LOCUST GROVE, Ark. (Aug. 16) — While virtually every Topless 100 starter at Batesville Motor Speedway fretted about tires Saturday, winner Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., and runner-up Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., had no such concerns.

“I guess just where I’m from, we run a lot of 100-lap races. You just learn,” said 50-year-old Madden, who has raced against Davenport in the Southeast for years. “It’s our driving styles a little bit. … I’ve always been able to save tires. We had a lot of tire left tonight. Tires weren’t a problem tonight. Like I said, I like would have seen a clear racetrack the last five laps and I think we would’ve put on one of the best shows.”

The veteran racers have ample experience at long-distance races on abrasive surfaces. But on a night the Batesville red clay forced 20 of the 27 feature starters to the hot pit, primarily for tire changes, Davenport and Madden were left battling for $50,000 because of their methodical approaches few drivers can replicate.

“I was really conservative, I felt like, early,” Davenport said. “There was a few times I pushed a little hard, but not crazy. I didn’t ever go 100 percent there the first 40 laps, or whenever it was so fast. I just tried to stay and keep track position. Toward the end, you never know how much you got. Obviously you see everyone pulling in with flats, and you don’t know if they’re wearing out, if they’re blistering or if they’re running over stuff.”

Two-time Topless 100 winner Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., who made his 23rd start in the Mooney Starr-promoted event, had a good idea why there were so many flat tires Saturday, including the lap-62 flat that forced him out of the fourth position.

“The way they prepared the racetrack where it was kind of wet early, that keeps rocks churning. So I think that was the culprit. There was debris going across the racetrack,” said the 59-year-old McDowell, who added that the leaders “maybe didn’t have to maneuver as much” as opposed to drivers starting deeper.

“I had to run the top, bottom, back across and be pretty aggressive to get up through there, once my car started coming in. So maybe that’s why we had (the flat),” said McDowell, who suspected tires would be among weekend challenges at the high-banked 3/8-mile oval.

But that’s no knock on the Batesville track crew because “they’re trying different stuff so that the racing is better” McDowell added.

“With that, you have loose dirt flying around, and there’s rocks with that. I honestly think that’s part of it. It’s hard to prep the place because when they work on these places and pack it in, it packs the rocks down, the racetrack shines off. Well then it rubbers up and gets one lane. So they did what they felt like they could, just the end result is you’ll have more debris on these racetracks when you do that.”

Davenport felt pressure from Madden before traffic hampered the runner-up late in the race, but never enough pressure to run harder than he wanted, which would’ve put his tires at risk.

“I just try to manage my stuff as good as possible,” Davenport said. “Once we caught the lapped cars at the very end, once Madden got to second, obviously I knew he’s really good at conserving his tires. I could see the board. Just trying to keep him behind me and block his air. … The lapped cars were slowing me down, and I felt like it was time to move, so I went back to the top, found a little bit more momentum there. I got going pretty good, got by some lapped cars and, yeah, just held on.”

Davenport inherited the lead when Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., blew a right-rear tire after leading the opening 37 laps, but being out front is difficult, he said.

“It’s so hard to lead here. It’s so slick. Going into (turn) one, it’s rough. You either go through there and you bounce and you push, or you go through there and you get loose and you hang. It’s really, really tough to lead here and not have anyone else to judge off of,” said Davenport, who also managed his tires well in winning June’s Dream at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.

“Once you get to the end, the lines can move so much, kind of like Eldora can. It just added another degree of difficulty when it’s so rough getting into one and up the front straightaway here. Yeah, I kind of run this race like Eldora. You can’t run too hard too early and you have to have something left at the end.”

That was Sheppard’s gameplan as well. The Rocket1 Racing driver chasing his first Topless 100 victory was surprised to be the first driver to blow out a right-rear tire.

“Yeah, I wasn’t going overly hard at the beginning of the race,” the pole-starting Sheppard said. “I wasn’t even mashing the gas that much. I was just biding my time. You know, I did the first lap to get the lead, then after that I was kind of rolling around there, not spinning the tires too much, just kind of easing. Got to lapped traffic before it popped. I knew something was wrong. Started sliding more than I was … it’s impossible to know if I ran over something or if it blistered or what.”

