ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 6) — Jonathan Davenport doesn’t merely race Eldora Speedway’s high-banked, half-mile oval. He thinks the place, breaks down every possibility and scenario in his mind.

The mental game is one of the not-so-secret reasons for his amazing success at the track over the past decade — and Friday night, he had that side of his approach to Eldora on full display en route to capturing the opening 25-lap semifeature during the second World 100 preliminary program.

Davenport, 40, of Blairsville, Ga., wrestled in his mind with whether he even wanted to win the feature. Making sure he would give himself the best opportunity possible to chase a record-tying sixth World 100 victory Saturday was his primary concern, not only by testing setup and tire choices but also attempting to calculate exactly where he should finish to be positioned to hit the heat-race invert.

In the end, though, despite all the machinations in his head, Davenport just let it all hang out. The result was a different type of J.D. conquest at Eldora, a $12,000 triumph that saw him make the moves necessary to overtake Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, for the lead on lap 21 and record his 11th career preliminary semifeature victory as part of a crown jewel weekend at the track.

“That wasn’t a methodical, ‘I’m gonna do this,’ kind of race,” Davenport said, standing inside his Double L Motorsports team’s trailer following the victory lane ceremonies and post-race technical inspection. “At one point, I was just like, ‘F--- it, I’m gonna try to win.’

“We don’t know what they’re gonna spin (after the race on the inversion wheel), so at that point we just leave it all in their hands and try to get the best finish we can.”

Everything worked out fine and dandy for Davenport — as it so often does for him at Eldora — with him ending up third in event points and then catching a three-car inversion on the Wheel of Misfortune to hand him an advantageous inside row two starting spot in Saturday’s third heat. But plenty happened on his way to his victory on a night that had “such a different” feel to it than Thursday’s first preliminary show.

After the start of Friday’s program was briefly delayed by late afternoon showers that juiced the speedway with moisture, Davenport had to make immediate decisions.

“We discussed what we wanted to do when we were going out there to qualify, and I was like, ‘I really don’t know, because the track (surface) could pick up, so I’m just gonna go through the middle, I ain’t gonna hit the cushion. I’m just gonna try to run wide-open through the middle and get a good lap.’”

Davenport’s strategy worked so well that he timed third-fastest in his group with a blistering lap of 14.942 seconds. He hailed his indomitable Eldora-specific Longhorn Chassis for its speed.

“That car’s just really good. It steers really good,” Davenport said. “I never went up and hit the cushion. I never did anything. It was just really good.”

Shifting to more of a race mode for his 12-lap shootout qualifier that he started from the sixth starting spot, Davenport began to think about event points.

“Then I’m like, ‘Well, if we get high points in qualifying, that’s gonna help us,’ because the heat races are gonna be so narrow (as the track dries out) and I didn’t figure there’d be much passing,” Davenport said. “And if that caution don’t come out (midway through the shootout), we run fifth or sixth. It was just a train race around the cushion. You couldn’t really do nothing, but then we took back off (on the restart) and Bobby (Pierce) made a little mistake and pushed over the cushion, and that got us to third right there so I’m like, ‘Well, that’s pretty good. We’re gonna start ninth (in the semifeature).”

Davenport’s next call: Tire choice for the 25-lapper.

“(The track) started getting black, and it’s really fast, so a lot of people was going soft (with tire selection),” Davenport said. “It wasn’t really hurting tires, it wasn’t really building up heat, because there was still so much grip around the cushion. And I’m like, ‘I’m just gonna put on 3’s and a (harder) 4 (compound on the right-rear) and I’m gonna run right through the middle and let these guys hit the cushion or whatever.

“Well, after we do that and run through there (pre-race tire tech), they go out there and wet the bottom (of the track). I’m like, ‘Oh, s---.’ Now, you can’t change anything on the car after you go through tire tech. It used to be until a yellow line out there you could stop and change whatever.

“Anyway, we was just sitting there (in staging), and it was kind of going through my mind, I’m like, I’m always trying to play their (invert) game, but usually they got numbers (placed) on the wheel you spin. They ain’t got no numbers (when he looked at it earlier in the night), so I go in the media center, I’m asking all kinds of questions that normal people probably don’t ask about how many of each number will be on the wheel. I think they should do that before we race. We ought to know what they’re gonna do. There’s too much on the line for the World 100, for the biggest race there is, to not know.”

Davenport noted that he’s “not that good” to be able “hit whatever I think they’re gonna do” with the invert, he said. “I can’t hit that perfect a hundred-and-some cars here, but I feel like I got an idea of how everything works and sometimes I can judge something pretty close.

“But all that being said, I’m sitting there waiting to go out, and nobody tells me what tires everybody else is on, because I’m hard (with right-rear choice) and they wet the track and I don’t know if anybody else has seen that. So I roll up there, and I told (crew chief) Cory (Fosvedt), ‘Hell, they’ve already wet the track, so now my running through the middle strategy is done I think.’

