UNION, Ky. (Aug. 8) — Jonathan Davenport didn’t need help from his crew chief to clue him in on his closest pursuer as the laps wound down in Saturday’s Sunoco North-South 100. Just a glance into Florence Speedway’s jam-packed grandstands provided all the information he needed.
Josh Rice, the 28-year-old Florence favorite from nearby Crittenden, Ky., was on the charge.
“(Crew chief) Cory (Fostvedt) was signaling me, but I knew he was coming without even looking at him,” Davenport said of Rice. “I could see everyone in the stands just going crazy cheering him on.”
The bleachers were like a rolling tidal wave of rabid Rice supporters, seemingly everyone rising to their feet, pumping their fists and waving whatever was in their hands each time the driver of the No. 11 machine raced by in his determined chase of Davenport’s leading machine. The fans were trying to will their boy to the biggest victory of his burgeoning career, in a race that means more to him than any other because it’s his home track’s crown jewel.
Even Rice couldn’t help noticing the developing spectator-side scene as he tore after the Blairsville, Ga.’s Davenport.
“Oh my gosh, I’m not even gonna lie, I looked up a few times and was like, ‘Holy s—!’ ” Rice said later after triumphantly driving his JRR Motorsports Rocket Chassis to the postrace technical inspection area in the pit area. “And then I just was like, ‘Quit looking at the damn crowd. Lock in, and win the son of a b----.’”
Which is exactly what he did, leading only the final two laps after overcoming the 42-year-old Davenport in a thriller for the ages.
“Just a dream come true,” Rice said.
The emotion that enveloped not only Rice, his family and his James Rattliff-owned team but also the entire Florence facility lived up to what everyone expected when the gigantic North-South 100 trophy finally reached his hands (save the “burn down the grandstands” hyperbole). The circumstances surrounding how Rice achieved his crowning glory, however, were a bit more extreme than anyone might have drawn up.
A midrace scrape with Davenport while battling for second place? Three pit stops for repairs and tire changes over a 12-lap span? A frenetic comeback through the race’s late stages despite a broken right-front shock? A flurry of hellacious back-and-forth sliders with J.D. that lit up the crowd for the final five laps and ended with Rice’s slick crossover move off turn four to win the drag race to the finish line with the two-time North-South 100 victor by 0.574 of a second?
It all seemed too illogical of a premise to come true, but it did. It’s an amazing story that will forever go down in Dirt Late Model lore.
“I pitted three times, changed four tires,” Rice said, shaking his head is utter disbelief as he recounted his path to the promised land. “They had the Big One on the frontstretch (a massive lap-12 restart wreck that swept up more than half of the 27-car field) and I just missed it … I think I was the last car through it. I know Bobby (Pierce) was in the big wreck, (Brandon) Sheppard, I mean, a lot of cars that probably didn’t even know what they had yet.
“Just crazy racing. I mean, the good Lord was with us. Luck is all it takes sometimes, but you got to have a good car to get lucky.”
Rice knew he had a contending machine early in the race as he settled into third place, after starting ninth, by lap 43. He was aware that he needed to pick his spots and conserve his tires and equipment for the stretch drive, but trouble found him anyway on lap 48 when he came together with Davenport while attempting a pass for second exiting turn two. The contact visibly injured Rice’s left-front wheel and he pulled up lame for a caution flag the following circuit.
“Me and J.D. obviously got together there,” Rice said. “You slide a guy to let him know you’re there, like, when they’re coming from the bottom of the wall. I slid him clean and then he runs me in the wall down the back straight.”
The blow left Rice’s steering “toed-out a freakin’ mile.” His car made hasty repairs during the caution period.
“The tie-rod was killed,” Rice said. “They lengthened it, they eyeballed it, and got my toe close (to normal). I went back out and was really good, and then I came back in (for another look during a lap-50 caution) and that’s when they changed the left-rear tire. I didn’t even really want them to because I told them, ‘Hey, I’m still really good.’ ”
Davenport survived the encounter unscathed, but the lap-50 caution flag was for him. He spun around off turn two from contact with Kyle Bronson as he made a bid to overtake the Brandon, Fla., driver for the lead and rearended the inside wall on the backstretch. With the left-rear tire blown out and other residual damage, Davenport’s car was towed to pit road in the infield, his race looking like it might be done.
