There aren’t many major events left that Jonathan Davenport has yet to conquer in Dirt Late Model racing. The Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway had been one of them, the Dirt Track World Championship is the other.

But on Saturday night at the 4/10-mile oval that has left him discontent over the years, the Blairsville, Ga., veteran finally checked Pennsylvania’s ultimate 100-lapper off his bucket list, a victory that came rather convincingly outside a pair of challenges from Ricky Thornton Jr. and Max Blair.

Davenport commanded all but two laps of the 19th running of the event presented by Experience Butler County, Pa., in a feature that the pole-starting Thornton led the opening lap and lap 85.

• 2025 Lucas Oil Firecracker 100 Results At Lernerville Speedway

“Check that one off, finally. I’ve had this one circled for a while. Thanks to all y’all fans for coming out here,” Davenport said in victory lane. “This was awesome. My car was really, really good there.”

Davenport had been virtually untouchable once he look the lead from Thornton on lap two up until the lap-84 restart. But hard pushes from Blair and Thornton on the lap-84 restart scared Davenport down the stretch.

Entering turn four on lap 84, Blair brushed Davenport’s left-rear when he “thought J.D. was entering a little higher.” A few seconds later, Thornton clipped the infield berm and shot up the track exiting turn four, clipping Davenport’s left-front while leading the lap.

The contact “knocked the left-front” and steering rack out of alignment so much Davenport “could hardly turn it.”

“I don’t know what happened on that one restart. I think I got hit by two different people there,” Davenport said. “I’ve been running the same line for 99 laps or whatever there. I don’t know what went on.”

Davenport added his steering rack was out of alignment by “a quarter turn” those last 15 or so laps, prompting him to be “all gas and brake, and trying not to spin the tires” as he “couldn’t steer at all.”

“Then I couldn’t turn down through this hole like I needed to anymore,” Davenport said. “Anyway, thank goodness we held on. Little closer than I wanted at the end. I didn’t really know what to do. There was two lapped cars there. I figured if I could stay right behind them and keep my speed up, somebody couldn’t slide up.”

Thornton fessed up to the mistake, saying he “went down in turn three and caught the hole wrong” and inadvertently “destroyed the left-side of him.” Thornton then purposely let Davenport back around because “that’s not how I wanted to pass him."

“I slowed down in one, left him get back in front of me. We race together too much to destroy a guy for a win” Thornton said. “I felt like I needed to get a little better. Overall, it was a good weekend for us. Congrats to J.D., his stuff was really good.”

Unlike last year’s Firecracker 100 that went caution-free the final 88 laps, six cautions slowed Saturday’s feature. The longest run lasted the opening 21 laps. Then cautions fell on laps 30, 44, 59, 78 and 86. Traffic never became a major influencer.

“I feel like maybe if we got to traffic a little (we could’ve had a shot). but two cars tired to destroyed each other the whole time and caused a bunch of yellows,” said Thornton, likely referring to Daulton Wilson and Carson Ferguson, who each caused two of the six cautions. “That part kind of sucked.”

Blair, meanwhile, posed as Davenport’s and Thornton’s closest challenger from the eighth-starting spot. He fell back to 11th before the lap-21 restart, but charged up to second by lap 73. His  lap-84 move simply “didn’t work out.”

“Ricky got on back by. If that yellow didn’t come out (on lap 84) when I got to second, I think I might’ve had a shot at it, but who knows how it would’ve played out in lapped traffic,” Blair said. “To run third to these two, I’ll take that all day.”

Even if traffic would’ve influenced the feature more, Davenport still felt comfortable enough to get the job done.

“I really felt like I got rolling there a couple times up through lapped traffic,” Davenport said. “Once you get by the first two or three there, they got spread out and run one line instead of all over the place. Once I finally got rolling there, I felt like I had a good lead, get in a good rhythm there, then we’d have a caution.

“I’m like. ‘Dang, you’re giving ‘em another shot.’ I knew the top was kinda there, but I never knew how good it was. There was enough lip there that somebody could throw a Hail Mary for a couple laps and get a good run on me. Luckily that didn’t happen. Really fortunate to be standing here, finally. This one has eluded me for a long time.

“Just an awesome racetrack. I’ve always loved this place. Just super slick, real technical. It’s a tough place to get around, no doubt.”

When asked how to encapsulate the Firecracker 100 victory into words, Davenport needed a few sentences to articulate himself. Once he could, he gave props to a legend that's won the event a record three times.

“It’s really tough. I don’t know how to say it. Man, it’s so tough to win here. We’ve been coming here a really long time. When I was out there leading, I was like, ‘You know, there’s this one other guy who used to be really good running through the middle here.’ He used to win quite a few here and he won quite a few quite a few at Eldora, too. Ole Scott (Bloomquist) was on my mind there. That man taught me a lot. We all miss him for sure.”