ROSSBURG, Ohio — When it comes to crown jewel late model events at Eldora Speedway, starting up front, making smart moves in traffic and getting the jump on starts each seem to play a big role in a driver’s path to victory lane.
Brandon Overton and Gregg Satterlee showed mastery of all three of those Friday night, winning their respective preliminary features in the 50th edition of the World 100 – just as they both did on Friday night of the double Dirt Late Model Dreams back in June.
Seventy-nine DIRTcar Late Models signed-in for competition in the gold anniversary of dirt track racing’s most prestigious event. After 50 laps of feature racing between the two split groups, a No. 4 was spun on the Wheel of Misfortune, indicating the top-four cars in Saturday’s heat race lineups will now be inverted before hitting the track.
He just keeps winning and winning at The Big E. With yet another victory Friday night, Brandon Overton has now won in six of the last seven Features he’s started at Eldora.
Overton led all 25 laps virtually unchallenged for the $10,000 prelim Feature win. But his journey to get there was a little different than in times past. He struggled in qualifying, posting only a 20th-fastest time in the group, which set him fifth on the grid for his heat race.
uit of the leader, and was even given a few restarts to get a run on him, but could not make the move in the end.
“I knew what I was doing was working,” Satterlee said. “I could see that [Pierce] was close, but I didn’t think I was giving up enough for him to really get a slider and clear me.”
On the final restart came Pierce’s most fierce challenge, as he drove it deep into turn one with two-to-go as if to try a slide job, but Satterlee had too much speed in the lane above and drove right on by to retain the top spot.
“At that point, I just tried to make a bigger arc in the corner, and just take up a little bit more room on entry,” Satterlee said. “I tried to make a little more speed down the straightaways to not enable him to get a run on me.”
The finishes:
First Feature (25 Laps) – 1. Brandon Overton, 2. Jimmy Owens, 3. Kyle Bronson, 4. Ricky Thornton Jr., 5. Dale McDowell, 6. Kyle Strickler, 7. Jensen Ford, 8. Dennis Erb Jr., 9. Mike Marlar, 10. Jonathan Davenport, 11. Spencer Hughes, 12. Frank Heckenast Jr., 13. Scott Bloomquist, 14. Shane Clanton, 15. John Blankenship, 16. Devin Moran, 17. Mike Norris, 18. Chris Simpson, 19. Michael Page, 20. Stormy Scott, 21. Max Blair, 22. Shannon Babb, 23. Kody Evans, 24. Austin Kirkpatrick
Second Feature (25 Laps): – 1. Gregg Satterlee, 2. Bobby Pierce, 3. Brandon Sheppard, 4. Nick Hoffman, 5. Tim McCreadie, 6. Hudson O’Neal, 7. Ricky Weiss, 8. Chris Ferguson, 9. Ashton Winger, 10. Zack Dohm, 11. Rick Eckert, 12. Chris Madden, 13. Chad Simpson, 14. Joseph Joiner, 15. Boom Briggs, 16. Kyle Hammer, 17. Johnny Scott, 18. Alex Ferree, 19. Steven Roberts, 20. Josh Richards, 21. Ryan Gustin, 22. Tyler Erb, 23. Brian Shirley, 24. Darrell Lanigan