Winning Moment: Jonathan Davenport went into overdrive exiting turn 2 with 12 laps to go, blowing past Dennis Erb Jr. and using a well-timed pick with the lapped car of Kyle Bronson to win Monday night’s (Jan. 30) Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series feature at Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala, Fla.
The win is Davenport’s fourth super late model victory of 2023 and the 69th of his LOLMDS career.
Dramatic Moment: When race winner Davenport cleared the scales and headed to victory lane. The tech shed proved brutal at Bubba over the last two days, with Davenport being forced to the tail of his heat race Sunday night and four drivers losing results over the course of Monday’s racing program. Shane Clanton was so upset over losing his qualifying time that his Skyline Motorsports team withdrew from the race.
In a Nutshell: For all the challenges surrounding Bubba’s tech shed and a narrow racetrack, the battle between Davenport and Erb Jr. was still worth watching.
What They’ll Be Group Chatting About This Morning
In breaking news, it’s been announced that Weight Watchers will be hosting a morale boosting event at Bubba Raceway Park after the track’s scales continually kept finding racecars to be lighter than the rulebook required. In all seriousness, this seems to have been more a fluke than an issue with the track’s scales, as even with four teams coming up light 35 of 39 cars cleared the shed. That didn’t stop concerns from playing out in the pits though.
I doubt it’ll escalate any further, but Devin Moran’s post-race comments make it clear that he understands he was in the wrong turning Ricky Thornton Jr. late in Monday’s feature.
That incident snapped Thornton’s Speedweeks-long streak of top-five finishes.
Defending World of Outlaws champion Erb Jr. is a known catfisher and his commitment to running the bottom line around BRP proved instrumental in his catching Davenport for the race lead and detrimental when trouble lapping Bronson ultimately let Davenport get away for the victory. But Erb Jr.’s success on the extreme bottom simply highlighted how narrow the BRP surface remained even on a night with improved track prep.
Which begs the question. Does Bubba’s LOLMDS format need to ditch the late models-only structure and add a second class of cars? It was a…
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