SARVER, Pa. (June 21) — A third-place finish in Saturday's Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway pleased Max Blair. But as strong as he had performed in advancing from the eighth starting spot in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series crown jewel event, he certainly wasn’t satisfied.

Standing in the pit area at nearly 1:30 a.m. after climbing out of the Crate Late Model he drove to another third-place finish in the 50-lap RUSH-sanctioned Bill Emig Memorial that followed the weekend’s headliner, the 35-year-old standout from Centerville, Pa., mused about what could have been.

“Man, I think I had a shot at that Super race,” Blair said, a wistful look in his eye as he considered the outcome of the 100-lap feature that saw Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., claim the $50,000 winner’s check.

Blair felt he might have missed an opportunity for the most monumental victory of a prolific career that already boasts more than 400 victories. He overtook his pal Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz. — the driver seeking an unprecedented third straight Firecracker 100 triumph — for second on lap 73 and stalked Davenport’s leading car oh-so-tantalizingly ahead of him.

Maybe, just maybe, Blair could pull off an upset for his home-state faithful if he could just catch Davenport and get a little help from slower traffic …

“You just don’t get too many shots like that,” Blair said of finding himself in position to bid for a hugely lucrative victory. “If that yellow don’t come out (on lap 78) … I mean, he’s J.D., right? So I’m not saying I would have passed him, but in lapped traffic, I was running them down. I know he was in lapped traffic, too. But like, I was moving around, kind of trying to feel what I had. I think maybe I could have surprised him.”

That element of surprise disappeared with the re-rack of the field following the caution period. Blair’s fate took another turn shortly thereafter following another caution flag, on lap 84, when he made contact with the left-rear corner of Davenport’s entering turn three on the restart circuit, causing a scramble in which Thornton, who was making a run on the bottom of the track, also bumped into Davenport and Blair fell to third.

Davenport fought off Thornton, who led lap 85, to control the final 15 circuits while Blair settled into third behind Thornton the rest of the way.

“I had a run down the backstretch, and I know (Davenport had) been kind of entering out there and then turning across the middle,” Blair said of lap 84. “But, I mean — and I haven’t watched the video or nothing obviously — but I feel like he was just entering out there wider and I had a good run, so I tried to get to him and I just I feel like he kind of cut it back quicker than he had. I mean, I danged near wrecked myself to make sure I didn’t wreck him. trust me.”

While Blair’s Centerline Motorsports Longhorn Chassis sustained no significant damage aside from the front ear of its nosepiece, he couldn’t regain the runner-up spot from Thornton. He fell one spot short of matching his career-best Firecracker finish of second, in 2020 when the race was reduced to 50 laps for live-television coverage purposes. (His other three starts in the Firecracker finale include finishes of sixth in ’21, 10th in ’23 and 12th in ’24.)

“I think I had a second-place car at least, but Ricky Thornton’s a special person behind the wheel of a race car,” said Blair, whose payoff fell to $10,000 for third rather than the $20,000 he would have claimed for second. “He just hit that restart really, really good (to position himself to overtake Blair). I think even at the end of the race I was a little bit better than he was, but he ain’t gonna make a mistake. He already let me pass him once, and he was behind me (for several laps) so he knew what line I was running and he just took that away in (turns) one and two.

“But like I said, we just ran third to J.D. and Ricky Thornton. We’ve really struggled this year, so we’re happy.”

It was very much an uplifting result for Blair, who was hoping for a profitable weekend at Lernerville to begin making his recent decision to drop off the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series a fruitful one. But while his WoO departure was certainly performance-driven — he left February’s DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., ranked fifth in the points standings but proceeded to record just a single top-10 finish in 11 post-Speedweeks starts to tumble to a distant 10th — he also didn’t want to miss the Firecracker 100 activities, which he would have done with the WoO tour running simultaneously at I-55 Federated Raceway Park in Pevely, Mo.

“This weekend was a big factor, especially with being able to race the Crate car too,” Blair said, noting that the Bill Emig Memorial — a race he’s won three times — offered a hefty $20,000 first-place prize. “And heck, we’ve got like nine campers here and 50 people, and we’ve run really well here in the past too, so we like getting to come here.

