GEORGETOWN, Del. (Aug. 24) — Ricky Thornton Jr. never ceases to amaze his crew chief Anthony Burroughs.

Amid a spectacular season in which Thornton has made Dirt Late Model magic on a regular basis, the 32-year-old native of Chandler, Ariz., mesmerized his head wrench once again with an otherworldly blast from sixth-to-first in a matter of six circuits to snatch a $18,049 victory in Thursday’s 49-lap Melvin L. Joseph Memorial at Georgetown Speedway.

“I don’t know man. He’s something else,” Burroughs said, shaking his head in disbelief as he watched Thornton pose for pictures in victory lane. “That was … I told him before he took his helmet off, ’That was all race car driver right there.’ ”

That Thornton continued his furious onslaught on the 2023 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series with his 12th full-field triumph (and 16th overall, including four semifeature victories) was no surprise, but the flair he flashed in making a late-race rally was head-turning. He asserted his superiority by exploding forward following a lap-35 restart to grab the lead from Brandon Overton on lap 41 and then march away to beat the Evans, Ga., driver by a healthy 2.840 seconds.

Even Thornton was a bit more charged up than usual after pulling off his latest dramatics.

“It feels really good,” a beaming Thornton said upon climbing out of his SSI Motorsports Longhorn car for postrace inspection near the Lucas Oil Series trailer in the pit area.

This was a race that seemed to have slipped away from the fourth-starting Thornton as he found himself sitting in sixth place when the fifth and final caution flag flew on lap 35. The slowdown for seventh-running Hudson O’Neal’s right-front flat tire, though, proved to be the break Thornton needed.

“We didn’t really have the car that we thought we were gonna have I guess is the easiest way to put it,” Thornton said, explaining how he slid backward. “The track stayed faster, longer, than I thought it would.

“I’d say about five laps before that (lap-35) yellow came out I started running the top and I felt like I could keep really good momentum down the front straightaway. But without a yellow, I don’t think I was gonna get by Terbo (fifth-running Tyler Erb), so it just worked out. I got to restart on the bottom and I got a really good start and (fourth-place) Devin (Moran) got tight in (turn) one, so that let me get by him and Terbo.

“And then we went down into (turn) three and (early leader) Garrett (Alberson) barely missed the bottom a little bit,” Thornton added, “so that let me get a good run off of four and I was able to get by him and get to third.”

Suddenly, Thornton had Overton, who had passed Alberson for the lead on lap 18, and second-place Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn., squarely in his sights with plenty of laps remaining. He quickly ran them down and, heading to the start-finish line to score lap 40, swung around the outside of Marlar exiting turn four and promptly cut to the inside of Overton down the frontstretch and powered ahead through turns one and two.

“Everyone kind of moved off the top of three and four,” Thornton said. “I think there were just enough crumbs out there where, like, I was able to get to it and almost develop a cushion. Then once I was able to get by Mikey and get to Overton, I felt like I had a good enough run off of turn four that I’d be able to cross him.

“I got almost too close to (Overton) and I did a wheelie down the front straightaway. It was kind of crazy. I had no air on my nose and it just kind of picked the whole front end up, just before the flagstand. I was able to turn under him after that and get some air on the nose and the nose came back down.

“I didn’t know if he was gonna turn to the bottom or not (entering turn one), and he didn’t and I ended up just staying in it and sliding him,” he continued. “I knew that was my best bet. I figured he was gonna be able to slide back there in turn three, but I never saw him. After that, I knew he had a really good car, so I just ran as hard as I could. I gave it my all. I wanted this one pretty bad. I was like, ’Well, you can’t really slow down now. You gotta keep driving kind of wild.’”

Thornton stayed hard on the gas to finish off his 23rd overall victory of 2023, push his first-place earnings for the season to over the half-million-dollar mark ($506,595) — and leave the 50-year-old Burroughs standing in awe.

“Man, I don’t know what to say,” Burroughs said. “We just keep working hard, doing the same thing every week, trying to get better, and he’s just driving the wheels of it.

