Fairbury Speedway
RTJ's hopes for Prairie Dirt rally end in a heap
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
The bitter end of Thornton's race. (joshjamesartwork.com)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 25) — Ricky Thornton Jr. has pulled off an unthinkable charge to victory in the Prairie Dirt Classic, so when he started wheeling hard on the top side late in Saturday’s 100-lap World of Outlaws Late Model Series event at Fairbury Speedway, everyone took notice.
Could the 35-year-old star from Chandler, Ariz., have another furious 2023 PDC comeback in him? When his rally from a midrace pit stop for a flat tire reached fifth place on lap 95, he thought he wasn’t quite out of it. | RaceWire
“I felt like I still had a shot,” Thornton said.
The bid abruptly — and quietly spectacularly — on a lap-96 restart when Thornton’s aggressive last-ditch bid carried him over the quarter-mile oval’s thick cushion in turn two and into the backstretch wall of concrete blocks. His Koehler Motorsports Longhorn Chassis came to a quick stop with its right-rear wheel and axle sitting on the track behind him after being ripped from the the rear end assembly
Thornton wasn’t injured, but his hopes of authoring a dramatic finish in a race won by Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., were dashed.
“I got through (turn one) good, but then on exit I hit the curb too hard and it just sent me over (the cushion),” Thornton said of the restart with four laps remaining. “The curb was so high on the wall there was no wall to stop you, so I just blew through it, popped catchfence — I was the whole car in the catchfence (while riding the wall). Actually, what broke the rear end was the fence post … ripped the rear out of it and a bunch of other stuff.
“Luckily the catchfence kept us all on the racetrack, but unfortunate ending for what could have been a good night.”
With his car owners Bobby and Jessica Koehler and their sons Jordan and Evan watching from the infield after arriving from North Carolina on Saturday, Thornton started 13th and spent the race’s early stages cooling his jets to save his tires. He had just moved into ninth place when he had to pit for a tire change during a lap-51 caution period.
“I felt like I was running a perfect race before I got that flat,” Thornton said. “I figured the top was gonna get so technical that if you were gonna be good up there you were gonna have to be wild” late in the race.
Thornton’s plan to turn up the wick in the “last 20 or 30 laps” was changed by his demotion to the rear of the field. He didn’t crack the top-10 again until a lap-85 restart.
“I knew my car was good at that point (of the flat tire), but we couldn’t ever run enough laps where I could pass a few cars and get going,” said Thornton, whose progress was hampered by a string of caution flags. “So then finally I got a couple restarts where I was able to go to the bottom, make a good corner, and then move up, and finally I was able to pass the three or four cars that were on the top and after that set sail and haul ass.
“I ran right up to (Nick) Hoffman for fourth (on lap 95) … then (the following lap) it looked like Bobby (Pierce) went to turn to the bottom and Nick didn’t think he was going to, essentially, and they touched and got sideways. I guess they threw a yellow for that … I didn’t want a yellow. When they kind of got together, I thought I was going to drive around both of them.”
Moments later, when the green flag returned, Thornton found himself crashed out of contention as he was going all out “trying to win us a trip to the bank,” referring to the traditional PDC’s winner photo shoot at the nearby Bank of Pontiac drive-thru. The damage from the accident was also severe enough for him to announce the team would be returning to its shop in Mount Airy, N.C., to make repairs and regroup rather than enter this weekend’s WoO-sanctioned USA Nationals at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis.
