WHEATLAND, Mo. (May 25) — Jonathan Davenport didn’t look like a crown jewel winner when he returned to his team’s pit stall at Lucas Oil Speedway after dominating Saturday ’s Show-Me 100. He didn’t feel like one either — for that moment, at least — considering he was running in and out of his trailer rather than celebrating his $50,000 victory.

With the rain forecast to arrive by midnight indeed starting to fall, Davenport had to eschew the usual postrace fun that follows a major triumph in order to hastily help his crew load up his car and equipment before the heavy stuff poured down. He grabbed spare tires, picked up assorted pieces of bodywork, put away tools — not exactly the way anyone wants to bask in the glow of a great accomplishment.

“It does kind of suck,” Davenport said once he had finished the mad scramble and had a minute to stand inside his trailer still wearing his driver’s suit. “I ain’t had time to talk (by phone) to my dad or my wife or (son) Blane or anybody. We didn’t have a big crowd (of fans) out here, but there were some people standing out in the rain so I went and made sure I signed their shirts or whatever they wanted just to show my appreciation to them.

“It would’ve been cool if we could hang out and have a beer, but now we gotta hurry up and load up and leave before we get hail damage and all that. It kind of sucks, but we’ll celebrate when we get back home tomorrow.”

The 40-year-old superstar from Blairsville, Ga., did have his victory lane moment in the spotlight before the skies opened. His crew chief Cory Fostvedt and first-year crew member Zach Houston joined him, as well as his car owner Lance Landers, Landers’s son Gavin and sponsor Steve Martin of Nutrien Ag Solutions.

But the party ended there, which was an awkward situation for a driver who has piled up victories in Dirt Late Model’s most prestigious events for the past decade. He’s accustomed to savoring major victories, but on this occasion the severe weather restricted him to just rehashing his performance in a quick interview before heading out the pit gate in hopes of outrunning the storms rolling in from the west.

There was plenty for Davenport to talk about. Most notable was his tire selection: the Hoosier NLMT 3 that he bolted on his Double L Motorsports Longhorn machine’s right-rear corner, a choice that went against the grain in a 33-car field that saw the vast majority of teams opt for the harder 4-compound tire for the right-rear.

What prompted Davenport to go softer with his right-rear tire for a long-distance race? He just drew on his experience at the 3/8-mile oval plus a healthy dose of gut feeling.

“Last year (at the Show-Me 100), I remember back after they wet the track so much, I was rolling around there with hard tires on and restrictor plates and I’m like, ‘Hell, I think I could lap half the field if I had soft tires and then go from there,’” Davenport said. “I feel like it was wetter today (than 2023) because they ran (water trucks) on it all day and it really hadn’t changed that much (through Saturday’s B-mains and last-chance race). There was just barely a black streak here and there, so I thought we’d just gamble.

“We normally would run a 2 (compound) left-front, 3 right-front, 3 left-rear, 4 right-rear. That’s what everybody had on in hot laps.”

The unexpected announcement Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series officials made shortly before the 10-minute horn was blown to line up the Show-Me 100 — that the race distance was being shortened to 80 laps because of concerns that the speeds produced by the heavy racetrack would be especially hard on engines and possibly cause cars to run out of fuel — didn’t factor into Davenport’s choice of a 3-compound tire.

“I actually didn’t know it until we had already made the call to do it,” Davenport said. “I’m like, ‘Well, hell, that just solidifies our decision.’ I was gonna go with a 4, but then last night, I mean, it was pretty black (for Friday’s 40-lap feature) and I felt like the 4 would’ve been better, and a 3 beat us (with Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., winning with the softer tire while Davenport finished fourth using 4). So I’m like, ‘Well, (the 3) went 40 (laps) and (the surface) was already black, so let’s just put it on.’”

The softer led Davenport to employ an aggressive pace. He vaulted from the fourth starting spot to the lead on the opening lap and then tore off, pulling away from his closest pursuers like he was attempting to finish the race in record time. A caution flag on lap 10 threatened to derail his plan to lap cars with abandon, but he drove away again following the restart and was over a straightaway ahead of then second-running Thornton by the next slowdown on lap 22.

“I felt like when you take off everybody kind of gets in a rhythm and kind of rides to see what plays out,” Davenport said. “So normally you have a long green-flag run to begin with, and I was hoping that’s how it was gonna go.

“I was going pretty hard, but I wasn’t going hard enough to hurt my tires because I knew I needed ‘em for later. I just knew all the guys in the back (getting lapped) were on hard stuff so I could drive right up through there.”

Davenport’s approach wasn’t without some danger. His night nearly ended on lap 22 when Neil Baggett of Columbus, Miss., and Brennon Willard of Lebanon, Mo., tangled between turns three and four with Davenport charging toward them.

