Jonathan Davenport didn’t envision making the 1,000-mile trek from Norman County Raceway in Ada, Minn., only to complete seven laps Friday at Mansfield Speedway. But as it turned out, those seven laps made the trip well worth it. | RaceWire
The primary reason the 42-year-old made the haul to Ohio was to test a handful of changes on his Double L Motorsports machine after he and his team identified issues that had flown under the radar during a disappointing five-race Upper Midwest swing on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series, where they managed a single top-five finish.
Although a torrential rainstorm washed out Friday's Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series program at Mansfield — abruptly arriving on lap four of the third heat race with Davenport comfortably out front — the Blairsville, Ga., veteran packed up convinced those problems had been solved.
In fact, Davenport and his Double L team were so confident in the fix that they’ve decided to forgo Saturday's Lucas Oil event at Muskingum County Speedway in Zanesville, Ohio, and head home a day early.
"I could tell from the first lap in hot laps that issue was fixed," Davenport said. "We solidified what we thought. We decided not to go to Muskingum now that we know we fixed our issue. I'm not saying we're going to win every race from now on, but we know a part we have to, I guess, maintenance more often or look closer into now.”
Davenport hadn't planned to race at Mansfield until Wednesday, when the World of Outlaws cancelled the weekend's Gopher 50 at Deer Creek Raceway amid a wet forecast. That same day, Double L Motorsports uncovered what Davenport described as "a mechanical issue" while stripping down virtually every nut and bolt on its race car during a regroup session at Donny Schatz's West Fargo, N.D., shop.
“The night they called off Deer Creek after Norman County, I said, ‘All right, let’s go back to the shop here and instead of going home or whatever, let’s just take this thing apart and see if we can find something.’ And yeah, we did,” Davenport said. “We thought that was the issue, but we didn’t wanna go a whole week not knowing. Thanks to (crew members) Tyler (Bragg) and Cory (Fosvedt), we made the long trip out here just to see if that was the issue. Obviously the car was way better than it was there.”
The problem helped explain a frustrating Upper Midwest swing. Davenport briefly challenged a speedy Bobby Pierce for victory June 22 at Ogilvie (Minn.) Raceway before slamming the turn-two wall on a lap-18 restart, ripping off the car's right-rear quarterpanel. Finishes of 11th, sixth, ninth and fifth followed over the team's final four starts.
Even more telling, Davenport knew that pedestrian stretch had little to do with himself or his team's abilities.
"We struggled, we struggled, and couldn't really figure out what it was," Davenport said. "We kept changing stuff, could never really get a grasp of what was going on. We knew something was not right. We unloaded another car at Norman County that I hadn't run up there. It was a really good car. We won three of five races with it and still struggled. I knew something was mechanically wrong. It's not a setup, a missed adjustment.”
Even Tuesday at Norman County, where Davenport set fast time, he knew something was amiss. The speed on the stopwatch didn't mask what he felt behind the wheel. In fact, because he was the first car to qualify, Davenport believes favorable track conditions made the problem appear less severe than it actually was.
Had he drawn later in the qualifying order, he's convinced the mechanical issue would've buried him much deeper in the field than the fifth-place finish he salvaged.
"I knew from the first lap of hot laps, I told them something wasn't right. And then in the heat race, we struggled in the heat race," Davenport said. "We done a whole bunch of changes for the feature. Maximized as much as we could, and it still wasn't correct. I've drove these things long enough. I know when we miss the setup or when we have a bad adjustment, or when something is mechanically wrong.
"It don't take much anymore — just one little thing. I felt like if we didn't go out where we did in qualifying, if we went out in the back, we would've qualified in the back. If we would've never had track position, we would've run 15th or so. We got a top-five out of it somehow."
Without divulging too much information, Davenport and his Double L team has been experimenting with new components involving the left-rear suspension, specifically the bump stops and shocks.
The issue wasn't a failed part so much as learning the lifespan of a new component the team has been testing.
"It's just something new we're trying with some parts," Davenport said. "The easiest way to explain it that I know how is the left-rear tire. We know when it's no good anymore, when the (bump) stops wear out, we don't use it anymore. We just have to know the lifespan or the shelf life of each part. And this is a different part. We've had it on that car for a certain amount of races, and now I know it's not good up to a certain amount."
Trekking 1,000 miles from Ada, Minn., to Mansfield, and then another 800 miles from Mansfield to the team’s Batesville, Ark., headquarters all for the sake of seven laps Friday doesn’t seem ideal, but Davenport’s glad for the glorified test session.
Next week’s Lucas Oil races at 34 Raceway in West Burlington, Iowa, and Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., are on his radar, but with rain in the forecast, that tripleheader weekend could be in limbo, too. Davenport figures to enter July 16-18’s Silver Dollar Nationals at Shelby County Raceway in Harlan, Iowa, but after that, he’s already set on skipping Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway’s $50,000-to-win Prairie Dirt Classic and the $100,000-to-win USA Nationals at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis., the following two weekends so he can attend his son Blane’s national-level fishing tournaments.
“That was another thing that led into this decision also. The weather looks a little iffy next week,” Davenport said. “There’s rain forecasted for all week next week at Wheatland, so I didn’t wanna wait until Wheatland to see if this is what fixed it and then get rained out.
“Essentially, if the weather got us again, that’d be four weeks off and I would have this thought in the back of my mind. I didn’t really know if it fixed it or not. We went ahead and put that to rest. Now we can go ahead and move on.”
This will mark the first time Davenport misses both the Prairie Dirt Classic and USA Nationals in the same season since 2013. Since then, he's missed a single PDC (2023) and two USA Nationals (2017 and ’20).
He simply can't bring himself to miss his son's two biggest fishing tournaments to date — the Bassmaster Junior National Championship on July 24-25 at Kentucky Lake in Paris, Tenn., where the nation's top youth anglers compete for national titles in a two-day individual format, and the Bass Federation Junior World Championship on July 29-31 at Lake Dardanelle in Russellville, Ark., following practice days on July 27-28.
Davenport will even serve as a boat captain during the tournaments. Adult boat captains generally oversee safety and tournament operations while the junior anglers compete. Davenport will be paired with the father of Blane's fishing partner, while Blane fishes from a separate boat.
“It’s pretty awesome. It’s his first year competitively fishing, and he did qualify for both national championships, which is pretty hard to do,” Davenport said of his son.
Will Davenport have any FOMO regarding two Dirt Late Model racing’s biggest mid-summer events?
“I don’t know, we’ll have wait and see,” he said. “We like going up there. The fans are great — both (Fairbury and Cedar Lake). We don’t get in that area a lot. And that’s one reason we went ahead and made this trip up north, was to see some different fans and knowing we wasn’t going to hit those two marquee events this year. I’m sure I’ll be watching for sure.”
All told, Davenport believes his pick-and-choose schedule instead of following national touring points — one that has earned him “cherrypicker" labels from critics — is unfolding exactly as he hoped. He still feels he can win the sport's biggest races — he’s won 13 total times this year — while spending more time at home than he has in years.
The flexible schedule has also afforded opportunities he never would've had otherwise, including spending a week in West Fargo, N.D., with longtime friend Donny Schatz and his family.
“Man, I’ve been racing for a really long time and I don’t know when the last time I went to six tracks in a row that I never been to,” Davenport said. “That was definitely nice. Me and Donny’s been friends for a really long time, but never really got to hangout anywhere besides the racetrack or a few drinks after a race, and then go our separate ways.
“So I got to go up and meet his whole family. They had great hospitality toward us — they fed us all week. We went and had fun together. So, yeah, we are enjoying what we have this year for sure.
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