IMPERIAL, Pa. — Jonathan Davenport, a three-time Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series National Champion, has previously come close to winning the Pittsburgher presented by Big River Steel.
However, on Saturday night, he dominated the 70-lap feature race and secured his first Pittsburgher win, taking home $50,000 out of the $150,000 purse.
Davenport first raced at the “Monster Half-Mile” known as Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway nine years ago.
On Saturday night, he put an exclamation mark on the event by becoming a first-time winner. Devin Moran charged from the 12th starting spot to finish second, earning $20,000 for his runner-up finish in the Double Down Motorsports entry.
At the checkers, Moran finished 1.864 seconds behind the winner and maintains a 10-point lead heading to Brownstown Speedway next weekend over Davenport in the Chase for the Championship.
Max Blair put on another strong performance in a Crown Jewel event, finishing third. Tim McCreadie, who held second place at one point during the race, finished fourth, and former Pittsburgher winner Hudson O’Neal rounded out the top five drivers.
For the 40-year-old native of Blairsville, Georgia, the win was his 83rd in his Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series career, breaking a tie with Jimmy Owens for second on the all-time win list.
“I have been coming here since 2015, the first time I was with Kevin Rumley. I fell in love with the place,” Davenport said. “This place is awesome, it’s big and wide, and it raced like I never thought it would tonight. I would have thought for sure it would have moved back up the race track.”
The race was slowed by only one caution flag, with 42 laps scored. Davenport had built a 7-second lead over the field, but the huge advantage would disappear with the restart.
“We just got to where we were running around the bottom there, and I was making pretty good time on the lapped cars that were still way out on the track. I knew we had a pretty good long run there, and I said before the edges of our tires were killed. I figured the first couple of laps when we went back green would be more momentum, so I tried to float out and just kind of move around, but I just didn’t feel the racetrack as good as I needed to even when my tires cooled down so I just kept migrating back to the bottom.”
Moran, who won the weekend opener on Friday night, quickly came up through the field from his outside the sixth-row starting spot. He climbed to third and then eventually to second before the caution flag.
But, on the restart, Moran slipped back to fourth but recovered in the remaining laps to close the gap on Davenport, but he never could get close enough to make a last-lap challenge.
“That restart, you know, I have watched a ton of film from here. The bottom got the top on the restarts like 12 out of 15 times, so I thought that bottom would be good, and that’s why I picked it. The top was just cleaned up enough, so I had to get back by Hudson [O’Neal] and Timmy [McCreadie] again. Our car ran really, really good tonight. I felt like we had a great car, and JD did too, obviously. Congrats to him on the win. I think we will have a dogfight in these last three races.”
Blair, like many other competitors in the field, was seeking his first win in Pittsburgh, his home state. He finished third in the Centerline Motorsports entry and earned a $10,000 prize.
“Even if we have started farther forward, I wasn’t real good at the beginning of the race,” Blair said. “The bottom had so much moisture in it the first little while I think you had to be in it, and I wasn’t good enough to be in it down there. I just rode around for as long as I could, but once it slowed down, you could run across the racetrack. This car really came alive at the end of the race. I thought I was going to run second there for a minute. To run third in the Pittsburgher is pretty awesome.”
The finish:
Jonathan Davenport, Devin Moran, Max Blair, Tim McCreadie, Hudson O’Neal, Ricky Thornton Jr., Mason Zeigler, Clay Harris, Carson Ferguson, Drake Troutman, Garrett Alberson, Jimmy Owens, Ross Robinson, Rick Eckert, Cody Overton, Logan Zarin, Logan Roberson, Mike Marlar, Daulton Wilson, Boom Briggs, Michael Norris, Cory Lawler, Gregg Satterlee, Brenden Smith.