Is Jonathan Davenport … inevitable?

After the 40-year-old superstar from Blairsville, Ga., waltzed to a blowout flag-to-flag victory worth $20,000 in Wednesday's 50-lap Castrol FloRacing Night in America feature at Eldora Speedway, the prevailing feeling was that come Saturday he’s destined for a record-tying sixth career World 100 globe trophy.

• Castrol FloRacing Night In America Results At Eldora Speedway
• 2024 World 100 Entry List Tops 100 Drivers At Eldora Speedway
• How To Watch The World 100 At Eldora Speedway

That’s how strong Davenport looked in his winning performance to kick off four consecutive nights of action at the famed half-mile oval. And that’s how overwhelming his reputation has become at a track where he’s captured 10 major triumphs since 2015, including his second straight and third overall six-figure Dream payday three months ago.

For his part, Davenport seemed quite aware of the impact his midweek domination had on his competition. He smiled satisfyingly when told that everyone in the pit area was losing sleep over how to deal with him.

“That’s awesome,” Davenport said, realizing it’s always a positive to be in the heads of rivals. “Just like we have been with other people all year, the more you work on your s---, the more you slow down normally. I mean, you’re always trying to get better. I’m trying stuff all the time, and you’re always gonna find more stuff that doesn’t work than what does work. You slow down trying to get faster a lot.”

While no one was waving a white flag of surrender with two nights of preliminaries ahead of Saturday’s 54th World 100, there was a sense that outrunning his No. 49 will take a herculean effort. The drivers closest to Davenport at the end of Wednesday’s headliner — if more than seven seconds and well over a straight behind can be considered close — led the way in acknowledging his superiority.

Runner-up Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, and third-place finisher Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., were standing side-by-side near the technical inspection area after the feature when asked simultaneously what it was going to take to deal with Davenport the rest of the week. 

“A lot of f------ speed,” Moran said with a smirk.

“Put my car and Devin’s car together,” Thornton added, “we might be able to stay on the same straightaway.”

Meanwhile, half the pit area away on the inside of turns one and two, Bob Pierce, the Hall of Fame driver now turning wrenches for his son Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., sighed when presented the same question about Davenport.

“Whew, man,” Bob Pierce said, shaking his head after a race in which his son performed admirably with a fifth-place finish after starting eighth but falling back as far as 11th early. “(Bobby) picked up a lot of cars right there at the end before (the surface) rubbered up, but to beat J.D., it’s gonna take a lot more. He’s the man here right now. Just like when Scott (Bloomquist) was so dominant, and (Billy) Moyer dominant, and (Donnie) Moran, Larry Moore in his day, and (Jeff) Purvis.”

Moran, 27, ran second behind Davenport from lap 15 to the finish, but he never threatened. Driving the same Longhorn Chassis that he debuted during June’s Dream activities — and piloted to a $25,000 preliminary victory — but hasn’t raced since, he couldn’t match Davenport.

“He just was way more balanced than I am,” said Moran, who tallied his 16th runner-up finish of the 2024 season (he’s won 11 times). “He could enter wherever he wanted and still turn down the hill and drive straight off the corner — and drive with authority. You can really get by cars that way. I couldn’t quite do that as well, and that’s what I feel like we have to work on. 

“Out of 80 cars, second isn’t bad,” he added. “But when you’re chasing the 49 (of Davenport) at Eldora, and he gets a head start like that (starting on the outside the front row), it’s gonna be hard to catch him.”

VG Performance’s Vinny Guliani, a Longhorn Chassis and Bilstein Shocks consultant who counts Moran as a client, noted where Davenport had his edge.

“We just need to ‘carve’ a little better,” Guliani said, referring to getting more traction in the corners. “(Davenport) can just carve so good, carve and come down the hill without being sideways. Everybody wants to tighten up in the slick, well, you tighten up so much you can’t make the corner carving right-front first. They’re all tightened way up so they slide. 

“If we can get that right-front steering just a little better where (Moran) can drive straight … he said he could leave the corner good, but we look loose, tailed-out in the corner. Well, that’s because we can’t carve like J.D. He looks like he’s on asphalt, so it’s a lot easier to keep the tires attached to the track when all four of them are tracking correctly. If you can’t carve as good as him and you have to slip it sideways, you’re never gonna catch back up, and, in the long run, his (tire) edges are going to be better than ours because we’re sliding.”

Thornton, 33, remarked that his Koehler Motorsports Longhorn machine lacked vs. Davenport similarly to Moran’s.

“To get my car tight enough to where I wanna steer like I need to, you either do have the traction or you don’t have the traction,” Thornton said. “I feel like I can get in (the corners) good, but if I get in good I’m too free off. If I get in where I’m too tight I at least have traction, but then you can’t maneuver.”

Searching for an answer to Davenport’s sublime Eldora mastery, Thornton wondered whether Davenport’s Eldora-specific Longhorn car — the only vehicle he’s run in the track’s crown jewels since the fall of 2021 — might have something special in it because of its age.

“Actually, you look at the body on that car, it’s more of the old-school stuff,” Thornton said, noting that Davenport’s car doesn’t appear to have quite as much “skew” to the body as more recent models. “We’re still kind of aero-grip, where he’s actually mechanical-grip. We’re working towards that a little bit. I think that’s where he’s probably got most of us, although usually wherever we go that’s a mechanical-grip racetrack, J.D.’s really good.”