Some in the Batesville pit area wondered if the Rocket Chassis house car team had a strategy of abusing its initial right-rear tire and charging back with new rubber. But that wasn’t the case.

Sheppard labored to get back through the field — from lap 38-93 he could only get to 11th from 19th — so track position was vital.

“Tonight, there wasn’t a whole lot of strategy,” said Sheppard, who went gained six spots in the final eight laps to finish fifth. “At the beginning of the race there was, I wasn’t going hard at all. Just keeping a good, solid pace where I wasn’t slipping or anything. Tire blew out, had to go to the back, and you have to figure out how to pass your way back through there without killing your stuff.”

Madden sways toward McDowell’s theory that the track’s rocky soil is what led to many flat tires. The 2019 Topless winner who rarely left the bottom groove noticed a pattern over the 100-lapper — that drivers suffering flat tires were running the top and all over the track.

“I did see some tires going early. I didn’t feel like those guys should’ve been having flats early. But I wasn’t running where they were running at either,” Madden said. “When you see guys having flat tires, you don’t run the line they’re running because there is a chance something is there. Yeah, for sure, there was a concern who would be the next guy. As far as tire wear, no, I was never concerned about that.”

Davenport doesn’t fault Sheppard for running all over the racetrack early on because “he didn’t wanna get held up and get passed” only for the racetrack “to clean off and rubber up or whatever.”

Starr’s track is “a big game, this place is. You definitely have to think through the whole race,” said Davenport, who reiterated “I was just trying to be slow and steady right there around the bottom there, just keeping pace” while Sheppard “really didn’t know what to do.”

Third-finishing Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, was also left perplexed on what he could’ve done differently.

“Obviously J.D. won, so he did what he had to, but I really felt like we had the car to win the race,” said Moran, who pitted for a tire change only 40. “Started seventh, and I was really going super easy at the start of the race. Drove to second, got underneath J.D. a couple times. Just really felt like I wasn’t going that hard. On that (lap-37) restart, I felt it go down right as I picked up the gas and knew I was in trouble. Had to come in the pit, bided my time to get up through there.

“Felt like my car was really good. I could maneuver and get around. I wish we could’ve had a restart with 11 or 12 to go, could’ve doubled back up and seen what happened. That’s the way it goes. J.D. did a great job with tire conservation, and yeah we ended up third.”

Count Hudson O’Neal, too, as another driver unsure how he could’ve positioned himself to save more of his tires. He was fortunate for the lap-63 caution for the slowing Timothy Culp because he felt his right-rear going flat. Once the caution flag appeared, he relinquished the sixth spot for new rubber.

But for the longest time, O’Neal thought his tires were going to make it 100 laps.

“We knew (tires were) probably going to be a factor,” O’Neal said. “It didn’t seem like in the first 20 laps we were going to have a lot of flats. Then they started popping, and I felt mine go down for 10 or so laps. It just got to the point it was so low, we had to come in and change it.

When asked if he got a glimpse of what Davenport or Madden were doing differently than him, O’Neal simply said that “J.D. looked really good” and “it looked like he was really maneuverable out in front of us.”

“Madden kind of faded right there in the beginning, and drove up through there pretty fast,” O’Neal said. “Yeah, just something in the racetrack cutting them all down. I’m just one of the unlucky ones tonight.”

Moran figured Davenport and Madden would be the drivers to beat on a Batesville track that raced a lot like Eldora.

“Scott Bloomquist was the best at Eldora and he was pretty dang good here, too,” Moran said. “They definitely have some resemblance on a lot of different things. They’re different for sure, but they resemble a lot of stuff.”

But in the end, the 30-year-old Moran thought he couldn’t have saved his tires any better while running at half-throttle in the early stages.

“I wasn’t even going that hard,” Moran said. “I could circle it and get by those guys.”

He’ll look forward to doing his research while examining how Davenport and Madden run their races on abrasive surface so he’ll be better prepared next time.

“I’ll put in my notes that sometimes you have to conserve even longer than that,” Moran said. “That’s the way it goes.”