ROSSBURG, Ohio (June 8) — With Ricky Thornton Jr. roaring into Dream XXIX weekend at Eldora Speedway as the hottest driver in Dirt Late Model racing, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he closely resembled the half-mile oval’s most recent crown jewel dominators — Jonathan Davenport and Brandon Overton — as he cruised to a $12,000 victory in Thursday night’s second semifeature.

Even the 32-year-old native of Chandler, Ariz., who now lives in Martinsville, Ind., felt like Davenport and Overton as he circled the famed track.

“I think so, because I’d say probably the biggest thing where Overton and J.D. have been better than everybody is, like, they get in the corner, they get to the center, and then their car has that certain characteristic,” Thornton said while his SSI Motorsports Longhorn machine was going through postrace technical inspection in the pit area. “It’s hard to explain without really knowing — their car just gets in that attitude, they can drive up off the corner. They’re not relying on the cushion, they’re not relying on the moisture.

“Tonight, that’s how our car was. I could go run around the top if I wanted to, but I didn’t have to. Those guys, it’s kind of the same way. If you can make the middle of the racetrack your best line, that’s the key when it comes to these long 100-lappers.”

Thornton said the feeling of a Davenport- and Overton-like car has “come and gone” for him in previous Eldora appearances. On Thursday it stayed with him for the 25-lap distance, buoying his hopes as he looks ahead to Saturday’s $129,000 winner’s check.

“I’ve never had it where it lasted the whole feature, and tonight it lasted the whole feature,” he said. “And I feel like, really, we were on the right tires for how slick the track was.”

VIDEO: Ricky Thornton Jr. talks to Derek Kessinger after his win Thursday night.

Of course, everything seems to be going right for Thornton since he experienced the heartbreaking hiccup of losing an apparent $50,000 triumph in May 27’s Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., to a four-spot penalty for failing the postrace deck height measurement. Thursday was his third win in as many feature starts since the Show-Me — and he might have been in line for a fourth checkered flag if last Saturday’s Historic 100 finale at West Virginia Motor Speedway in Mineral Wells hadn’t been rained out and ultimately canceled (he was scheduled to start from the pole in the $50,000-to-win event).

“We all met after that (Show-Me 100) deal in the trailer after it all calmed down, and we gave each other a fist bump and told everybody, ’Good job,’ ” Thornton’s crew chief, Anthony Burroughs, said when asked how the team responded to the Show-Me 100-losing penalty. “Not that we needed any motivation, but it just lit a fire under us. I mean, we got two of the best guys in D.J. (Williams) and (Christopher) Jayco, and with Ricky, our team’s just excellent.

“We got a lot of confidence. We feel good about what we’re doing. Thanks to Bilstein (Shocks) and Longhorn and (Bilstein/Longhorn engineer) Kevin (Rumley)… they’ve just helped us out a ton, and we took the tools that they gave us and put ’em to what Ricky’s looking for. And I’ve said ever since I started working here, and finally people are starting to notice — he’s one of the best race car drivers in the country, and he’s getting a lot of confidence.

“Hopefully we can keep it rolling,” he added. “We’re not gonna win ’em all, but we’re gonna ride it as long as we can.”

Burroughs was on such a high after Thornton recorded his 11th overall Late Model victory of 2023 — doubling his career-high win total in the division since he joined SSI Motorsports full-time in 2020 — that he even had no problem with his driver slapping the wall hard enough in both Thursday’s heat and feature to bend the car’s right-rear spoiler.

“We’ve got a little bit of work to do,” Burroughs said, glancing at the damaged bodywork. “But I told him ever since I got here, if we’re back there running for 20th and he knocks it off, I’m like, ‘Argh!’ But he can knock it off every night if he’s winning. We’ll fix it.”

A Run On The Wild Side

Josh Rice of Verona, Ky., didn’t particularly want to spend Thursday’s second 25-lap preliminary feature tossing his Rick Jones-owned Rocket Chassis around Eldora’s extreme high side, scraping the concrete wall and bouncing on the edge of disaster repeatedly. He knows it would be almost impossible to win Saturday’s Dream finale racing like that.

But when asked about his hard-charging style, the 24-year-old driver responded that he felt he didn’t have any other choice.

“I had to” run like that, Rice said after toughing out a fourth-place finish. “That thing was terrible. I just wasn’t very stuck at all. I wasn’t right-rear stuck, so I just had to use the wall to be stuck.

