WHEATLAND, Mo. — Jonathan Davenport picked up his third career CMH Diamond Nationals win on Saturday night at Lucas Oil Speedway.
The race was co-sanctioned with the Lucas Oil MLRA. Davenport held off late-race charges from both Josh Richards and Kyle Bronson to pick up his sixth Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series win of 2021.
Davenport had just passed race leader Jimmy Owens coming of off turn two, moments before Owens got into the back of a slowing lapped car when he had nowhere to go. Third-place driver, Shane Clanton also had nowhere to go in a chain reaction, got into Owens.
Advancing 14 positions, Richards finished second with Bronson coming home in third. Stormy Scott and Earl Pearson Jr. completed the top five.
In Lucas Oil Victory Lane for the 56th time in his career, Davenport closed the gap on points leader Tim McCreadie, who finished 12th in the final rundown after being involved in a lap 42 caution.
“I kind of figured those guys were close to me, this place never did slow down at all. I was figuring it might get a little black streak or something, but it never did so you had to search around. It was getting a little choppy there past the halfway point, so I had to move around a little bit, from off the bottom,” Davenport explained. “I was a little better through three and four but would come back and hug the bottom off of turn two. I don’t know what happened to Jimmy [Owens] there, he’s had the worst luck in the world this year.”
Richards was not only the Optima Batteries Hard Charger of the race, but he also turned the fastest lap in the 50-lap event.
“Yeah, we will take it. We were just a little off, I didn’t get a very good qualifying lap in, and it put us behind all night long,” Richards said. “We have been off, what seems like a month, with all of these rainouts. It’s good to be back in the seat. There was a lot of attrition there. Hudson [O’Neal] and I were racing hard into three and I was down low while he was stuck in the middle. I hate it for him.”
Bronson entered the race with two runner-up finishes in his last two series events and came home in third tonight.
“I wanted to get my guys a win tonight. We were just riding around there at the beginning because I didn’t want to blister my tires. We were running well, running Jonathan [Davenport] down with about ten laps to go. That caution killed us.”
The finish:
Feature (50 laps): 1. 49-Jonathan Davenport[4]; 2. 14-Josh Richards[16]; 3. 40B-Kyle Bronson[3]; 4. 2S-Stormy Scott[1]; 5. 1-Earl Pearson Jr[6]; 6. 15D-Justin Duty[10]; 7. 20-Jimmy Owens[2]; 8. 1X-Aaron Marrant[11]; 9. 25-Shane Clanton[7]; 10. 1T-Tyler Erb[21]; 11. 22H-Daniel Hilsabeck[12]; 12. 39-Tim McCreadie[9]; 13. 56JR-Tony Jackson Jr[25]; 14. 91P-Jason Papich[5]; 15. 14M-Reid Millard[22]; 16. 41-Jeremiah Hurst[13]; 17. 59-Garrett Alberson[18]; 18. 11H-Spencer Hughes[14]; 19. 71-Hudson O’Neal[8]; 20. 25S-Chad Simpson[15]; 21. 93-Mason Oberkramer[20]; 22. 3W-Brennon Willard[26]; 23. 3S-Brian Shirley[19]; 24. 20RT-Ricky Thornton Jr[17]; 25. 22F-Chris Ferguson[24]; 26. 157-Mike Marlar[23]