BATESVILLE, Ark. — Jimmy Owens survived a four-lap shootout with Brandon Overton to win Friday night’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series 30-lap feature at Batesville Motor Speedway.
Overton crossed the finish line in second ahead of Jonathan Davenport, Shanon Buckingham and Kyle Bronson.
Owens had pressure from Overton for the last half of the race as the two battled in lap traffic. A caution with four laps to go for Timothy Culp allowed Owens to pull away from Overton to take his ninth LOLMDS win of 2020.
The caution with 26 laps complete allowed Owens to have a clean track in front of him as he sped away from Overton to record his 73rd career win in LOLMDS competition.
“I was afraid to step out in traffic, I didn’t want to give up my track position,” Owens said. “I wanted to see that last yellow because it gave us a clean track ahead. We hope to keep it rolling tomorrow night. The track will be a different animal tomorrow night with a 100-lap race. They usually prep the track a little different and there won’t be as many laps on it before the feature. Hopefully it will hold up and be a good race.”
Overton ran second to Owens the entire distance and looks to improve one spot higher on Saturday night than he did one year ago in the $40,000 to win finale.
“We’ll take it, last night we had a little bad luck,” he said. “Jimmy’s had a good year and we have been there with him all year. We’ve got to get a little better, so we’ll go onto tomorrow and see what happens.”
Davenport rounded out the podium with his third-place run.
“We are trying some new things on the car. It seemed like it was pretty good, we just need to tweak on it some more for tomorrow. We kind of got lost there at mid-season, but everybody has worked hard on the team and we have made a lot of strides the last two nights. It’s good to run here in front my car owner, Lance Landers and Steve Martin and everybody at Nutrien Ag Solutions. We have a bunch of farmers here this weekend, so hopefully we can get them a big win here tomorrow night.”
The finish:
Jimmy Owens, Brandon Overton, Jonathan Davenport, Shanon Buckingham, Kyle Bronson, Earl Pearson Jr., Dale McDowell, Tim McCreadie, Shane Clanton, Spencer Hughes, Stormy Scott, Billy Moyer Jr., Josh Richards, Ricky Thornton Jr., Billy Moyer Sr., Tanner English, Chris Madden, Mason Oberkramer, Tyler Bruening, Shannon Babb, Devin Moran, Tyler Erb, Timothy Culp, Morgan Bagley.