By Jacob Hord, @HordRaceWatcher
At the end of Friday night’s late model preliminary feature, Ricky Thornton Jr. found himself in the same spot after Thursday night’s modified race: Victory Lane. From the get-go, it was RTJ’s night. The only thing he didn’t win was hotlaps, he was third, just .114 seconds behind Tanner English. RTJ made up for it in qualifying, setting overall quicktime with a blistering 12.098 second lap.
That put Thornton Jr. on pole of the first heat race, where he was seemingly out on a Sunday drive. He even turned a lap in his heat race that was faster than his quicktime lap. After the heat race, Thornton Jr. drew the pole for the 25 lap, $5,000 to win feature, naturally. When it’s your night, it’s your night.
Beloved “Fast” Freddie Carpenter joined RTJ on the front row of the feature. On the start, RTJ got the jump on Carpenter in a race to the bottom and third-starting Nick Hoffman got by Carpenter for second. RTJ’s .499 second lead on lap two jumped to .806 seconds over Hoffman, Carpenter, Gordy Gundaker and Myles Moos. RTJ steadily built his lead to 1.195 second lead on lap six as he was reeling in lapped traffic.
Thornton reached lapped traffic as lap nine turned to lap ten with a 1.056 second lead. On lap ten, Thornton had to move up the race track to dispose of two lapped cars, adding a couple of tenths to his lead in the process. Gundaker had also made his way by Carpenter for the third and final Saturday Feature lock-in spot. After passing the first two lapped cars, RTJ had a somewhat clear track in front of him, allowing him to build his lead up to 1.771 seconds on lap 14 as Hoffman navigated around the lappers.
RTJ’s lead hovered around the 1.5 second mark until lap 21 when the race-long leader had to deal with more lapped traffic. On lap 22, the lead was slashed to under a second, but the yellow flag waved for the first and only time during the feature for a Spencer Hughes flat tire. That was all RTJ needed, as he cruised to the win after the restart. Bobby Pierce was one driver who tried to make the top work on the four lap run to the checkers, but to no avail. RTJ won his 31st feature of the season by 1.136 seconds. Nick Hoffman and Gordy Gundaker rounded out the podium and locked into Saturday’s Feature.
A relatively tame feature after a night of racing marred by fence repair. It wasn’t as exciting as Thursday night, but not every race can be a banger. Up next is the finale on Saturday night.