COLUMBUS, Miss. – Jonathan Davenport became the first four-time winner this season on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series tour with a flag-to-flag victory Friday to win the Optima Batteries Clash at the Mag at Magnolia Motor Speedway.
The event was co-sanctioned with the COMP Cams Super Dirt Series.
Mississippi racer Michael Arnold turned in his best career run with the series as he finished second. Jimmy Owens was third followed by Kyle Bronson and Mike Marlar.
With the weather forecast calling for up to an inch of rain on Saturday, track and series officials made the decision to alter the weekend schedule and move the event finale to Friday night.
Davenport and Owens ran first and second for the first 35 laps of the race until Arnold moved into second, breaking up the duel. A caution with six laps to go gave Arnold one last shot at Davenport, but Davenport pulled away to win by 1.8 seconds.
Davenport is now two-for-two with his new Longhorn Chassis.
“Once we got to lapped traffic, I was okay with the yellows,” Davenport said. “These guys are so good behind me I was afraid somebody as going to burn in another groove. I spun my tires on the next to last restart and I screwed Jimmy [Owens] up a little. I may have cost him a second-place finish. I might be kind of picky where we run this car at the rest of the season, it’s a good piece.”
Arnold was elated with his podium finish.
“It feels really good, I really didn’t expect a second place finish tonight,” Arnold said. “I was hoping for a top-five, but this is just awesome.”
Owens was happy with finishing third after a rough night on Thursday.
“The crew busted their tails getting the back-up car ready for tonight and it was pretty good,” Owens said. “We qualified well; we were just a little short in the feature. I felt like if we got into traffic I was pretty good, especially if it stayed green for a while. I thought I could run Jonathan down if the race had stayed green, but it just didn’t go our way.”
The finish:
Jonathan Davenport, Michael Arnold, Jimmy Owens, Kyle Bronson, Mike Marlar, Earl Pearson Jr., Michael Page, Tim McCreadie, Hudson O’Neal, Shane Clanton, Chad Thrash, Stormy Scott, Logan Martin, Kyle Beard, Josh Richards, Tyler Erb, Morgan Bagley, Ray Kulhanek, Matt Cosner, Brian Rickman, David Breazeale, Hunter Rasdon, Ricky Thornton Jr., B.J. Robinson, Spencer Hughes, Dalton Cook.