“Oh my God, that was so close,” recalled Davenport, who took evasive action to slip between the two spinning cars while making only the slightest contact with Willard’s right-rear quarterpanel. “I held my breath going through there. Luckily they just kept doing what they was doing and they didn’t stand on the gas and try to spin around, because I actually had to slide off the brake pedal to miss the first one and then I gassed up and went back the other way to miss the other one.

“That was close. That would’ve definitely took us out of the race right there. We got lucky.”

Never again did Davenport face a truly concerning threat en route to a flag-to-flag victory. Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., briefly pulled within a few car lengths of the leader before the race’s ninth and final caution flag flew on lap 62, but Davenport’s mind was put somewhat at ease with his knowledge that the Rocket Chassis house car driver also was using a 3-compound right-rear tire.

“Me and (Rocket1 owner) Mark (Richards) talked (before the feature),” Davenport said. “We was up there (looking at the track) and we was actually riding motorcycles back, and we was talking back-and-forth and I said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘I’m thinking a 2 (on three corners) and a 3 (right-rear),’ and he just kind of looked at me. I don’t know if he was already thinking it or not, but we talked about it.”

What actually worried Davenport most was his feeling that the 50-year-old McCreadie might have destiny on his side. Not only was he due to break out after a slow start since he debuted in the Rocket1 seat in March, he was racing just eight days after his father, legendary big-block modified Hall of Famer Barefoot Bob McCreadie, died at the age of 73.

“Then McCreadie got to second … you know how these things work out,” Davenport said. “You know, he just lost his dad, and I’m like, ‘If I’m gonna run second, it’d be all right.’ Like, I wanted to win for myself and the team, but I wouldn’t have minded finishing second to Timmy if that’s what was meant to be.

“We’re still good buddies. Hell, we was talking right before the feature, so I had a little small part of my heart that was pulling for him too. It would’ve definitely been cool for the week he’s had, just the whole deal.”

Davenport said he knew McCreadie would “be on the gas” in pursuit of his first victory with the Rocket house car operation, and, during the lap-53 red flag for drivers to change helmets or add tearoffs because of visibility problems, he learned from Fosvedt that T-Mac was on the charge. But J.D. wasn’t going to be denied down the stretch and managed to steadily lengthen his edge and defeat McCreadie by a commanding margin of 5.296 seconds.

“We’re normally really good here until it gets rough, and it started getting rough and choppy and I started bottoming out and pushing,” Davenport said. “Once it does that and your car’s tight anyway, it’s even more physical to try and manhandle it because it’s always wanting to push.

“I moved down a little bit (to compensate) and I was floating across the holes with wheel-spin, but if you caught it wrong then it would jerk the front end around so you just gotta grip the steering wheel and hang on.”

Davenport’s triumph continued impressive run of success at Wheatland, a track that he’s become especially adept at in recent years. His only previous Show-Me 100 victory came in 2015, but Saturday marked his 13th career checkered flag at the pristine facility, including a $27,000 sweep of April 12-13’s Lucas Oil MLRA Spring Nationals and five wins in 2023 highlighted by his memorable victory over a group of well-known motorsports names as a guest driver in last August’s SRX Series event.

While Davenport’s Wheatland hot streak cooled to start the Show-Me 100 weekend with preliminary night finishes of ninth (Thursday) and third (Friday), he knew circumstances had prevented him from showing his full strength.

“We was really two days behind because we had ignition problems (on Thursday),” said Davenport, who made his 11 Show-Me 100 feature start since 2011. “The whole time we was out there (winning a heat) we had a problem, so we had to run the other car (in the feature and start in the last row). And then (Friday), we felt OK, and then we got in the feature and we had the front end knocked off of it on the first lap (in a homestretch crape with eventual winner Thornton). I didn’t really know it was that bad until today when we started looking at it and we had to change everything (all bolt-on front end parts) pretty much.

“Once again,” he added, “I worked my guys pretty hard today.”

The work paid off for Davenport, who felt he could’ve — maybe should’ve — won the last two Show-Me 100s. In 2022, however, he spun himself out in lapped traffic while in contention for the lead and in ’23 he ran out of gas late in the distance when an overheating issue required him to continually rev his engine under caution.

And Davenport did, in fact, down one celebratory postrace beverage. After he asked his crewman Zach Houston if he was going to drink a beer with him, Houston initially responded, “No sir,” before Davenport encouraged him to go fetch a few.

“All right,” Houston said. “Give me 30 seconds.”

Moments later Houston reappeared at the doorway to the team’s trailer with mini-sized cans of Michelob Ultra. He handed one to Davenport and they proceeded to toast Davenport’s latest addition to his bulging resume.

A big bash it wasn’t considering the weather conditions, but it was another memory for Davenport in a career already filled with them.