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Ricky Thornton Jr. gets first win with Koehler Motorsports in North-South 100 prelim at Florence

Ricky Thornton Jr. returned to the driver’s seat of the Koehler Motorsports No. 20RT Late Model over the weekend at Florence Speedway (Union, Ky.) as racing veteran Chris Madden debuted as his crew chief for the Sunoco Race Fuels North-South 100.

With twin preliminaries on Thursday and Friday kicking off the 42nd annual event, Thornton outran pole-starting Jason Jameson in his heat race to claim the eight-lap victory. Rolling off on the front row for Thursday’s opener, Ricky overtook Nick Hoffman on the 10th circuit and paced the remainder of the 25-lap opener to claim his 22nd win of the season and the $6,000 payday. He finished 2.080 seconds ahead of Bobby Pierce with Tim McCreadie rounding out the podium.

Turning in another solid run in Friday’s preliminary, Ricky backed up a flag-to-flag showing in his heat race with a runner-up finish in the final prelim. He finished 1.982 seconds behind race-long pacesetter Jonathan Davenport.

On Saturday, Thornton stormed into the $75,000-to-win North-South 100 with a fourth-to-second run in his heat. Starting the main event in ninth, Ricky rallied to a top-10 finish in the 100-lapper after pitting on lap 77. He rejoined the field in 17th and worked his way forward to bring home an eighth-place outing.

Ricky holds a 220-point advantage atop the latest Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series point standings.

Full results from the event can be found at www.LucasDirt.com.

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