Ricky Thornton Jr was his usual, steady self in Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series action at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway, registering finishes of third Friday and sixth Saturday in the 36th annual Pittsburgher 100 presented by Big River Steel.

But needless to say, he wasn’t on the levels of Devin Moran and Jonathan Davenport, the fellow Lucas Oil Chase for the Championship drivers that swept first and second both nights.

Now the Chandler, Ariz., driver who’s sat atop the Lucas Oil Series points most of the season before the playoffs reset is 60 points behind Moran and must make something happen during this weekend’s Jackson 100 at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway should he have a shot at the title Oct. 19 at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway.

“Really, I never saw J.D. the whole race. He just took off,” the 33-year-old Thornton said. “He was really good (Friday), I thought he was the best car. He just wasn’t able to get by Devin, where (Saturday) put him on the pole and he was going to be tough to outrun.

“Yeah, I couldn’t see him. I knew with the four of us it’d be close. My goal is to stay as close as I can, try to maximize your night and not try to take yourself out of the points. Overall, I feel like we didn’t lose too much. I feel like we’re still in good shape."

Considering 70 points separate first- and 10th-place in the Lucas Oil Series point system, and another 55 points between 10th and 21st or worse, Thornton’s 60-point deficit is certainly manageable heading into the two-day Jackson 100, a place that’s fit him well over the years.

"Yeah, (being 60 points behind) is definitely manageable,” Thornton said. “I feel like we were really good at Brownstown last week. Eldora, it's Eldora, so you don't really know. I think we'll have a good shot both nights at Brownstown. The biggest thing there is getting qualified. It's hard to pass in those short features in the first night. We'll tune it up a little bit.”

Thornton said he and his No. 20rt Koehler Motorsports team were simply “just a little off all weekend,” especially finding grip on corner exits, the kind of grip that helps make speed down the long straightaways of the Steel City oval.

“We struggled getting traction off the corner, worked on it and got it better,” Thornton said. “That was probably the best I felt all weekend. Just wasn’t as good, as good as I needed to be.”

During Saturday’s 70-lap finale, Thornton started sixth and fell back to eighth by lap four, but climbed his way into third by lap 38, less than a second behind second-running Moran but more than seven seconds behind Davenport. It was during that green-flag run that Thornton knew his car performed better the longer the feature stayed green. 

“As I said, that was the best we felt all weekend,” Thornton said. I feel like we're moving in the right direction. We’re trying to fine-tune exactly what we need. Early in the feature with the hard tire, we almost struggle to get going a bit when those guys (Davenport and Moran) are blazing out and gone.”

The lap 42-caution for Boom Briggs changed Thornton’s race for the worse. He slipped back to fifth on the ensuing restart and could never recover during the back half of the feature. Thornton attributes losing a total of four positions Saturday on restarts alone to everything that pertains to the team’s tire program. 

Moran, meanwhile, drove from the 12th-starting spot and to the front of the field without much resistance. Davenport, on the other hand, took advantage of open racetrack from the pole and, of course, the exploits of having his trusty Eldora Speedway race car at his disposal.

“We can kind of track them back down and then there’d be a yellow and it’s right back to how it was, and they take off again,” Thornton said. “I know we need to work on the tire program. The tires have been changing so much the last couple years, it’s hard to stay on top of it. Overall, happy with our performance (Saturday) and we’re looking forward to Brownstown.”

Brownstown, as have many tracks on the circuit, has been good to Thornton. He won last year’s Jackson 100 after all and has had top-five runs going for him this year in two trips to the quarter-mile. He finished fifth in March 23’s Lucas Oil event at the track and contended for a top-five spot in Sept. 25’s Castrol FloRacing Night in America event until a midrace tangle with Moran knocked him off course. He finished 15th that night.

Now in his fourth season on the Lucas Oil tour, Thornton is a seasoned points racer. Yet he didn’t find himself driving harder this past weekend at PPMS because every point matters all the more over this now three-track, five-race playoff. He doesn’t envision himself driving any harder than what he normally does at Brownstown either, nor Eldora.

If anything, Thornton said “I would say, for me, it’s probably the opposite” when it comes to driving intensity because sometimes driving harder leads to overstepping, and overstepping can lend itself to disaster.

He doesn't plan on changing his driving style just because it’s the playoffs or that he's in his largest points deficit since falling 50 points behind to Hudson O’Neal on opening night of the Lucas Oil Series season Jan. 25 at Georgia’s Golden Isles Speedway.

“There was a few times I thought about wailing the top in one and two, but you take that chance of screwing your spoiler up or whatever,” Thornton said about the times he thought about driving harder than normal at the Pittsburgher. “And instead of finishing sixth, seventh, whatever, it’s going to be a 20th. That’s the hard part, is making sure you don’t do something too crazy and take yourself out of the points. I tried to salvage what we could and finish as good as we could.”