Davenport Cruises at Cedar Lake Speedway, Adds $50,000 USA Nationals Victory to Historic 2015 Season

Davenport Cruises At Cedar Lake Speedway, Adds $50,000 USA Nationals Victory To Historic 2015 Season

Georgia Driver Leads Final 88 Laps of Cedar Lake's Crown Jewel World of Outlaws Late Model Series Event To Complete Sweep of USA Nationals Weekend

(NEW RICHMOND, WI - Aug. 1, 2015) - Making his historic 2015 season even better, Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., led the final 88 laps of Saturday's 28th annual USA Nationals at Cedar Lake Speedway to score a $50,000 victory in the World of Outlaws Late Model Series crown jewel event.

Davenport, whose stellar 2015 campaign already included a $100,000 payday at Eldora Speedway's Dirt Late Model Dream and a $26,000 Prairie Dirt Classic triumph at Fairbury American Legion Speedway just one week ago, overtook Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill., on lap 23 of Saturday's 100-lap race and pulled away from Billy Moyer of Batesville, Ark., in the closing laps on his way to his first USA Nationals victory.

The 31-year-old Davenport drove his Kevin and Lee Roy Rumley-owned Longhorn Chassis to his 16th overall victory of the season and his third of the year on the WoO LMS.

"This is unbelievable. It's really just like a fairytale," said Davenport, who completed a sweep of Cedar Lake's USA Nationals weekend after also winning $6,000 in Thursday's USA Nationals tune-up event. "We've just really done our homework. Kevin's found a few things and it's really paying off. This thing is just so good, and it doesn't matter if it's a flat track, high-banked, big track, small track - it's phenomenal everywhere."

Like he has been for most of the season, Davenport was nearly untouchable in Saturday's race. Starting from the sixth position, he charged to third on the opening lap to settle in behind Erb and Moyer. Davenport overtook Moyer for second on a lap-15 restart and powered around the outside of Erb to take the lead exiting turn two on lap 23.

Davenport was in control from there, running virtually unchallenged until heavy traffic slowed his pace and allowed Moyer to close the gap around lap 70. But Davenport found his groove through traffic by lap 85 and kept a slower car between him and Moyer for the final 15 laps on his way to winning by a margin of 1.618 seconds.

"We took off really good and got to third," Davenport said. "I just kind of rode there through a couple cautions because I wanted the fuel load to burn off a little bit so I didn't lay over on the right rear too much and hurt the tire. I just waited for that to burn off a little bit, then picked the pace up and tried to get to the lead.

"It was kind of hairy there at the end. I saw everybody was in the bottom, but then saw a couple lapped cars moving up, so I thought I'd better get up in a hurry. I had to slide one lapped car because I wanted to at least get one lapped car between us just so I'd have a little cushion."

Moyer settled for the runner-up finish in his self-designed Victory Race Car while Erb took third in his Black Diamond Chassis. Defending USA Nationals winner Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., finished fourth in a Club 29 Race Car with Chase Junghans of Manhattan, Kan., rounding out the top five in a Capital machine.

Remarkably, Davenport's stellar weekend at Cedar Lake nearly didn't happen. After his July 25 victory at Fairbury, Davenport, who currently leads the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series points standings, initially planned to take the USA Nationals weekend off in order to spend time at home with family before tackling a busy late-summer and early-fall stretch of racing. But after rethinking the situation, Davenport and the Rumley team decided to make the trip after all.

"I really wanted to come the whole time, but we just don't get many breaks to spend time with our families," Davenport said. "But I told Kevin (Rumley), once you get on a roll like we are, you just gotta stay with it. I know our families sacrifice with us not being there. We all hate that, but this is what we do for a living, and you gotta get it while you can."

After dominating Friday's preliminary action and earning the pole for Saturday's feature, Moyer, 57, felt good about his chances of scoring his long-awaited sixth USA Nationals victory. But after leading only the first lap before getting passed by Erb, Moyer was never able to regain the lead in settling for his third-career runner-up finish in the event.

"He was better than us," Moyer said of Davenport's performance. "We gave it a whirl and gave it all we had, but we came up a little short. The outside came in there for a short little span where you could really rock on that outside, but it went away real quick and there wasn't much we could do after that."

Edited from press release by Joshua Joiner.