“But honestly, it was, we haven’t run as good (with WoO) as we wanted to be running. When we left Florida, none of us really felt we’d be in this situation, but we are. We just got to where you had to sit down and think about it.”

Carefully considering the pros and cons of staying on the WoO trail or leaving it, Blair and his car owner Brad Spochacz concluded that going independent was the best move. With Blair mired deep in the points standings and needing serious improvement to reach at least fifth— and a $100,000 points-fund payoff including loyalty bonuses — it became apparent that he could likely make up for the points-fund cash he’d lose by dropping off the circuit if he performed well in events, like the Firecracker, that are in his wheelhouse.

“It took a ton of thought,” Blair said. “Like, we laid a whole schedule out and compared schedules, which way we’d go, what we thought we could (earn).

“If we started running way better (with WoO), we could have run fifth-or-so probably (in the points standings). But realistically, seventh to 10th was probably what we were gonna finish. Seventh was probably OK (worth $60,000), but 10th (worth $42,000) wasn’t enough to make the difference. If I could win the Crate race this weekend, that almost cancels out the point situation, you know? And plus the Pittsburgher (weekend Oct. 3-4 at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway) is $14,000-to-win for Crates (over two races) and I can run a Crate there also.”

Looking at the WoO dates that conflict with major events for the Lucas Oil Series in Blair’s home state added more ammunition for his decision.

“You know, I was going to have to miss the Firecracker (by staying with WoO),” said Blair, whose earnings Saturday at Lernerville totaled $13,500 including the $3,500 he received for third in the Crate race. “I was going to have to miss the ($30,000-to-win) Hillbilly (100) here (on Aug. 29-30). I was going to have to miss the ($50,000-to-win) Pittsburgher. I was going to miss the Rumble deal at (Pennsylvania’s) Port Royal, the $50,000 race (on Aug. 22-23). 

“There’s just all these races that I was going to have to miss in my backyard, at places that I’m comfortable at and that I like and feel like I can run well at, to maybe run 10th in points, and it just didn’t make sense, you know?

“We just decided to kind of step back, regroup this year,” he continued. “I mean, we’re still going to race on the road a bunch, don’t get me wrong. Like, next week, we’re planning on going to go to the Hunt the Front race at Florence (Speedway in Union, Ky.), things like that. And we’re going to go to the North-South (100 at Florence) again this year, things like that. I’m going to go to the ones I want to go to and skip the ones I don’t want to go to. And then next year, we'll go back on a national tour, 100 percent for sure. That’s the plan.”

Blair stresses that point — he’s not pulling back to return to local racing.

His WoO announcement might have come soon after he used an idle WoO weekend May 9-11 to win five times in as many starts in Super and Crate action at Tri-City Raceway Park in Franklin, Pa., Stateline Speedway in Busti, N.Y., and Eriez Speedway in Hammett, Pa., but that was “just bad timing,” he said. He’s still largely focusing on national-level events.

“There was a ton of factors that went into it, but like the biggest thing I wanted to make sure I got across to everybody when we made that decision is I’m not going to just go race locally,” Blair said. “Like that’s not what we’re doing in any way, shape of form. When we got races that make sense locally, absolutely, instead of driving 15 hours, I’ll race that, you know. Like Fourth of July weekend, we’re going to race McKean County (in East Smethport, Pa.) on Friday, Stateline Saturday and Eriez Sunday. It's $6,000, $10,000 and $4,100 (to win), so why wouldn’t I?

“There’s a couple weekends that we will (run close to home), but we’re still going to run a bunch of Lucas races. I’m still going to run a bunch of Outlaw races, too. We’re obviously going to go to the ones at Sharon (Speedway in Hartford, Ohio) in a couple weeks, and I’m gonna go to PDC (July’s Prairie Dirt Classic at Illinois’s Fairbury Speedway), Cedar Lake (August’s USA Nationals at the Wisconsin track) and World Finals (November’s season-ender in Concord, N.C.).

“We have a really nice little schedule put together, and when it’s all said and done, hopefully falling off was the right decision,” he added. “I felt like if we fell off, too, we’re going to conserve a bunch of equipment that I can set aside and use for next year and spend a little less money that way, so when you sat down and looked at it, you know, me and my car owner together, we felt like this was the smartest thing we could do.”