ROSSBURG, Ohio — Ricky Thornton Jr. sat in the same place Friday afternoon that he did almost exactly one year to the day: at a dais in Eldora Speedway’s media center alongside his three Big Four rivals in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series’s Big Steel River Steel Chase for the Championship.

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This time, though, the 34-year-old star from Chandler, Ariz., didn’t feel quite the anxiety and pressure he did a year ago. It was still there — battling for the $200,000 Lucas Oil Series championship in Saturday’s General Tire Dirt Track World Championship is a heavy mental load on any driver — but he wasn’t facing the prospect of seeing his historically dominant season end short of a title in a best-finish-wins scenario.

Thanks to his performance in the first four races of this year’s expanded five-race Chase, Thornton enters the national tour’s season-ending event with a 50-point cushion on the deadlocked duo of Blairsville, Ga.’s Jonathan Davenport and Dresden, Ohio’s Devin Moran. That fact gives him slightly more room for error and peace of mind as he guns for the championship that slipped through his fingers in 2023.

“I’d say the 50 points, being up, is definitely big for me, just knowing you don’t have to win the race,” Thornton said during the press conference that kicked off the second DTWC weekend at Eldora. “Last year it was just whoever out-dueled who was gonna be the champion. 

“I feel like there’s obviously still a lot of money on the line so we want to win the race, but at the same time, if we run second or third, it would be good enough no matter what.”

Exactly where Thornton needs to finish in the 100-lapper will depend on whether he or the other contenders earn 10-point bonuses for setting group fast times in Friday’s qualifying, but he knows from the start that a fourth-place finish makes him unbeatable no matter what his competition does in time trials and the race. 

So while Thornton would love to add a second DTWC trophy to his collection — he previously won the race in 2021 at Portsmouth (Ohio) Raceway Park — he can still enjoy a giant post-race celebration with his Koehler Motorsports team as long as he finishes close to the front. He remarked that his mindset will be to race smart and not put himself in a bad position like he did last year when an early scrape effectively snuffed out his title hopes because of damage that put him down multiple laps while his crew made repairs.

“I feel like kind of the biggest thing I learned this year compared to last year was just go out and treat it like another race,” said Thornton, who labored to an eighth-place finish, 14 laps down, in last year’s attrition-filled DTWC as Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., claimed the championship with last-lap pass of Moran for the runner-up spot. “I feel like last year was more of a bonehead move on my part. I put myself in a bad situation, so hopefully this year we don’t run into that problem. We just need to qualify good tonight … we don’t want to be relying on a provisional or something like that tomorrow.”

For Davenport and Moran, there’s little difference from the 2023 DTWC. Both drivers experienced the winner-take-all Chase finale as Big Four participants and took turns running in the lead position for the title before falling short — Davenport because of mechanical trouble caused by the moist, rough-and-tumble conditions and Moran being unable to stave off O’Neal — and expect to push themselves to the front in a similar fashion.

“I don’t know about Jonathan, but for myself, it is like last year,” said the 30-year-old Moran, whose best finish in six career DTWC feature starts was his third-place run last year. “It’s gonna be … win. It’s your only chance of winning (the title) pretty much.”

Moran is aware of the myriad other finishing combinations that are possible if Thornton stumbles. In fact, he’s worked them all out if he can’t make the situation simple by winning the DTWC like his father, Donnie, did once in his Hall of Fame career, in 1988 at Pennsboro (W.Va.) Speedway.

“I got a whole spreadsheet figured out of what we need to do and watching the board and all that, so we came in prepared,” Moran said. “But our main goal is to come in here and win the race, and then if we win the race, I don’t want to wish misfortune on anyone, just hopefully we’re we’re five or six spots ahead of everyone else.”

When Moran mentioned his detailed breakdown of championship scenarios, Davenport, sitting alongside him during the media gathering, perked up.

“I gotta check out that spreadsheet you got,” Davenport said, drawing a laugh from room that was filled with media members, officials and sponsors.

Davenport, 40, is mostly focused on winning the race — something he’s a favorite to do considering his history at Eldora that includes nine crown jewel victories — but he acknowledged he needs to be aware of other possibilities.

“Pretty much last year was just get the best finish above the other guys,” said Davenport, who sparkling resume is missing a DTWC triumph (his best finish in 13 career feature starts is second in 2018 at Portsmouth). “This year me and Devin pretty much have to win the race I feel like. Ricky’s gonna be pretty good. I think if he finishes top five it doesn’t matter what we do.”

But then Davenport paused and added, “I’m not sure,” before turning to Moran again and saying, “I gotta look at your spreadsheet to figure that out.”

McCreadie, meanwhile, sat at the media conference table as the outside of the Big Four drivers. The 50-year-old pilot of the Rocket Chassis house car is 165 points behind Thornton so he can’t win the title, though he’s still mathematically alive to finish second. 

“As far as the racing end of it, I’m just gonna enjoy myself,” said McCreadie, whose career-best DTWC finish is second, in 2022 at Portsmouth. “They’ve got way more on the line than I do this weekend. I can put more pressure on them. I can’t lose as much.”