“We move on from that and take off pretty good and I’m following Timmy (McCreadie in the top five),” he continued. “We run around the bottom a couple laps and it kind of wears out pretty quick, so then we go to the top and we’re just running around up there and I’m like, ‘Hell, I’m just gonna try something different.’ So I start wide open through the bottom down here (in turns three and four), just floating to it, and I’m like, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty good.’ I got to McCreadie’s left-rear and I followed around the top down there and (Ross Bailes) got tight around the cushion so we both got by him, and then I slid McCreadie on this end (for fourth only eighth) because I’d already run through there.”

Davenport was unsure where he was running amid the race’s frenetic pace, so he was pleasantly surprised when he found himself in fourth place upon the first caution flag flying on lap 10. That got the gears in his head churning again.

“So now I’ve already qualified good, I’m 12th in points already (entering the night),” Davenport said. “I’m like putting all this through my mind, and I’m like, ‘I’m either gonna pull off now or try to win, because if I finish third or fourth, I might as well try to win.’

“I always think about stuff. I’m always thinking about stuff like that. This is the Invert 100. I mean, it’s just what sucks. It’s the biggest race of the year, let the fastest cars race, but anyway …”

Restarting on the outside of the second row, Davenport found an open lane into the runner-up spot when second-running Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, went “out wide (in turn four) to try and get a run, and I, like, fire up really good so we’re three-wide going down the front straightaway. I go ahead and slide Gustin, (Brian) Shirley’s on my inside, and I come out second.

“So then I’m just riding, I’m pacing with (leader) Devin (Moran),” he continued. “I tried to run through the bottom here (in three and four) a couple times but I couldn’t really hang with him. Then I tried to turn down over there (in one and two), just moving around before we get to lapped traffic. Once we get to lapped traffic, I thought, Hell, I’m here, I might as well try to do something.”

Davenport elaborated on his winning pass of Moran on lap 21: “He kind of gets help up a little bit (by lapped cars), so I slide him (in turn one), and then, I don’t know why I did this, but I run around the bottom of three and four because there was one little brown strip about two lanes off the bottom. I was really just doing that because I thought we was gonna go green longer and that would give me another line to try and pass him, because it’s Eldora — you slide somebody down here, they slide you down there to pass you back — and I just wanted another lane in my arsenal for later on. Luckily, I beat him to the line (at lap 21), and when he slides me back in one and two the caution comes out, so that gives me the lead with four to go.”

The remaining circuits belonged to Davenport, who didn’t received a challenge as Moran and Pierce slid each other repeatedly before finishing second and third.

“I would only look (at the turn-two video screen) going down the front straightaway, and they weren’t showing me, so that was good,” Davenport said. “If I can’t see my orange spoiler then I’m concentrating on my line because don’t want to crash a car. We’re running pretty fast out there, so I just stay in my line, I never see nobody or hear nobody, and I just drive it to the end.”

The victorious run shifted Davenport’s mindset to Saturday’s big show and the $57,000 winner’s prize at the end of the rainbow. Always contemplating, always running through different technical ideas and scenarios, always studying video looking for an edge, Davenport began considering what track conditions might be like on Saturday and who his biggest challengers could be.

“For the Dream (which he won in June), they went and really worked (the surface) a lot (on Saturday), so that’s one reason I wanted to put the tires on I did tonight, was to see how they would work (in the wetter conditions),” Davenport said. “And I did my adjustments like I wanted to … I’m about two adjustments off from a 100-lapper, but I wanted to see where we was at running around the cushion, because I knew there was a big one. I just wanted to see how my car reacted, and I got to see that and win the race.”

As for scouting his competition, he kept a close eye on the second semifeature and identified two strong-running rivals.

“Hudson (O’Neal) was really good,” he said of the 24-year-old driver from Martinsville, Ind., who won the second semi to complete a sweep of his two preliminary events leading into the World 100 that he captured last year. “Obviously he won last night, and he was like a slot car going around that top. He looked like he could follow the cushion all the way around three and four. I’m old, I get a little nervous off the corner, so I’m always trying not to run all the way around it. He looked really straight, really good around there, and then in one and two he was running right through the middle."

Semifeature runner-up Cory Hedgecock of Loudon, Tenn., caught Davenport's eye, too.

“And I was watching the 23 car right here, and he was really good right through the middle the whole time. Like, he never went and touched the cushion. I think there was a couple in times in traffic he might could’ve went up and touched and got a little bit of a run and slid Hudson down here, so he’s gonna be really good.”

Will either driver be as good as Davenport with everything on the line Saturday night? Perhaps, but they’ll have to outthink J.D. as well as outdrive him.

“I’m always watching something. I’m just trying to learn,” Davenport said of his famed Eldora focus. “As much as I’m learning on the racetrack, I’m learning watching people and looking at lap times and video. It’s what you have to do here.”