“I figured out how to ride it all the way around in (turns) three and four. I couldn’t get steered early, and finally I was backing it in the corner. I was driving it like we were on a 3/8-mile or something.

“But that ain’t pretty,” he continued. “We want to try and get the car better where we ain’t gotta do that. We got some work to do for sure.”

Rice certainly drew the most attention in the A-main as he blasted from the sixth starting to third on the opening lap, fell back to fifth on lap three and swapped fourth place twice before finally gaining the spot from Jonathan Davenport with a lap-23 slider.

“The hole down here in (turn) two was killing me, off of two, and I finally figured out how to get all the way around the top of it and I started making up a lot of ground,” Rice said. “I was trying to lift for it, but once I figured out I could just wheelspin through it I could do better.”

Despite kicking off his weekend with a top-five finish, Rice wasn’t especially pleased with his performance. While he had no qualms with the 4-race-old Vic Hill-built engine under its hood — he called it “a bad son of a bitch” that had enough extra power to let him “floor it” when he needed to compensate for a push — he admitted that he was contemplating pulling out his older 2020-model Rocket car.

“I’ve been a lot better here,” said Rice, who has two career starts in the Dream’s finale (sixth in 2015, eighth in ’22). “We’ve been everywhere with the setup today. (Rocket’s) Mark (Richards) had us try some stuff and then we kind of went back to our old stuff for the feature. It’s like we didn’t change anything really. 

“This is a ’22 (model) it’s not really reacting very well right now for whatever reason. Something’s not right.”

Rice paused, and then concluded: “We can’t do that for 100 laps. I can’t do that for 100 laps. I’m wore out after 25.”

Searching For An Answer

Immediately after the finish of Thursday’s second 25-lap preliminary feature, Bobby Pierce and his crew-chief father, Bob, stood alongside Bobby’s car in the pit area, engaged in a deep conversation about what had led to the 26-year-old dismal 21st-place finish.

The obvious answer was the cut right-rear tire that caused Pierce to spin between turns one and two on lap nine after he had climbed ever-so-slightly from the 11th starting spot to ninth place. But the younger Pierce wasn’t quite so sure that it was merely a flat tire that dive-bombed his effort on opening night of Dream XXIX.

“Something felt like it was off with the car from the start,” Pierce said. “It felt like a shock was messed up or something. I don’t think the tire was just going down … it felt like it was leaning over on the right-rear and the tire was basically rubbing the frame until it went flat.”

According to Pierce, bolting on a new tire didn’t change the car at all. He struggled for the remainder of the distance, finishing one lap down to winner Ricky Thornton Jr.

The outing certainly wasn’t the type of start Pierce was hoping for in his first Eldora crown jewel appearance in a Longhorn Chassis, but the night wasn’t completely disheartening. He had something to smile about with his successful rollout of a special Dream wrap on which fans could purchase a cancer ribbon decal to stick on the rear deck of his car with Pierce donating a portion of proceeds to cancer research.

“Got a lot of passengers riding with me this weekend,” Pierce wrote on Facebook above photos of the colorful ribbons stickers adorning his machine’s bodywork. 

Odds and Ends

Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, and Spencer Hughes of Meridian, Miss., retired from the first 25-lap preliminary feature with terminal engine woes, forcing both teams to immediately begin making powerplant changes before heading to bed for the night. … Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., began his bid for a fourth consecutive victory in the Dream finale with a surprisingly quiet evening. He transferred through a B-main and finished ninth in the second preliminary feature; his advance from the 22nd starting spot did indicate, however, that he came alive as the night progressed. … After Kyle Bronson of Brandon, Fla., completed a march from the 20th starting spot to a ninth-place finish in the first 25-lapper, his pulled into his pit stall with his car sporting crushed right-corner bodywork and a gash in its right-side door. … Former Dream winner Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., finished sixth in the second preliminary feature after starting 15th and vaulting from 10th to sixth in the six circuits following a lap-nine restart. … Young drivers who qualified for preliminary features in their first-ever Eldora starts: Dustin Sorenson of Rochester, Minn. (finished 20th in the first 25-lapper) and Tyler Clem of St. Petersburg, Fla. (19th in the second feature). … Thursday’s program saw heat races beginning at 8:49 p.m. and the second preliminary feature ending at 11:28 p.m.x