After the Checkers
Takeaways, analysis from Port Royal's prelim
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Ricky Thornton Jr. headed to victory at Port Royal. (Heath Lawson)
PORT ROYAL, Pa. (Aug. 28) — Takeaways and analysis from Friday’s 40-lap Rumble by the River prelim at Port Royal Speedway, a $10,000-to-win Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned event captured by Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz. (RaceWire):
RTJ FORM: It’s no secret Ricky Thornton Jr. and the Anthony Burroughs-led Koehler Motorsports No. 20RT team have been off their game this season. Even some victories haven’t resembled the dominant form that carried Thornton and Burroughs to 34 wins together in 2023. Friday at Port Royal, however, was quintessential rip-roaring RTJ. Calling it vintage RTJ almost feels disrespectful because that suggests he’s lost something as a driver. Friday showed he clearly hasn’t. Thornton was a half-second faster than his rivals for stretches of the 40-lapper, building three-second leads from laps 3-10 and 10-16 before cautions erased both advantages. It takes incredible precision and confidence to run Port Royal’s risky-but-rewarding cushion like Thornton did, a line that can go awry with one misstep. Yes, it’s been a rocky season, but there’s plenty to salvage: Saturday’s $50,000 finale, the World 100 and Lucas Oil’s $100,000 miniseries bonus over its final five Saturday races among it. Thornton still has time to make something significant out of a season that’s largely fallen short of expectations.
JD BY THE NUMBERS: Jonathan Davenport’s Friday night represented a season that’s featured plenty of flash but uncharacteristic inconsistencies. Davenport set overall fast time, only to fall from the pole to third in his heat before rallying from 13th to third in the feature. The podium extended his winless streak to 17 races, his longest within a season since going 17 straight without a victory between July 15 and Sept. 3, 2023. He hasn’t won since June 20. His longest overall drought since then reached 20 races bridging the 2024-25 seasons. Davenport has still matched last year’s 13 victories despite making eight fewer starts — 53 compared to 61 — but his consistency has dipped. He has 26 podiums versus 34 at this point last year and 41 top-10s compared to 52, while his average finish has slipped from 5.49 to 7.35. The speed hasn’t disappeared — Friday showed that — but turning that speed into complete nights has been harder to come by.
MORAN MOMENTUM: Devin Moran kept Ricky Thornton Jr. honest Friday, and while he came up short of the victory, the runner-up finish was a meaningful result. It marked Moran’s first podium in more than a month, since another runner-up finish July 21 in the FloRacing Night in America event at Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway. More importantly, Moran chopped 45 points from Brandon Sheppard’s Lucas Oil Series lead, trimming the deficit from 180 to 135 with nine points races remaining. With plenty still on the table down the stretch, Friday was the kind of night Moran needed to keep the championship within reach.
POINTS RACE: Ricky Thornton Jr.’s victory Friday jumped him past Max Blair for fifth in the Lucas Oil Series standings, giving him a 15-point edge entering Saturday’s Rumble by the River finale — the cutoff race for the tour’s new Big River Steel Bonus Program presented by ARP. The top five in points following Saturday qualify for a separate five-race miniseries over the final five Saturday events, beginning Sept. 19 at Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway. While the season-long championship points race remains, the points do reset among those five drivers for the bonus program, with $100,000 going to the top point earner. That makes Saturday a race within the race for Thornton and Blair, made all the more intriguing by the fact that the close friends park next to each other virtually everywhere they race.
TRACK WORK: Port Royal’s racing surface has had a subtly different look of late after track crews added roughly 80 truckloads of dirt in June and increased the banking around the half-mile, particularly through turns three and four. The work was aimed in part at eliminating a crown that had developed across the upper half of the banking — or a “shelf,” as some drivers describe it — that made working the top side of the track more difficult. Track officials had been well aware of the ongoing issue, and Friday offered an encouraging look at the improvements. The troublesome shelf appeared nonexistent, while the added banking produced comers and goers throughout the feature. Let’s see what 50 laps brings us Saturday.
STAT OF THE NIGHT: No driver has come close to Ricky Thornton Jr.’s dominance at Port Royal. Thornton’s five Lucas Oil victories — all over his last seven starts there — are three more than any other driver in national touring competition. Chris Madden, Tim McCreadie, Hudson O’Neal and Jonathan Davenport are next with two victories apiece. Madden’s 2021 World of Outlaws weekend sweep remains the only other instance of a driver winning back-to-back national touring events at Port Royal. The track has otherwise spread the wealth, producing 17 different winners across 25 national touring events — making Thornton’s run all the more remarkable.
