FAIRBURY, Ill. — Ricky Thornton Jr. rallied late to snare the Castrol FloRacing Night in America presented by Kubota late model victory at Fairbury Speedway on Wednesday night.
His triumph was worth $20,000 in the fifth annual One For the Road presented by I-Beam Sliding Doors. He piloted the Kevin Rumley Engineering No. 20rt super late model to the win.
After starting 15th on the feature grid, Thornton overtook Shannon Babb on lap 48 amid lapped traffic and went on survive a final corner charge from Babb to secure his second series win of the year by a mere 0.111 seconds.
“I was running around the bottom and then we had a restart and (Tim McCreadie) actually picked the top and drove through the middle and passed like three or four cars,” Thornton said. “I felt like I could move out (off the bottom) just a little bit and really just get above the hole and there was a lot of traction there from everyone digging it out. I thought I was going over (under the lap-44 bicycle), it got up and I turned right, I’m like ‘Don’t turn too hard, cause then you’re really gonna hurt when you land’ so I just tried to get (the car) back down and get my momentum going again.”
Myles Moos and Garrett Smith brought the field to the green flag, but it was third-starting Shannon Babb who jumped to the lead exiting turn two on the first circuit.
He led for two laps before Myles Moos jumped to the lead on the third circuit. Moos was out front until lap seven when Babb took back control of the lead.
Shannon Babb extended his advantage to as much as 3.3 seconds before seeing it dissipate in lapped traffic.
Thornton Jr. edged ahead for the lead coming to the white flag and went on to pace the final two seconds for his fifth-career miniseries win.
Finishing behind the lead duo was 10th-starting Ryan Gustin with Bobby Pierce and Brian Shirley completing the top five.
The finish:
Feature (50 Laps): 1. 20RT-Ricky Thornton Jr[15]; 2. 18B-Shannon Babb[3]; 3. 19R-Ryan Gustin[10]; 4. 32-Bobby Pierce[4]; 5. 3S-Brian Shirley[9]; 6. 99-Devin Moran[6]; 7. 1-Tim McCreadie[17]; 8. 10-Garrett Smith[2]; 9. 18D-Daulton Wilson[12]; 10. 25-Jason Feger[5]; 11. 28-Dennis Erb Jr[22]; 12. 40B-Kyle Bronson[13]; 13. 97X-Cody Overton[7]; 14. 16-Tyler Bruening[18]; 15. 97-Cade Dillard[11]; 16. 84-Myles Moos[1]; 17. 22*-Max McLaughlin[21]; 18. 19M-Spencer Hughes[24]; 19. 58-Garrett Alberson[20]; 20. 89-Mike Spatola[8]; 21. 157-Mike Marlar[23]; 22. 9-Nick Hoffman[19]; 23. 93-Carson Ferguson[14]; 24. 126-Kaede Loudy[16]