Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., seemed destined for a strong — perhaps even a podium — finish in Thursday’s 30-lap preliminary feature at Eldora Speedway's Intercontinental Classic after bolting into fourth place on a lap-14 restart. Then his advance from the seventh starting spot stalled.

“I got behind (eventual third-place finisher) Ricky (Weiss) there, and at that time I think the cushion was the place to be for sure,” Davenport said. “He don’t really run the cushion — he runs the middle to it — and that dirtied up my air so I either would have to run right up on him or way back, but then I was afraid I was gonna get slid.”

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In the midst of trying to adjust his line to compensate for Weiss’s, though, Davenport slipped too high in turn four on lap 17. It effectively spelled the end of his hopes for a positive outing on opening night.

“I just jumped the cushion and that messed up the nose,” Davenport said while eyeballing the damage to the front of his Lance Landers-owned Longhorn Race Car in the pit area. “That was the first time, and I just had to wrestle it from then on. After we got that damage there, any type of air that got under the nose, it would just fly the nose and I would jump the cushion, and it was hard to get back off it because it’s so thick. I was just trying to hang on.”

With Davenport struggling to hang onto his machine for the remainder of the distance on an Eldora track surface that was as heavy as he’s seen it in “a long time,” he fell to 12th in the finishing order. The winner of the World 100 in three of the last five years — including last year — was left sitting seventh in the Intercontinental Classic points standings heading into Friday’s second preliminary program.