“Bronson, I was just trying to break his momentum,” Davenport said of his slider that resulted in Bronson clipping the right side of his car. “And these cars got brake pedals. Like I had to hit my brake pedal numerous times when somebody would slide me, and he just caught me and spun me out.
“Luckily, there’s a big berm down there (in front of the inside wall) that I hit I guess. I’d have to go back and watch it all, because hell, I ain’t got a rearview mirror in this thing, so I don’t know where people are behind me and I don’t know what I hit, but I don’t think I ever hit the concrete, which was the biggest thing. That dirt berm saved me.”
Davenport was able to return to action at the rear of the depleted field after quick pit work by his Double L Motorsports crew. There he joined Rice, whom Davenport knew wasn’t happy about their encounter. In fact, Rice pulled up alongside Davenport’s car as the wrecker crew was hooking it up on the backstretch and expressed his displeasure.
“Obviously, he was mad, but, I mean, our car’s running yaw, so if he didn’t hit me in the right-rear quarterpanel …” Davenport said. “I thought I’d given him enough room to hit my right-front tire. I mean, it sucks for him because he had to battle back after that.”
Rice had one more bump in his road. During the ensuing stretch of racing he tangled on the homestretch with Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, knocking Erb out of the feature and nearly doing the same to Rice.
“When I was looking up through the field at who I had to get by, I seen Terbo, and I’m like, ‘Man, he’s gonna be the one I’ll have a problem with getting back by,’ ” Rice said. “He likes to get wide, it ain’t no secret, but he gave me one opportunity to get by him and I tried to shoot the gap … and I don’t even know how the car survived. I think the front end was 6 feet off the ground down on the frontchute.
“So I pitted again” during the red flag on lap 60 for safety crews to tend to Garrett Alberson of Las Cruces, N.M., who was struck in the helmet by a rock or mud clod. “I told (brother) James, I’m like, ‘The right-front is killed. Like there is no rebound in the right-front.’ I wanted to change the (broken) shock. Well, when I got in there, the left-front (tire) was flat and I didn’t even know it, and then they changed both front tires and I was pissed because they had a shock sitting there. I’m like, ‘Why didn’t we change the right-front shock?’ ”
Rice had to press on without the right-front suspension working correctly. Somehow, he managed.
“It put all kinds of traction in it, but it was just hard to drive,” Rice said. “With no rebound on the right-front, if I could get it pointed straight, I would fly. But it was so hard to drive.”
Rice called on his determination and innate knowledge of the half-mile Florence oval to rally. By lap 68 he was back in the top five, but it wasn’t until lap 92, when he fought past Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, that his path to Davenport was clear.
When Rice caught Davenport with four laps to go, he “gave J.D. an elbow back just to let him know I was a little pissed” from the earlier altercation, “and then we raced each other clean the rest of the way.”
And what racing it was. The two drivers, hungry for the $75,000 top prize, sent the place bonkers for the last two laps.
“I knew J.D. was going to stay around the bottom,” Rice said. “I knew he was just gonna take me to find something on that top that would work. I figured out a way through that hole in one or two, and … I got locked in. I was, like, talking to myself, like, ‘You gotta chill out and win this thing.’”
Rice dived underneath Davenport through turns three and four on lap 98, slid ahead off the corner and surged forward to lead lap 99. But then Davenport threw his own slider through turns one and two on the final circuit and lurched ahead in the second corner.
“So he slid me down there (in turns three and four on lap 98) and then I like hit him in the ass actually coming down straightaway because I didn't want to lose my momentum,” Davenport said. “I didn’t know if he was going to slide himself or go to the wall (in turn one), but when I hit him I think it might have turned him a little bit, so he went to the wall and I slid him back. Then he got to the cushion fast enough and he got actually back in front of me before we got off of two.”
