ROSSBURG, Ohio — Brandon Overton owns an enviable performance record at Eldora Speedway, but he understands his fortunes at the famed half-mile oval remain subject to fate.

Every driver experiences rough nights at the Big E. Overton had his on Friday when he crashed hard while leading a heat race during the second Dream XXIX preliminary program. 

Overton, 32, of Evans, Ga., was shook up physically by a wreck that put a serious crimp in his bid to make Saturday’s 100-lap finale his unprecedented fourth straight Dream victory, but he didn’t hang his head in despair.

“It ain’t always gonna be perfect,” Overton said matter-of-factly while standing in street clothes in Eldora’s pit area after watching the evening’s twin 25-lap preliminary features from atop his Wells Motorsports team’s trailer. “I’ve said it forever, you gotta be lucky here.

“It sucks, but it’s Eldora,” he added. “It is what it is.”

Trials and tribulations aren’t something Overton has had to deal with much at Eldora, where he’s become one of the track’s most legendary Dirt Late Model winners in a relatively modest period of time. His nine career Dream appearances since 2014 include three wins — an unforgettable sweep of the double Dreams in 2021 that was worth over a quarter-million dollars and a third straight triumph last year — and five top-five finishes in seven feature starts, while his seven World 100 attempts show one victory (the first of 2021’s double events) and four top-five runs in six feature starts. He also has captured four Dream preliminary A-mains and two World 100 prelims.

Friday night was almost uncharted territory for Overton, who in a split-second went from appearing headed toward a victory in Group A’s third heat to sitting in his mangled Longhorn car gasping for breath after slamming the concrete wall in turn one.

Overton was handily leading the heat with two laps remaining — a decided turnaround from Thursday’s show that saw him qualify through a B-main and quietly advance from 22nd to finish ninth in the 25-lap preliminary feature — when his car suddenly veered to the right as he entered the first corner. He made significant contact with the concrete wall and came to an abrupt stop between the first and second turns.

2023 Dirt Late Model Dream At Eldora Speedway Results

Highlights | 2023 Dirt Late Model Dream at Eldora Speedway

“I just blew the right-front tire out,” Overton said. “It did the same thing we did at (Tennessee’s) Bristol (Motor Speedway — it blew the sidewall out. It’s got so much pressure on (the right front corner with the high speeds), it balloons the tire out and just blows the sidewall out.

“When I went in the corner, I was just telling myself, I drove hard like four or five laps, and I was like, ‘Alright, I’m driving way too hard. I need to calm down some.’ Because I could feel it — like, I would go in there and push, and then I’d crank it left and gas it. You just know it’s just laid on (the right front).”

Overton recalled that when he entered turn one on the eighth lap, “I had lifted and was back in the gas, and I wasn’t near the wall really. I was down (on the track), and I heard (the tire) go, ‘Psst!’ It just took off right and I knocked the hell out of the wall. I heard ‘Psst,’ and in the fence I was.”

After rolling to a stop near the top of the track, Overton quickly realized that this was no pedestrian accident.

“That’s the hardest I’ve ever hit anything in my whole entire life,” he asserted.

The safety crew quickly reached the window of Overton’s car and three members leaned down and put their heads inside to check on his condition. He initially had trouble conversing with them because the wind had been knocked out of him.

“That’s what I was trying to tell ‘em, like, ‘I’m alright, I just can’t talk,’” Overton said. “I’ve hit a lot of s—, and that hurt worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. Like, I flipped before, but flipping doesn’t hurt as hard as that hurt. When I flipped, hell, I got right out. I think when you flip it just keeps going it don’t hurt so bad, but when you just stop, that's what sucks.

“Me and (Billy) Moyer were talking about — it might look like we’re working (hard behind the wheel), but once you’re out there, you’re almost calmer out there than you are when you’re in here. I think that’s why I hurt, because you’re not ready for a hit like that. Like, I got stopped. It didn’t slide, it didn’t ricochet off. It just stopped.

