Port Royal Speedway
Thornton proves mastery of Port Royal's top lane
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Ricky Thornton Jr. celebrating a $10,000 victory at Port Royal Speedway. (Heath Lawson)
PORT ROYAL, Pa. (Aug. 28) — Long before Ricky Thornton Jr. mastered the uppermost reaches of Port Royal Speedway, he learned not to fear the ragged edge of Arizona’s most daunting speedplants.
That came growing up around Chandler, racing momentum-oriented places such as Manzanita Speedway, Canyon Speedway and Central Arizona Raceway, where maintaining speed often meant venturing as high as a driver dared. | RaceWire
Those formative years help explain why Thornton looks so remarkably at home at Port Royal, where Friday’s 40-lap Rumble by the River preliminary victory gave him four straight triumphs at the half-mile and five in his last seven Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series appearances. There’s running the cushion, and then there’s the Anthony Macri Line — the precarious strip of real estate the sprint car star has made famous at Port Royal and Thornton has practically made his own in a Dirt Late Model.
“I go back to growing up at Manzanita Speedway, Canyon Speedway, Central Arizona — they’re all fast places,” the 35-year-old Thornton said after his $10,000 triumph. “There is a wall, but there isn’t a wall. So if you had to run the top, you had to be on the edge of the racetrack all the time. So it just taught you, you can’t be scared to be out there and do it.
“And we come here, like, I drive down into turn one and it’s the same mentality. Like, all right, if you want to be fast, you’ve got to put your right-front on the wall and trust it. If you don’t trust it, you’re gonna wreck. So just make sure you do that, run as hard as you can.”Thorn
For all but a handful of laps, Thornton appeared untouchable. Until Devin Moran rattled off five straight laps quicker than Thornton as the leader trudged through lapped traffic from laps 25-29, it wasn’t hyperbole to say Thornton was a half-second faster than the field for stretches.
Thornton built advantages approaching three seconds twice over the opening 16 laps, only for cautions to erase both. And once Moran crept within striking distance through traffic late, Thornton needed only a sliver of clean racetrack to regain the blistering pace that carried him to a 1.392-second victory.
“I feel like once I got to traffic, I slowed down a little bit, but I think everyone’s going to do this because the air gets so bad,” Thornton said. “So once I’d kind of clear a couple of those guys, my pace kind of picked right back up.”
Even Thornton’s preferred route around Port Royal wasn’t quite the same as it had been during his $60,000 sweep of last year’s Rumble by the River weekend.
The half-mile itself has undergone some changes since then. Track crews added roughly 80 truckloads of dirt in June and increased the banking, particularly through turns three and four, in an effort to eliminate a troublesome crown — or “shelf,” as some drivers described it — that had developed across the upper half of the racing surface.
“I feel like this track’s a little bit different than last year,” Thornton said. “Yeah, up against the wall, it feels flat. That’s what it feels like to me. I think the track itself is better, but the last foot-and-a-half against the wall is kind of flat. But it’s probably just from the grader getting all the crumbs and stuff off the wall.
“But I still feel like our car was good enough I can get up there and just really carry a lot of speed. One and two, I feel really comfortable. Three and four, I really didn’t know where I needed to be. I knew I could make good laps around the top, but even when I was in traffic there at the end, I’d move towards the middle and my car was still really good.”
That last part might be the most encouraging takeaway for Thornton and his Anthony Burroughs-led Koehler Motorsports team.
Thornton has reached the point at Port Royal where anything less than victory feels like failure. And if that sounds familiar, it should. That’s largely how his remarkable 34-win 2023 season — and the first half of ’24 — felt everywhere he went.
It’s a feeling Thornton knows well, but one that’s seemed distant for some time. He’s been asked repeatedly this year, especially after victories that have come sparingly, whether this might finally be the turning point for him and his Koehler team. None of his previous seven victories truly materialized into one. Perhaps Friday can be different.
“I feel like we got our confidence back,” Thornton said. “Our team, I mean, we’ve been working really hard all year. And like I said, we’ve had some unfortunate stuff, and I’ve made some mistakes, too. That’s part of it. But looking forward to tomorrow and the rest of the year.”
Thornton believes the speed behind Friday’s performance hasn’t necessarily been missing. Stringing together nights without something going awry has been the greater challenge — like last Saturday at Maquoketa (Iowa) Speedway, where he ran fifth before an engine failure, or the Topless 100 the weekend prior, where a flat tire spoiled a run in which he led 53 laps.
“I feel like we’ve probably had this pace the last two months or so,” Thornton said. “It’s just one night we’ll be really good, the next night have something crazy happen. So, kind of how our year’s been.”
Port Royal, at least, has offered remarkable consistency. Even Thornton finds his streak difficult to comprehend, having never won more than twice consecutively at any racetrack before reeling off four straight Lucas Oil victories at the half-mile.
“I love coming here,” Thornton said. “Obviously, I’ve watched a million races here, so it’s nice. I got a really good car. I feel like our package is always really good here. It was in the SSI car. It is in our Koehler Motorsports cars. So, it’s something we really worked on is our half-miles.
“I feel like as a driver, for some reason — when you get to these half-miles, we’re really good, just aero-wise and stuff like that.”
Thornton’s five Lucas Oil victories at Port Royal — all over his last seven series appearances — are three more than any other driver has accumulated in national touring competition at the half-mile.
A fifth straight Saturday would carry even greater significance.
Friday’s victory moved Thornton past Max Blair for fifth in the Lucas Oil standings, giving him a 15-point cushion entering Saturday’s $50,000 finale, which doubles as the cutoff for the tour’s new Big River Steel Bonus Program presented by ARP. The top five advance to a separate five-race miniseries with points reset and $100,000 awaiting the top point earner.
Thornton appreciates the added incentive, but he’s equally pleased that the series championship itself remains a season-long pursuit.
“The way the season championship is, I think it’s how they should’ve always been,” Thornton said. “And still, to have $100,000 on top of that for the top five is pretty cool.”
Thornton has his sights set higher than simply hanging onto fifth. There’s still time to make something significant out of a season that’s largely fallen short of expectations.
“Honestly, my goal leaving (Port Royal) is to be in the top four,” Thornton said, alluding to Brandon Overton, who’s 75 points ahead in fourth. “I think third’s still in reach. First, second, it’s mathematically possible, but the odds of that happening are very slim.
“So I think we just keep our pace up and, like I said, have a really good night tomorrow. And after that, we’re going to a bunch of places I really like, too. So we got Knoxville, Brownstown, Pittsburgh, Eldora. So all those places I feel like our car is capable of winning, as long as the driver shows up.”
