Batesville Motor Speedway
Ebert's pursuers fall shy in Batesville's tire game
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Topless 100 runner-up Dale McDowell. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
LOCUST GROVE, Ark. (Aug. 15) — Dale McDowell and Jonathan Davenport might have been too good at what they do in Saturday’s 34th Ace Doran Topless 100 at Batesville Motor Speedway.
Both savvy, smooth-driving veterans did a superb job conserving their cars’ rubber in a race overwhelmed by cut, and later worn, tires. But that also meant they could have pushed a little harder in the closing stages to stave off $50,000 winner Dan Ebert of Lake Shore, Minn., and improve upon their finishes of second (McDowell) and third (Davenport).
They left a little, well, tire tread on the table.
“I first felt like I gave it away a little bit because I was running really conservative, trying to make it on tires,” said McDowell, the 60-year-old, two-time Topless 100 victor from Chickamauga, Ga.
“I could’ve kept going harder than I was,” said Davenport, a 42-year-old star from Blairsville, Ga., who was seeking to become the first back-to-back Topless 100 winner. “We weren’t anywhere close to blowing out (the right-rear), but you just never know. We just didn’t know how hard to go.”
The century grind wasn’t without its problems for the two Georgians. Both were relegated to the back of the pack during the race’s first half, McDowell on lap 15 when a scrape spun him backward onto the inside wall in turn four while running ninth and Davenport on lap 34 with a cut right-rear tire as he sat fourth.
But their patience — and certainly the tire-related attrition experienced by so many drivers ahead of them — brought them back into contention. McDowell entered the mix toward the front when he cracked the top-five on lap 45 with fourth-place Devin Moran’s flat tire, and come lap 74, after first-half race dominator Ricky Thornton Jr. relinquished the runner-up slot to a flat, he found himself sitting second behind leader Josh Rice.
“We had a gameplan, and we aborted it a little after that (lap-15) deal,” said Shane McDowell, Dale’s young brother, crew chief and team owner. “But just his experience, and the way he knows how he’s driving the race car, got him back up there.”
And as the race wound down with the 28-year-old Rice running away in the lead, McDowell calmly settled into second. With only Rice, McDowell and eventual fourth-place finisher Clay Stuckey not yet pitting for tire changes and the 3/8-mile oval’s surface taking rubber, McDowell figured he just had to outlast Rice.
“He was driving so straight, and he was so good in the middle and he was gauging off the guys that hadn’t pitted,” Shane McDowell said. “He knew how hard they were running and hustling the car. I could listen to Dale running quarter-throttle, driving it in a push, and I said it — if the (Rice) can make it to 15 to go, we gotta be able to make it, because he’d run the top, he set a really fast pace, so we knew he had to hurt his tire way worse than we did.”
Rice was eventually felled by a flat right-rear tire, on lap 89 when his virtually bald shoe blew out. The problem for McDowell, though, was that Ebert had shot by him for second on a lap-87 restart and thus became the driver who inherited the lead.
While the surface had rubbered, it wasn’t a single, thin lane that makes it easier for a vet like McDowell to keep challengers at bay. Batesville tends to rubber in a different manner than most tracks, allowing a bit more wiggle room for a charging driver like Ebert, who pitted for a new right-rear tire after 34 laps following a flat, to attempt a pass.
“My phone wouldn’t work (due to bad cell service) so I’m just hand clocking it (lap times), and that’s how I knew it was rubbering (around halfway) and Dale went in conserve mode,” Shane McDowell said. “Like we got to running lap times, like 15.0’s or 15 flats, so it sped up some. And then all of a sudden he just started leveling out like 15.50’s, and I was just telling him how much room he has, just let them guys go, just maintain your pace.
“It started cleaning up really a little bit before then, but this place races wide enough that it actually, when it rubbers, it rubbers wide. And so it races wider. The shape of it, even if it does clean up some before it really, really locks down, it still widens up pretty wide so you can move around a little bit. It’s not like some places we go where it rubbers real hard. This place you can still move around.”
That was bad news for McDowell on the lap-87 restart. Something wasn’t right with his Team Zero Race Car and, with the wider area of rubber, the Ebert was able to seize on McDowell’s slight hesitation off turn two and dive ahead into three in a maneuver that ultimately made the 38-year-old a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series winner for the first time.
