After the Checkers
Breakdown of World's first preliminary night
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Ashton Winger in victory lane. (Zach Yost)
ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 10) — Takeaways and analysis from Thursday’s 56th annual World 100 opening prelim night at Eldora Speedway, a pair of $12,000-to-win split-field semifeatures won by Ashton Winger and Brandon Overton:
PRELIM PAYOFFS: Even if they accomplish little else this week, Ashton Winger and Brandon Overton at least had their moments Thursday. I believe both are equipped for success over the final two days, but that aside, Winger called Thursday’s victory the biggest of his career simply because it came at Eldora. For Overton, it marked his first Eldora victory of any kind since September 2022, when he captured the postponed Dream. Clearly, both victories carry plenty of meaning. Surprisingly, however, a preliminary victory doesn’t necessarily foreshadow Saturday success. In the 13 World 100s since the split-field preliminaries were introduced in 2013, only four times has a driver won a prelim and gone on to capture Saturday’s finale: Bobby Pierce in 2016, Jonathan Davenport in 2019 and ’22, and Hudson O’Neal in ’23.
INVERT WINNERS, LOSERS: Without discrediting either hard-earned victory, the six-car heat-race invert certainly played into the hands of Ashton Winger and Brandon Overton. They qualified 16th and 17th in their respective groups, with Winger making the invert by 0.048 seconds and Overton by just 0.011. Kyle Strickler, meanwhile, caught the cruelest end of the invert, missing 18th by 0.005 seconds. That razor-thin margin cost him a front-row starting spot and instead left him starting seventh. A midpack chain-reaction incident later sent him hard into the backstretch wall and his night ended with a steering-wheel fling at Dalton Cook. Devin Moran, meanwhile, missed the inversion by 0.017 seconds.
REGIONAL REPPIN’: Winner Ashton Winger wasn’t the only regionally focused driver to run well Thursday. Pennsylvania’s Michael Norris and Ohio’s Adam Stricker finished ninth and 10th, respectively, in the second semifeature — no surprise considering both drivers know how to turn it up a notch when the track has a little extra juice. Winger sits eighth in overall points, while Stricker and Norris are 20th and 21st followed by Jason Feger in 22nd. Dallon Murty (21st in the second semi) and Sam Seawright (20th in the first semi) rank 23rd and 24th despite being nonfactors in 25-lappers, buoyed by top-five qualifying efforts. And for those keeping score at home regarding Chris Ferguson and Dale McDowell, they rank third and seventh in points after finishing fourth and sixth in the first semi.
PRELIM PERIL: How crucial is it to qualify for both 25-lap semifeatures at the World 100? Last year, Max Blair was the only driver who missed a preliminary feature and still qualified for Saturday’s 100-lapper. Several notable names failed to make Thursday’s semifeatures, none bigger than last year’s World 100 winner Ricky Thornton Jr. Six-time consecutive World 100 feature starter Kyle Strickler, 2016 Dream winner Dennis Erb Jr., Shannon Babb, Gregg Satterlee, Jason Jameson, Mike Spatola and Tyler Carpenter were also among non-qualifiers.
STOCK UP: Purely based on my Seeding the Field rankings, the three biggest risers compared with the points standings after one program are Justin Haley (+50, 32nd from 82nd), Ches Chester (+43, 38th from 81st) and Michael Leach (+36, 16th from 52nd). Yes, Haley has top-notch equipment in the Spire Motorsports No. 77, but considering Thursday marked just his second-ever Super Late Model start, qualifying 15th in his group and making the 25-lapper was impressive. Chester, a Crate racer whose lone previous Super start this year produced a 12th-place finish in Sunday’s Baltes Classic, benefited from Mike Benedum’s deck-height infraction to inherit the final heat-invert spot and despite fading in his prelim, transferred to his semi. Leach, meanwhile, has two-thirds of the night figured out. He qualified seventh in his group and advanced from fourth to second in his shootout before slipping from fourth to 12th in the semifeature.
STOCK DOWN?: Using the same comparison between the points standings and my pre-event seedings, Ricky Thornton Jr. (-61, to 65th from fourth), Shannon Babb (-44, 78th from 34th) and Gregg Satterlee (-40, 64th from 24th) suffered the night’s biggest drops, though each had extenuating circumstances. Thornton and Satterlee battled car trouble, while Babb was disqualified from his shootout after weighing 3 pounds light at the scales. Dennis Erb Jr. (-39, 36th to 75th) was the biggest failer without a notable incident, finishing 10th in his shootout after qualifying 40th in his group. Chris Madden (-37, 46th to ninth), Mike Marlar (-32, 45th from 13th) and Garrett Smith (-30, 57th to 27th) were among the other drivers who had notably disappointing opening nights. Honestly, though, I wouldn’t take too much from Thursday considering wet, heavy conditions that didn’t provide much of a preview for the rest of the weekend, as long as the weather plays nice.
STAT OF THE NIGHT: Victories for Overton and Winger stretched the state of Georgia’s streak of World 100 semifeature victories to six in a row, adding to Jonathan Davenport’s and Dale McDowell’s clean sweep of all four last season.
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