ROSSBURG, Ohio (June 6) — Jonathan Davenport looked like a mere mortal at Eldora Speedway during Wednesday’s FloRacing Night in America event. On Friday, though, he was back to his usual stupendous self at the famed half-mile oval.

Rebounding from a rare off night that included a slap of the outside wall and change to his backup car, the 41-year-old superstar from Blairsville, Ga., restored order with a convincing victory worth $30,000 in Friday’s regularly-scheduled 50-lap Dream XXXI preliminary feature.

But even as Davenport led 40 of the race’s 50 tours en route to beating Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., by 1.193 seconds, he conceded that his march to the checkered flag was no easy task.

“It was damn nerve-racking,” Davenport said while wearing street clothes and sipping a celebratory drink in the pit area following the evening’s action. “I didn't think it was ever going to get over with all the cautions (eight in all) — and I don’t know if the cautions helped me or hurt me, but we pulled it off.”

Davenport advanced his Double L Motorsports Longhorn Chassis from the sixth starting spot to grab the lead from Timothy Culp of Prattsville, Ark., on lap nine, but he was far from home free. He had Overton draw close just before a lap-26 caution flag, saw Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., briefly outgun him for the lead on a lap-39 restart and, finally, had to survive two green-white-checkered restarts to emerge triumphant.

Thornton’s slider through turns one and two to snatch the top spot on lap 40 surprised Davenport “a little bit,” but he understood how he had left the door open for his rival.

“I had to move my angle a little bit more to catch the bottom because (before) that restart they had blowed a lot of water out off turn four,” Davenport said. “ I couldn't get all the way down where I needed to or I’d hit the water and it could have been even worse, so I had to had to go around the corner more in the slick and then turn down.”

Davenport wasn’t about to cede the race’s glory to Thornton. He quickly fought back to regain command on lap 41 with an aggressive slider of his own through turns one and two.

“I’ve had too many damn seconds this year, so I was either going to hit the inside wall or I was going to slide him back there,” said Davenport, who has been a runner-up 12 times in 2025 (he now has eight victories).

Consecutive caution flags on lap 49 — necessitating by Eldora rule a two-lap run to the finish — forced Davenport to employ his race savvy to defend against a last-ditch slider bid by Thornton, who ultimately lost second to Overton and settled for a third-place finish.

“I knew what (Thornton) did there on the first restart, and I knew I’d kind of messed up, but I didn’t know how good a run he got because, I mean, this place is however wide it is so you can’t see,” Davenport said. “And obviously, if I take off first, I'm a little bit ahead, so I just don’t know how good a run he’s getting.

But on the last restart, I actually thought about taking a top just to change things up a little bit, but I hate to do that after I took the bottom so many times, you know what I mean? So I stayed on the bottom and it worked out.”

Davenport’s 11th career victory in a crown jewel preliminary at Eldora — including six at the Dream, four at the World 100 and one during the 2022 Eldora Million — set him at ease after his rough start on Wednesday. His trusty and race-winning Eldora car just wasn’t up to snuff during the FloRacing program and he compounded the problem by contacting the wall during time trials.

“Even in hot laps (on Wednesday), I pulled out on the track and had a mild vibration,” Davenport said. “I mean, it wasn’t a tire or anything, so I really didn’t know what it was, but the car didn’t feel very good. And so we changed a few things and qualified, and obviously my first lap, it was like 20th-something so I knew something wasn’t right.

“And it’s been a long time since I hit the wall here qualifying, but I tried to just go up and get a little bit more (speed on the second lap) and I hit the wall escalated the problem we had had.

“We got everything fixed for the heat and we should have been able to at least keep up with the back of the field, and actually we went backwards somehow, so I’m like, ‘Something’s wrong. We got time. Let’s just unload the other one and try to get some (FloRacing series) points for the night and then we'll go back through this thing.’”

After advancing from 25th to finish 14th in the 50-lap FloRacing feature with his backup car, Davenport and his crew spent their idle Thursday reworking their Eldora mount. It was back on point for Friday, putting Davenport in form to chase a third straight and four overall $100,000 Dream victory.

“We went all the way through it and changed a bunch of stuff,” Davenport said. “We didn’t actually find anything (wrong), but we changed a lot of parts, so obviously something was not right.

“I was getting a little tighter there later in the run, but I was doing some different stuff (with his lane choice),” he continued. “You know, I’m always trying a little something, but I didn't know how much of a lead I had so I was still really, you know, ripping around the top. And I feel like, from what people told me, the lead I had, I should have moved down a little bit and would have been OK, but the balance of the car’s pretty good."