“I’m sure it’ll hurt in the morning. My neck feels like it stretched — you can obviously expect that,” he continued. “But just out there, the biggest thing was, it felt like somebody punched me, like, right there (in his lower abdomen near where his crotch belts are). It had me feeling just like somebody punched you in the nuts, you know what I mean?”

With officials displaying a red flag so Overton could be tended to, he eventually regained his breath and climbed out of his car. He walked to the ambulance with EMTs and rode in it to the infield care center, where he went for a short check-up. He was found to be sore but otherwise uninjured and he then made a beeline back to his trailer, where he found his car sitting toward the center of the pit area near turn three with a horde of crew members — his own plus many from other teams — already going to work on a hasty repair job.

“I think everybody from Spencer Hughes’s crew, Terbo’s (Tyler Erb) crew, Capital (Shane Clanton), everybody was jumping in helping, so obviously I appreciate all that,” Overton said. “J.D. (Jonathan Davenport, who won the third heat after Overton’s demise) came down to check on me, and obviously Terbo … he come to the damn (care center) room when I was in it to see how I was doing.”

Overton climbed back into his car and buckled his seatbelts and helmet strap as the army of mechanics finished patching up the car. He fired up his machine and drove to the pre-race tech line as the first B-main concluded.

The car wasn’t up to snuff, though. While he ran the entire 12-lap distance in the second B-main, he only managed to pick up five spots to finish sixth, four positions short of a transfer position. He acknowledged afterward that the vehicle had a bent frame and wasn’t really suitable to race.

“Where the uprights are at, it cracked that,” Overton said. “I went back out there and I could tell … I was actually scared to drive it. I was like, ‘This will be really stupid if I go rush to get back out there and then wreck again.’

“We put it back together, but the rack plate’s so bent down that I can’t turn the wheels back-and-forth. If I have to run it (on Saturday), I’m not racing. I can’t drive the thing. It needs a (front) clip — it 100 percent needs a clip. The welds are broke, you can see it.”

As Overton detailed the damage to his car, he noted that he was waiting for DIRTcar officials to visit him so he could check on the event rules for swapping cars. He learned that he could indeed pull out his other car to finish the weekend, though he would have to start at the rear of the next race he enters. That would be Saturday’s second of six 15-lap heats, which he was scheduled to start from the sixth spot.

Overton’s confidence in his ability to recover from his Friday problems was evident when he was asked if he had been pleased with his car’s speed before the accident.

“We were way better than (Friday) night,” Overton said. “Even looking back at the times in the feature last night, hell, the last five laps I was just as fast as (winner) Ricky (Thornton Jr.). But we’re on the wrong tire, obviously, 20s and a 30, and (the Eldora surface is) way drier than it’s ever been in I don’t know how many years, so we peter out. Like every restart I’d fly up through there and then everybody would single-file out and you’re just kind of there.

“I don’t feel bad about my car. Like I said every year, the rougher (the track) is entering (the corners), the worse I am on the prelim nights because I can’t make it through there good. But the longer the race, you just slow down, so when you slow down getting in you don’t bounce off the ground so damn much.”

While Overton will have to advance to a top-three finish to transfer through a heat or gain a top-four spot in a B-main, he believes he can do it to keep alive his hopes of a fourth straight Dream checkered flag. He thinks the event’s new crew-to-driver signaling rules, which ban signal sticks and allow tea members to hand-signal only if they’re away from the inside wall, could actually help him in the 100-lapper that pays $129,000-to-win.

“Obviously there’s still signaling, but it’s not as easy for us to see (the crew members), so that’s probably pretty good,” Overton said. “A lot of guys, I feel like, are probably gonna take off and run scared, you know what I mean? So you can maybe sit back there and ride around and have a little bit of tire left.”

Will Overton get the chance to realize his long-distance strategy? That’s the question he must answer Saturday.