West Virginia Motor Speedway
Multifaceted evolution raises RTJ's prospects
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Ricky Thornton Jr. with team owners Bobby and Jessica Koehler. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
MINERAL WELLS, W.Va. (Oct. 18) — Helping load his Koehler Motorsports team’s trailer after Ricky Thornton Jr. banked a colossal $225,000 weekend in the Dirt Track World Championship at West Virginia Motor Speedway, Bobby Koehler fielded a question that took him back to their first days together in July 2024.
How had his driver pulled himself — and the team — through months of inconsistency and disappointment to produce this remarkable turnaround?
For the 44-year-old team owner, the answer goes back to Thornton’s arrival at his Mount Airy, N.C., operation following his stunning release from SSI Motorsports. Koehler knew little about the Chandler, Ariz., driver beyond the talent that had vaulted him to the top of the sport. Suddenly, they were assembling a national touring team around a driver whose livelihood had been upended while he set a blistering pace atop the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series standings.
“When he come here, he knew enough. But we didn’t. We didn’t have the data. We didn’t have the notebooks,” Koehler said, “and in 48 hours, we left North Carolina with (son) Jordan’s stuff and come halfway across the country” to continue on the Lucas Oil tour.
“Since then,” he continued, “he decided that he was never going to be put in that situation again — that he can succeed knowing on his own.”
Koehler saw a driver determined to become more self-sufficient. The growth hasn’t always been obvious amid the wins, disappointments and personnel changes that have followed, but Thornton has developed into more than the exceptional behind-the-wheel racer Koehler hired. He’s become an increasingly hands-on mechanic and decision-maker while learning how to steady the people working alongside him.
Now, after weathering the most puzzling stretch of his career — one that produced merely four victories for Koehler Motorsports through June — Thornton has earned $290,000 over his last four races, counting bonuses. It’s the most lucrative four-race stretch of his career and has vaulted him back atop the DirtonDirt Top 25 poll for the first time in more than a year.
His fourth consecutive Lucas Oil victory Sunday delivered his second Dirt Track World Championship, his first four-race winning streak at the national level and further affirmation of a team finding its identity following the departure of veteran crew chief Anthony Burroughs.
“At the start of the year, our stuff wasn’t going good, and I was down on myself,” Thornton said. “I was trying not to be down on the guys. It was more being mad at myself. I’d made a bunch of mistakes, stuff like that. If you can minimize that stuff and keep levelheaded, keep your guys going good, eventually your luck’s going to turn around. Fortunately, it has.”
Even Burroughs, who left at the end of September to join Kyle Bronson’s operation, believed Thornton had the knowledge to thrive without him.
Speaking on the record for the first time since his departure, the 53-year-old veteran offered an endorsement Oct. 3 at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway that extended beyond his former driver’s talent behind the wheel.
“He’s a smart fellow. He knows his way around a race car,” Burroughs said. “It’s like I told him when I told him my decision and the reason why: Ricky doesn’t need a crew chief. He just needs a mechanic because he’s one of the better crew chiefs in the pit area.”
That knowledge has developed through years of working with established crew chiefs, building on a foundation laid at dirt tracks across central Arizona. Running family equipment out of his parents’ two-car garage, Thornton learned to work on just about anything he raced: street stocks, modifieds and Late Models.
“I kind of always did everything on my own growing up,” Thornton said. “Then, once I got into the Late Models, my best friend, Taylon Center, was the crew chief. He got me in the door at SSI and all that, and we worked together for a few years, and it was good. Then Burroughs came in.”
Maintaining his own equipment gave Thornton a starting point. Learning how to extract speed consistently against national competition — and diagnose what was missing when the wins stopped coming — required another level of understanding.
Center helped bring Thornton to an established SSI Motorsports operation in 2020 before Burroughs took over as crew chief in August 2021. Thornton and Burroughs went on to win nearly one-third of their feature starts — 49 of 149 from January 2023 until their unforeseen July 2024 separation with SSI dropping Thornton to bring Hudson O’Neal back.
That established partnership gave way to a different challenge at Koehler Motorsports, where Thornton went from learning under Burroughs’s wing to becoming the veteran presence others leaned on.
Six crew chiefs have worked with Thornton since the move: Kenny Payton, Nathan Sletto, Chris Madden, Zach Frields, Burroughs and now Justin Tharp. Through those transitions, Thornton has become a source of continuity, drawing on his growing mechanical knowledge while learning how to keep the people around him working together.
“We had a lot of people in and out,” Thornton said. “We knew right away, ‘OK, this guy’s going to finish the year. This guy’s going to make it this long. This guy’s going to do this.’ It was just making sure I didn’t destroy relationships at the same time.”
