Who's this guy sent to beat Tony Stewart, Hailie Deegan and the SRX race field?
With Ryan Newman holding a nearly insurmountable lead in the standings, Thursday night’s final race of the 2023 Superstar Racing Experience (ESPN, 9 p.m.) will focus on Tony Stewart’s attempt to dominate on the dirt for a second straight week.
Last week at Eldora, Hailie Deegan gave a spirited chase in the late laps, and she gets another shot Thursday night at Lucas Oil Speedway in Central Missouri. But Stewart, Deegan and the seven full-time SRX racers have five visiting racers in the field Thursday, and one can definitely be labeled a dirt-track ringer.
Jonathan Davenport has built his career in the dirt, winning the entire laundry list of important dirt-track races, along with three Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championships. The 39-year-old Georgia racer makes his lone 2023 SRX appearance Thursday night and, while the surroundings might be familiar, the Who’s Who of fellow racers will get his full attention.
Thursday’s “guest lineup” also includes four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, retired NASCAR veterans Clint Bowyer and Kenny Wallace, and seven-time Trans Am champ Ernie Francis Jr.
They join Stewart, Deegan, Newman and the other four SRX full-timers: Brad Keselowski, Marco Andretti, Ken Schrader and Bobby Labonte.
Thursday night wraps up the third season of the SRX, a six-race series birthed in 2021 by Stewart and a few other industry insiders. While Newman and Stewart have each won one race this summer, the other three were won by visiting NASCAR stars — Kyle Busch made two starts and won both, and Denny Hamlin won in his lone attempt.
Stewart and Andretti won the SRX’s first two championships. Those first two seasons were run on Saturday nights and televised by CBS.
Stewart has won five of the 17 SRX races since 2021, while no other racer has won more than two. To win his sixth, Stewart will likely find some stiff competition in Davenport, whose very busy racing schedule has included six starts at Lucas Oil Speedway this year.
He’s won four of them.
SRX Racing TV schedule 2023
Thursday, July 13: Stafford Motor Speedway (Denny Hamlin)
Thursday, July 20: Stafford Motor Speedway (Ryan Newman)
Thursday, July 27: Motor Mile Speedway (Kyle Busch)
Thursday, Aug. 3: Berlin Raceway (Kyle Busch)
Thursday, Aug. 10: Eldora Speedway (Tony Stewart)
Thursday, Aug. 17: Lucas Oil Speedway, 9 p.m. on ESPN
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Tony Stewart, Hailie Deegan up against dirt ace in the SRX finale
