Both prelim nights in this year’s installment of the Silver Dollar Nationals at Huset’s Speedway had a common theme according to Ricky Thornton Jr.

“I feel like this year, compared to last year, we're driving a lot harder in these prelim nights, if that makes sense,” the 34-year-old Thornton said after Friday’s third-place finish netted him his fifth straight podium on the tour. “Just because, you know, when playoffs does come, I mean, if you can be five or six wins ahead of a guy, that’s the difference between that guy winning and you can run six or seventh one night and then still be in good shape.”

Indeed, there was more focus on the Big River Steel Chase for the Championship presented by ARP on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at Husert's than any other time on the tour this year. That's also put more emphasis on winning for the emerging title contenders as each Lucas Oil victory is worth 10 bonus points toward the five-race playoff chase that resets the standings after Sept. 20’s Knoxville Late Model Nationals at Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway.

Those state of affairs were especially on Thornton’s mind after Friday’s winner Jonathan Davenport dwindled his would-be playoff advantage to 40 points.

“So, obviously, you want to win as much as you can,” said Thonton, who has 10 series wins this year compared to Davenport’s six. “That way, you can be in that position come playoff time.”

Now 545 points over the top-four cutline with nine points races before Sept. 26’s playoff opener at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway, Davenport sees himself and Thornton — now 530 points to the good — as virtually locked-in for the playoff chase. That means these next two months on the series is all about winning.

"That's going to be the most important thing moving forward, is just getting wins,” said Davenport, who added “that could definitely be a huge benefit come Brownstown” on Sept. 26-27’s playoff-opening weekend.

“But yeah, we can concentrate and maybe take a little bit more gambles on tires and setup-wise and, you know, take take a few more chances out on the racetrack because, yeah, wins are going to mean so much,” Davenport said. “It’s quite a bit. Ten points for each win is going to be a lot. He's already four or five ahead of me right now, so we're going to have to close that gap so we can hopefully get at least squared up, if we're caught up with him by that time. But I mean, it's going to be hard to out-win him until the end of the year.

“You know, I thought coming into this weekend, if we could just luck-up and, you know, have a good weekend, not get tore up, and Ricky not win, that would be a great weekend for us. So we kind of flipped the script a little bit so far, and we've already got a win. So doing a little bit better than expected.”

Thornton couldn’t care less that Davenport regained the lead in the regular season standings with Friday’s victory. The two actually joked about how that’s not the priority for either of them Friday.

“Is it cool to be the point leader? Yes, but at the end of the day, you want to have more bonus points than those guys to put yourself that further ahead,” Thornton said. “We were joking earlier. (Davenport) asked if I wanted him to cover his orange spoiler, and I’m like, ‘No, it's pointless.’

“The way we’re so close right now, like, whoever outruns the other one is going to be the point leader. So, there's no reason for him to change his spoiler for one race. So I don't know. I feel like, we got a lot of momentum. We're running really good. J.D. is running really good. Devin (Moran) picked the pace back up. So I feel like it's kind of us three again. ... Obviously, Hudson (O’Neal) has been really strong lately."

While Davenport and Thornton are gung-ho for wins, those fighting for their place in the top-four — Hudson O’Neal (255 points ahead of Garrett Alberson in fifth), Devin Moran (150 points ahead of Alberson), Garrett Alberson (150 behind Moran) and Brandon Sheppard (175 behind Moran) — are feeling the playoff pressure.

“Yeah, I mean, for sure, you’d be lying if you said it wasn't on your mind, but really, the only way that we have a shot to get back in there is just try to go for wins and if it goes, it goes, and if not, it doesn’t,” Alberson said when asked if he’s feeling the playoff pressure. “So yeah, you try not to focus on it because it makes racing kind of miserable when we focus on that stuff. So, we’re really, we're just trying to go for wins as best we can.

“I feel like we're putting ourselves in good places and we’re in a good place for it a lot of times. It's just, you know, be it experience or just decision-making, just capitalizing on it. It's kind of tough sometimes.”

Alberson himself agrees with Thornton’s assessment of amplified intensity on any given race night, that, “yeah, it seems like everyone's driving hard.”

“Everybody always drives hard, but it seems like it's ramped up even more by the scenario,” he added.

Alberson had a provisional top-four playoff spot through May 22’s Cowboy Classic at Lucas Oil Speedway until misfortune struck the following night at the Wheatland, Mo., oval. Five laps into the feature he started the front row from, Alberson blew his right-front tire and clobbered the turn-two wall.

He finished 24th that night while O’Neal took the victory, a 125-point swing that Alberson could use right about now. But the silver lining for Alberson is the deficit forces him to be sold-out for wins like Davenport and Thornton.

“In a way, that's kind of what's fun about it right now is like, you might as well just try to win, because you're going to not make it by going easy,” Alberson said. “Like if you don't make it, at least you're trying hard. If you, like, crash out at times or something like that, you know at least try hard going for wins.”

For Devin Moran, he’s gone from being comfortably inside the top-four to now being more focused on stringing together solid points nights these last 10 points-awarding events.

Four finishes outside the top-10 in six races between June 21’s Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa., and July 5 at Muskingum County Speedway in Zanesville, Ohio, has narrowed the gap — from his 355-point cushion over the fifth-place Alberson following May 24’s Show-Me 100 that’s been trimmed to 150.

“They've definitely closed in on us. So we got to worry about making the playoffs first, you know,” Moran said. “There early in the year, I felt like we were in really good contention and we just had a bad month and a half. So we just got to focus on getting our consistency back and once we do that, hopefully we can get a little bit of a gap and then we can risk a little more for wins at that point.”