Rice got an incredible bite on the turn-two cushion; his car bounced into the air as he rocketed by Davenport on the bottom. But he still had to execute the remaining half of a lap.
“That last lap was crazy,” Rice said. “All the way down the backchute … I’m telling you, the backchute looked like I was at Hagerstown (a bigger half-mile in Maryland). It just looked like the longest straightaway ever.
“I didn’t know whether to go to the bottom or top (in turns three and four), but I went in on the top. I just got bent, got bent, and it was so hard to get bent with that right-front because I was pogoing off the ground, but I got it perfect. I seen J.D. sliding (toward the outside wall in turn four when he surged ahead) and I knew it was over because I had such a launch (off turn four).”
Davenport considered throwing a more aggressive, last-lap bomb. He scaled back his bid, though, and didn’t have enough traction off turn four to outrun Rice.
“I had it in the back of my mind I was going to run in there (through the final set of corners) and crash him,” Davenport said. “I mean, I don’t know about crashing him, but I could have stuffed him in the fence. We could have banged wheels and all that. (Third-place finisher) Luke (Morey) might have even won then.
“But you know, I give him enough room, and I guess he thought I was going to go all the way (to the wall), so he turned back down. Now I wish I’d have went all the way, then I could have got that run down the straightaway. I was kind of half-assing it, like trying to fake him into something, you know, because I figured he thought I was going to go all the way to wall, so that's one reason I didn’t. Just trying to race smart, but anyway …”
Rice said his drive through the deciding corners “worked out perfect” in answering Davenport's slider and zipping past him to the checkers.
Davenport climbed out of his car on the frontstretch and stood solemnly as the defeated runner-up. He paused an interview to stop Rice as the ecstatic winner drove backward down the straightway toward victory lane and lean into Rice’s window to say a few words and congratulate him, then continued talking. He offered praise to Rice for his standout performance.
“I knew he was coming on the top, but I tried it one lap, and hell, I thought I was about to turn over there,” said Davenport, whose 14 career North-South 100 feature starts (including the last 12 years in a row) show seven top-five and 10 top-10 finishes. “I didn’t really want to commit to that. And then (his crew) give me a little bit of distance and I kept trying to run harder and I think I just messed myself up there, I’d bottom out in that hole in (turn) one.
“I was trying to carry more speed and just trying to catch that little bit of lip right at the wall to get down the straightaway. I knew I could probably go in the corner a little better (than Rice), but I knew he’d be running 30 mph faster down the straightway. I was just trying to make it to the next corner before he could get there.
“He done a good job,” he added. “I thought I had done enough, you know, to save my tires good enough, where I could kind of run through the middle and get going there, but … he’s just good here, you know what I mean? I mean, I can’t take nothing away from him. We just wasn’t good enough.”
As Davenport spoke on the frontstretch, the crowd roared repeatedly for Rice. That included the moment when Rice stopped his car in front of the backstretch stands and climbed on the roof to celebrate.
“Man, I’m telling you right now, honestly, I think (the car’s) out of gas. It kind of like bubbled and shut off (on the backstretch),” Rice said. “That’s probably a good thing because I’d have probably hurt the motor (revving it) because I was so excited.”
Rice’s emotions bubbled over too when he reached the raucous victory lane.
“It was crazy, man,” Rice said. “I mean, we tried to win this deal so many times. We’d always bring our best car and the last few years we’ve screwed it up so bad so many times, you know. For it to just work out for once … like I said earlier, we bring a new car to this deal every year and we just keep putting it on black and it finally hit.”
Rice said he nearly passed out during his postrace interview because he was “so excited” and kept calling for water bottles to drink. But he had plans for other libations back in the pit area, telling fans that there would be a “party at the 11 trailer … BYOB.”
“I can promise you, the 11 camp’s gonna be in the beers pretty hard,” he said. “We’re going to see the sun come up, I can promise you.”