“When we restarted and I come up off of (turn) two, when Dan got by me, it wheelspun down the back straightaway and it hadn’t been doing that, so I thought I was out of right-rear tire and that made me even be more conservative,” said Dale McDowell, who won the Topless 100 in 2004 and ’23. “But it was the right-front (tire) that was the problem. It went down, and when it went down, it got the whole car loose.
“But I really couldn’t tell. I did know I got a little tighter in the middle of the corner, but there again, when that happens, it's all about right-rear. If you don’t have any right-rear drive, it’ll push or get loose.”
McDowell’s brother identified the deflating right-front tire as Dale’s trouble after the race. Shane had initially, however, thought Dale was running with something broken in the car’s left-rear suspension from the early encounter with the inside wall — so much so, in fact, that he was worried the car might fail the postrace deck-height measurement.
“I thought we were gonna be too high when they checked the droop,” said Shane McDowell, who noticed his brother’s car leaning down on the right-front. “But we were still over an inch to the good, so the reason the car was up (in the left-rear), the reason it looked up more, was because the right-front tire was low.
“Now that we checked the droop and everything was fine, we come out (to the straightaway for postrace ceremonies) and we had 5.3 pounds (of air pressure) in the right-front tire (after starting at 12-13 psi). That thing was going flat for a long time and that got our car messed up a little bit. He said it’s even what happened over here when Dan got by him. He said, ‘I could have probably guarded or picked it up, but I wheelspun a little bit because the car was down on the right-front.’
McDowell’s right-rear tire was actually going soft late as well — Shane said it was at 7.5 psi following the race after starting at 11-12 — so the brothers felt a bit fortunate to salvage a $20,000 runner-up finish, a distant 4.984 seconds behind Ebert. It was McDowell’s eighth podium result in 24 career Topless 100 feature starts since 1996.
“Good night I guess. We’ll take it,” Shane McDowell said. “But like I’ve said several times, we’re running out of years” to win the Topless 100 for a third time with Dale racing towards the end of his career.
Davenport, meanwhile, continued his remarkable run of success in the Topless 100, recording his sixth straight podium finish since 2021 (two wins, three seconds, one third) at his team owner Lance Landers’s hometown track. But he felt he might have had a third career win slip through his fingers.
“I was just being careful and I let those guys pass me (early),” said Davenport, who started fifth and ran around that spot for much of the race’s first third. “As the race went on (the surface) got slicker and we got better. I was just riding really, and I felt like I played my cards just right. I felt like it started picking up just a little bit of grip when we got to third (on lap 29). Then I was passing (Brenden Smith for second) and the caution come out (on lap 34) and (the car) started laying over just a little bit, and the longer we went under caution, it started laying over more so I came in (for a tire change).
“Just cut it, but who knows? It might not have lasted (100 laps) if we hadn’t pitted.”
Ebert slipped past Davenport — for eighth place — on lap 60, which turned out to be a critical moment considering how the race played out.
“I had passed Ebert when we come out of the pits there (on lap 34), and then it started rubbering and I just went in conserve mode pretty much,” Davenport said. “I was on the outside behind (Terry Phillips) on a (lap-58) restart and he went in there and got really loose in front of everybody and I had to check up, and then (Ebert) got by me on the inside.”
Davenport never regained track position from Ebert, though he admittedly was concerned about reaching the finish if he pushed too hard. He spent late-race caution periods pulling alongside drivers in the top-five, including Ebert, to catch a glimpse of their right-rear tires and wasn’t sure Ebert would make it.
“When I was right behind him, I thought his tire was almost slick then, and that was probably 20 or 30 to go,” Davenport said of Ebert. “I was just going up and looking at guy’s tires. It’s so dark here, but every now and then, like, there’d be a little bit of light shining on there and you could see, so I was just looking for circumference grooves on the tire.
“(Ebert’s) didn’t look all that great at all. Dale’s looked fine. I could still see the circumference grooves in his, but there’s a lot of other people I couldn’t.”
Davenport found that he had plenty of rubber left on his right-rear tire to potentially run harder in the final laps, but he simply didn't trust what he had and tipped his helmet to Ebert for his breakthrough victory.
“He kept air in it just long enough,” Davenport said. “He did a good job … I mean, he done an excellent job. He started moving out (late) and made some passes. It’s hard to win any Lucas Oil race, no less one here at Batesville the way this place shakes out … and a crown jewel on top of that.”
