VADO, N.M. — Jonathan Davenport is a realist. He fully understands that winning six consecutive feature races during the Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout at Vado Speedway Park is a tall task. Doing so, of course, would pay a hefty bonus of $300,000 via the Penske Racing Shocks Paydirt Jackpot.

“You can’t win them all if you don’t win the first one,” quipped Davenport during his postrace interview after winning Saturday’s 40-lap opener.

You can’t win them all if you don’t win the second one either, so Davenport promptly went out and claimed another $10,000 victory Sunday, outdueling NASCAR star Kyle Larson of Elk Grove, Calif., in a thrilling race at the immaculate 3/8-mile Royal Jones-owned oval just south of Las Cruces. Now Davenport, of Blairsville, Ga., has his sites on the two biggest bonuses the six-race miniseries has to offer.

Along with massive $300,000 bonus (which would also include a new truck courtesy of Iowa-based Karl Chevrolet) for six victories, if a driver captures five features, he’ll earn an extra $100,000, while a driver winning four features will earn a $25,000 bonus. Davenport remains the only driver eligible to win either of the two big bonuses and has a legitimate shot at claiming the $25,000 bonus if nothing else. It’s a best-case scenario for the superstar driver.

“It’s going to be tough to win six. Is it doable? Yeah, but probably not,” said Davenport before Sunday's race. “I feel like we got as good a shot as anybody if it can be done. I didn’t plan on coming out here and winning six. I think I can win two or three of them for sure. And the bonus, now they moved it up to four (wins), so it’s going to be a tough row to hoe, trying to get to four. We’re going to do our best and just take it one night at a time.”

VIDEO: Watch highlights from Sunday's entertaining Wild West Shootout feature. 

Davenport admitted that the bonus was more than enough incentive to get his Lance Landers-owned Double L Motorsports team to make the long haul to New Mexico, but there are other goals he hopes to accomplish during the trip. He’s working with two new crew members as crew chief Cory Fostvedt and tire specialist Michael Bixby have joined he and team engineer Vinny Guliani on the road this season. Getting the four to function as a well-oiled unit is at the top of Davenport’s wish list before the team returns to the grueling Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series in 2023.

“Obviously that’s going to be in the back of my mind, to try to get a bonus,” said Davenport, whose mindboggling 2022 season of $2 million in earnings included the Eldora Million. “Ultimately that’s what we came out here for, but we came out here to try to grow as a team and to learn one another before we go back on the Lucas Series and have to tackle that so we’ll already be hitting the ground running.”

Fostvedt said getting off to a good start this week has been a big positive as he replaces veteran crew chief Jason Durham and Bixby steps in for former crewman Tyler Bragg.

“I think it was good just because it gives us a chance for the whole crew to kind of gel together,” Fostvedt said. “Everybody gets to know each other. Everybody gets to figure out strengths and weaknesses, where we can kind of get off on the right foot. It just gives everybody a lot of confidence. It gives Jonathan confidence in me. Jonathan will have confidence in Vinny. Jonathan will have confidence in Michael. Michael is doing a great job on tires. Vinnie is doing a great job all around. Vinnie, he could do anything. And I just feel like we have the best driver out there.

“(Early success) is very important and I’m very very happy that everything is going well. Practice night we got out a car that we did a little work to over the winter. Mainly we got it out just to shake it down, make sure (Davenport is) comfortable and happy with it, which he was, which is a bug sigh of relief for us to know that we’ve got that car back in our inventory running very very well. Right now we’re all very happy with how everything is going. Everyone is working together very very well. Longhorn is doing a great job and our engines are great. We couldn’t be happier.”

Guliani said the transition has been almost seamless, in part because of the skill and effort both Fostvedt and Bixby have brought to the team.

“It’s a lot easier when you’ve got really good guys coming on board,” Guliani said. “We had really good guys last year and the year before that but we’ve got a program and we do things the way we do them, so we just try to stick to that program and these guys have been awesome coming on board buying into that. It’s like having a coach and players you know … not that any of us is the coach or the players, but we just get along good and we do it the way we’ve been doing it.

“We’ve got a plan when we get to the racetrack. We’ve got a plan at the shop. We’re organized and that makes it a lot easier on everybody. I know Jonathan pretty well and know his idiosyncrasies and getting to learn these guys and they’re getting learn us. It’s fun and so far so good.”

So far, so good indeed. Davenport cruised by race-long leader Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., on lap 26 and went on to win Saturday's race unchallenged. He then led all 40 laps of Sunday's race from the outside front row, though he had a stiff challenge during the second half of the feature from Larson. After the opener, Davenport warned his new crew that they wouldn’t all so easy.

“I guess you could say it’s good in one sense and it’s a bad in another because it was awful easy (Saturday) night,” Davenport said. “You know we didn’t have no problems. That’s what I told Michael. They ain’t all going to be like that you know. We didn’t have any scrapes or bruises throughout (Saturday) night. Everything fell our way and it went good, but you know that, that makes everybody know that they can do it and takes a little pressure off everybody. So now we’re just ready to get back where they can do their job still 100 percent. You know, it was good having an easy first night. Obviously I’m still learning Cory. I’m still learning Michael, too. So we all gotta grow together and make this thing the best we can.”

And then there’s the little matter of that big bonus. Davenport’s already in the driver’s seat — both literally and figuratively. A win on Wednesday could make him start thinking about what color truck he wants.

“(The bonus) is always in the back of your mind, but you can’t ever look that far ahead because at the end of the day anybody can win this thing,” Fostvedt said. “We’re still working as hard as we can, as is everybody in the pits. There’s 48 cars here and about any of them can win, so you can’t ever really let up. It’s always in the back of your mind.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it, but like I said, we just kind of take it day by day, cross our T’s and dot our I’s and make sure everything is going as good as we can get. Everything that we can control we try to control. There’s always stuff that’s out of your control, but I guess as long as everybody kind of does their job and gives 100 percent, which everybody is, then I feel like it’s an attainable goal.”