Bob Pierce mused that while Davenport certainly “believes in that car” with its proven Eldora success, the suspension of the machine “just seems like it’s softer” and could be its secret sauce.

“I’m not sure he’s doing something like dropping high-speed out and dropping gas pressure (in the shocks) to get the car softer,” Pierce said. “Kind of like the old oil-shock days, because right now we’re on top of the racetrack, and any time you’re on top of the racetrack, stuff’s rigid, so that’s gas pressure and valving, all that stuff.

“I think we’re getting one dimensional, and we’re forgetting how we used to do it and we’re getting ourselves in trouble here. We’re working on the car, we’re blaming it on the car, and shocks are … everything. When it gets (slick) like this, you don’t have to have a ‘good’ set of shocks. They just gotta work, they gotta move. I think we’re missing the boat on that.”

Amid conjecture over Davenport’s power, the man himself didn’t think he was at his best Wednesday.

“Everybody keeps saying, we killed ‘em, we killed ‘em, but I was not happy at all in the seat,” Davenport said. “I know I can be way better than that. That makes me feel good.”

When it was suggested to Davenport that he sounded like the late Scott Bloomquist — the 12-time Eldora crown jewel winner who famously flashed so much confidence that he played mind games with his competition — he chuckled.

“I guess, but I’m just telling the truth,” Davenport said. “I know that we can make that better. We’ve been trying stuff through the summer, and I’ve gotten bad, I’ve gotten good, whatever, and so I wanted to bring the good to here and try out. I only put it on for the feature and I didn’t think it was that good, just the way I know where I mash the gas and my angles, the things I do here, I couldn’t do it like I need to. It wasn’t bad, but I just know I could do it better.”

Nevertheless, Davenport appeared unbeatable, starting from his heat race when he shot by Piece for the lead off turn two on the opening lap and then never looked back en route to earning the feature's outside front-row starting spot.

“The heat, I was really surprised we were that good against Bobby, but, I think I had ‘em out-tired, too,” Davenport said. “I think we made a good decision there, and I think that’s what made it look like we really killed ‘em, because we had a different tire on.

“Normally if you run around Bobby and there’s a lip around the top you’re gonna run second no matter what. But I just got a perfect start, I got a good run on him, and then I got the lead and the tire took over from there.”

It was an aggressive move that carried Davenport past Pierce, one that might have looked a little more authoritative than he typically makes.

“Hey, I mash it every now and then,” Davenport quipped. “I’m old, I got a lot of gray, but I can mash on it every now and then.

“But that’s just Eldora,” he continued. “I got a good enough start that I was pretty close to him getting in turn one, so he was gonna slide me. That’s just what you do here … if you’re coming through the field and you slide somebody, you’re not gonna pass ‘em that lap. You’re gonna pass ‘em the next lap because you’re gonna go back-and-forth, so, I knew he was gonna slide me, so I just made sure I let off and got all the way in the brown and got a good run through one and approaching two so I could turn under him. He’s skating back and there’s not a lot of brown leaving two so he couldn’t get going. It’s kind of a planned reaction, but, people that know this place know exactly what was gonna happen.”

Davenport roared out of the gate in similar fashion in the feature to immediately grab the lead from the polesitting Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y.

“I got another really good start and I was pretty even with him,” Davenport said. “Normally the inside guy is a car length ahead once you get there (to turn one), and then you can kind of go up and mess the guy’s air up. I actually thought Timmy was gonna leave me a lane or I would’ve turned down earlier, but I just stayed up there and made sure I got me a good run. I had to lift a little bit and come back down, and then I thought he could come back under me but there was just enough (moisture) leaving four that I could go all the way to it and get down the front straightaway, and then I kind of slid myself getting in turn one to try and block him from sliding me back.

“Just chess and checkers. You gotta have a really good car, but you gotta think about your moves and play ‘em out. Fortunately, I’ve been at the front of the field enough that I know when to do it and how to do it. It’s just practice.”

Indeed, no one has more experience running up front at Eldora over the past decade than Davenport. He’s led 672 laps in 100-lap races at the track going back to 2015 when he earned his first crown jewel victory — three times more than any other driver — and he’s won six of the last 10 century grinds.

And Wednesday’s 50-lapper provided Davenport an even better tuneup for Saturday’s finale than he typically gets with the 25-lap semifeatures during the preliminary programs.

“I went full, 100 percent, 100-lap race mode right there, except for the little changes that I wanted to try,” Davenport said. “I wasn’t gonna do it, and then I told (crew chief) Cory (Fosvedt), I said, ‘If we don’t do it now, I’m not gonna do it all weekend, because we’re not gonna get a long enough run, the racetrack’s not gonna be like this.’ If I could’ve asked for a racetrack, that’s exactly what it would’ve been. 

“We treated this like it was gonna be the World 100.”

Davenport said his car was “freer than I thought it was gonna be” and he would have have to “go back and think about it and figure out why it didn’t do what I thought it would do,” but it certainly seemed good enough to win World No. 6. Everyone watching definitely thought so.