The turnover has fueled perceptions online that Thornton is difficult to work with, a characterization he dismisses by pointing to the relationships he’s maintained.
“I could still go talk to 99 percent of the people I’ve worked with, and they’re totally fine with me,” Thornton said. “Anytime stuff gets hard, there are people on our team I can still go to.”
From his perspective, the changes reflect the work of finding the right people and establishing the familiarity that helped make SSI so successful. Some arrangements, including those with Koehler shop manager Payton and Madden in 2024, were temporary from the outset. Others simply didn’t become lasting combinations.
“You don’t build a standout team right away, where all of a sudden it just clicks and it’s perfect,” Thornton said.
With Tharp and tire specialist Seth Hunter already signed on for 2027 — along with the team’s recent success — there’s a sense everything is aligning once again for Thornton.
Helping him get there is the hands-on approach he’s come to embrace.
“I don’t have to, but I feel like, for me to run better — I don’t know why — mentally, for me, I have to work on the car,” said Thornton, who Koehler said became more heavily involved in the team’s decisions as the season progressed.
His influence also shows in the smaller exchanges that shape how a crew functions. Hunter describes Thornton as a driver willing to explain something he already understands without making the person asking feel inadequate.
“When it comes to any questions I have or if I need help with anything, he doesn’t scream, he doesn’t yell, he doesn’t get mad,” Hunter said. “He explains everything to me.”
For the 21-year-old UNOH graduate, navigating his first national touring season after finishing school in May, Thornton’s willingness to teach has helped him learn on the fly.
“He takes the time out of his day to answer me,” Hunter said. “He also provides clear communication and explains the ‘why’ behind decisions, rather than just giving orders.”
Thornton acknowledges that managing himself has required work, too.
Early-season struggles left him frustrated with his mistakes. He averaged a 10.2 starting position across his 34 starts in the first 37 races of the Lucas Oil season. Last year on the tour, he started outside the top 10 only twice.
Keeping those feelings from weighing on his crew became another responsibility. His wife, Shae, often bore the frustration that followed him away from the racetrack.
“I feel like I owe a lot of it to my wife, too. She gets the brunt of a lot of it,” said Thornton, who averaged a sparkling 2.4 starting position over his final 11 Lucas Oil races. “Whenever I’m mad, she’s the first one who knows I’m mad. A lot of times, it’s not fair to her, but she understands at the same time.”
“I’ve just tried to stay better,” he added. “If it feels like your leader’s letting everybody down, usually that’s a downfall.”
He has an example in Koehler, whose response to disappointment has remained constructive. Thornton said Bobby and his wife Jessica have continued supporting the operation while asking where it can improve.
“It’s always been, ‘What can we do better? This is really good, but we need to work on this area. We need to work on that area,’ ” Thornton said. “It’s never been, ‘Hey, you guys suck. You’re on your own.’ As long as I’m under his leadership, I feel like we’re always going to be in good shape. Then I just try to do the best I can for my guys.
“Obviously, it’s more of a team sport now than it’s ever been,” Thornton added. “I feel like whenever I win, they win. Whenever I lose, it’s my fault for losing, not making them win.”
Koehler has always believed in his family and team culture. The car owner has been more hands-off with his race team this year, largely to help his 18-year-old son Evan develop concrete business he started last summer — Elite Ready Mix. Through it all, Koehler has remained well connected with Thornton.
“Me and Ricky talk pretty regularly — daily, weekly, nightly on the phone,” Koehler said, and the team’s investment isn’t going in vain. Including his $125,000 fourth-place points-fund payout, Thornton’s Lucas Oil earnings will exceed $670,000 this season, surpassing the $642,169 he amassed during his 2024 championship campaign.
Koehler estimates operating the team costs $1.2 million annually. While says he doesn’t place financial pressure on Thornton, he recognizes how personally his driver takes the responsibility.
“Ricky’s knowledge and his development’s amazing,” Koehler said. “With the right positive attitudes around him, it just shows his ability.”
Thornton never seriously doubted his future was with Koehler. Now, this sterling stretch — including 13 straight top-five finishes in features and semifeatures, matching his career-best streak — has quelled whispers that he might be better off elsewhere.
“I’m here for the long haul,” he said, “and I’m excited for our future.”
He feels something special coming together, renewing his belief that anything is possible once again.
“We want our team to be together the next 10 years, like Rocket1 did and stuff like that, where the guys have been together so long, they all know what each guy can do,” said Thornton, praising the Mark Richards-led team in Shinnston, W.Va., that on Sunday won its 10th career national title dating back to 2009 with Brandon Sheppard. “They can all do everything. That’s the part we’re trying to start working toward.”
