BRISTOL, Tenn. — Despite no practice time and having to start from the rear of the 150-lap race, Jonathan Davenport managed to finish 14th in his first-ever NASCAR Truck Series race Thursday night at the dirt-covered Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.

Davenport, who relinquished his 25th-starting position due to unapproved adjustments so the Spires Motorsports team could properly repair a hole in the oil cooler after a rough heat race earlier in the day, ran as low as 32nd in the race that featured 10 cautions.

On the whole, it was a successful ending to a long day that also saw Davenport qualify 21st for Easter Sunday’s 250-lap Cup Series main event.

“I wish we would have got some practice. I think that would have definitely helped us,” Davenport said. “I don’t know if it would have helped everybody else as much as it would me. I’d like to have been able to tune on the Truck a little bit and see what I would have liked more.

“It really changed more than I thought it would over a run. We started tight, then get loose. We tried to adjust on it. I was probably just telling the wrong information without knowing. But everything turned out pretty good. Made all the laps. Didn’t go a lap down. Don’t think I pissed too many people off. It was a good night."

Bringing the No. 7 Chevrolet Silverado home in one piece was mission accomplished in and of itself. Sixty-six of Saturday’s 150 laps were completed under caution, and the first pileup nearly ruined Davenport’s night.

Running toward the tail of the field as five cars tangled and scattered across Bristol’s turn-two banking, Davenport found just enough room to squeeze through the retaining wall and a spinning Ben Rhodes.

That sequence alone propelled Davenport from 28th to 23rd. By the end of the 40-lap opening stage he advanced two more positions to sit right outside the top-10. From there, Davenport hovered around 18th and 24th until the race’s final caution with 18 laps left, doing what he can to fully adjust to the complexities of major league stock car racing.

“The whole thing is different,” Davenport said. “There’s shifting, and we have fans on in there. I can turn the air condition on from my helmet. Just things like that. And the swifter, I pulled it out one time and the fuzzy part (to clean the windshield) was gone.”

So, to compromise for the lack of serviceable cleaning equipment, Davenport took off one of his gloves in an attempt to dust off his view through the windshield.

“I was like, 'Would it be frowned be upon here to pull my glove off?” Davenport said, explaining his in-race thought process. “It got really dusty that one run there. It probably looked like I was waving at the fans.”

Davenport made up 10 positions over the final 21 laps, going from 24th on the second-to-last restart before reeling off four more spots on the last restart with nine laps left. Last year’s top-ranked Dirt Late Model driver felt so confident he nearly pushed the Truck too hard and “about ruined it on the last lap there.”

“I was trying to get a little bit more and about spun it out coming off turn two,” Davenport said. “Luckily I saved it and didn’t stick it in the fence and didn’t tear it up too bad for these guys.”

Davenport can surely put Saturday’s experience to good use in his Cup debut Easter Sunday night, particularly the way the track chances, the routine of shifting (he missed a shift on a restart with four laps left in his Cup heat that cost him two spots and a runner-up), and the overall race craft of stock car racing. He’ll mull over his Saturday some more before fully applying the day’s experiences to his Cup debut on national television.

“I’m going to go back and digest it. I’m sure there’s quite a bit,” Davenport said. “And the longevity of that race, I’ve never ran a 150-lap race. Hell, I’m ready to go another 100 (laps). That’s definitely not as rough on me as a Dirt Late Model hauling ass around here. Yeah, that was fun.”