil tour), Brandon Sheppard’s gonna be really good. Hudson’s gonna be really good. Devin’s gonna be really good. So, it’ll just kind of back to your normal guys to beat.”