“He don’t have no quit in him, and he’s got confidence. He can do what he wants to, and he’s a really good thinker. It’s just instinct.”

Added Burroughs on Thornton’s performance: “We didn’t give him the winning car tonight. We were too tight, we were unbalanced, but then, just like the way it’s been all year, the track slowed down a little bit and our posture came back, and then he just took off.”

Burroughs wasn’t the only person to notice how Thornton continued a season-long trend with his late surge. The drivers he vanquished identified the same traits in the Lucas Oil Series points leader.

“He can sit right there and ride,” said Overton, whose runner-up finish kept him winless since a $50,000 World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series triumph on April 22 at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala. “It’s the same thing I was doing when I was kicking their ass (in 2021). You can sit back there and ride and you can watch what everybody’s doing, and when it’s time to go, you just go.

“I’ve had my year. J.D.’s (Jonathan Davenport) had his year. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason why we’re that fast. It’s just our time, and right now you’re seeing it with him. Obviously they’ve got a good team and he does a great job … they’ve got something figured out. We’ve all been there. So hat’s off to them. They’re doing a helluva job.”

Marlar, who finished third, felt the race’s caution flags flew at points when he was at his best and ready to strike. Perhaps, in fact, he might have been able to stay in front if he had reached first place. Nevertheless, he conceded that circumstances didn’t work in his favor and Thornton was the ultimate master of the night.

“But there at the end, the fastest car ended up winning,” said Marlar, who, unlike Thornton and Overton, previously visited Georgetown (he finished fourth in a 2018 WoO event). “Ricky’s car has so much traction. He can kind of drive a little more crooked and still have traction than I can, so I gotta work on that.

“Aero(dynamics)  is such a big thing here, and he’s on his game right now. He’s zigging when he needs to zig and zagging when he needs to zag.”

Marlar detailed how Thornton seized the initiative to shoot past him and Overton.

“So I caught Brandon in the bottom,” Marlar said, looking back to the moments after the lap-35 restart. “Well, then he got to protecting the bottom, and then I rode around the outside of one and two and had a huge run but I didn’t want to show him my nose, so I just let off and hoped that he didn’t hear me out there.

“Then he went and backed it down into three, rolled the bottom again, and I rolled the bottom and got a real good corner there and stayed with him. Then we went down the front straightaway and I thought, Here’s where I’m gonna go around him, and he went high that lap, so it aero’d me real bad; I was kind of half ready for it, but I didn’t know for sure if he would and he did, and that aero’d me. So then we come back down (to turns three and four) and run the bottom again, and I thought, Well, I guess I’ll go back to the bottom and try to pass him there, so I went to the bottom that lap but Brandon and Ricky went to the top and Ricky passed me and passed him.

“Ricky’s car was just fast,” he continued. “At the end of these races he really comes on … and Ricky smoked us again.”

New Waverly, Texas’s Erb, who finished fourth, simply noted that Thornton is behind the wheel of “the best car here.”

“When your car’s good, you don’t have to kill yourself for the first 30 (laps),” said Erb, whose previous Georgetown starts produced WoO finishes of seventh (2017) and 16th (’18). “He’s just hanging out until it’s time to get paid and then he drops the hammer … you can do s--- like that when you know you’re good.

“It happens every year. Somebody’s good, and he’s good. If I was him I’d race every night, too, and get everything I can get. It’s just the way racing is right now. It’s so close, you’re off two-tenths and you start last and you suck. He’s never off two-tenths so he never sucks. He’s just got it figured out.”

Erb had an up-close view of Thornton’s prowess at Georgetown, not only on the track but in the pit area since he ended up parked alongside the SSI Motorsports trailer. He mused that he might need to stay close to the sizzling RTJ during this weekend’s Rumble by the River at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway.

“I haven’t said two words to him all year, and I parked by him tonight and ran better,” Erb said. “So tomorrow I guess I’ll park by him again and maybe it’ll rub off.”