Brandon Overton would like to forget his last visit to Eldora Speedway. His body, though, hasn’t let him.

Almost every day since Overton’s Dream XXIX weekend at the half-mile oval in Rossburg, Ohio, ended early in June due to hard crashes on consecutive nights, the pain in his neck and back — but mostly his neck — has been a constant reminder of how awful his trip was.

“It sucks waking up knowing, ’Man, this is gonna hurt,’ ” Overton said as he leaned against a counter in his trailer before the start of Aug. 26’s Rumble by the River finale at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway and described the deep, throbbing soreness from the accidents that lingered for over two months.

The 32-year-old star from Evans, Ga., is nothing if not a realist, however. The residual effects of June’s Dream have certainly hampered his racing efforts this summer — he hasn’t been 100 percent physically — but he also hasn’t wasted time wondering why he experienced so much misfortune that weekend.

With Overton returning to Eldora this weekend for the 53rd World 100 — a race he won in 2021 to go along with his three Dream victories (two in 2021, one ’22) — he’s well aware of the persnickety nature of the famed high-banked track. He’s chalked up the misery of June as just part of how a driver has to expect to take some bad at Eldora if, like he has, they’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a whole lot of good.

“That’s kind of the way I took it,” Overton said. “Like, it’s been awful good to me, you know what I mean? So you can’t really get pissed off. Yeah, that was obviously an awful weekend, but you can’t really get that upset about it.

“I’ve watched, like, the video of (open-wheel legend) Jack Hewitt, and how many times he should’ve died there. And I remember Scott (Bloomquist) crashing, wiping out, in hot laps (at the 2004 World 100). Everybody’s had their turns, so it’s like, ‘Whatever.’ You just take it and go.”

WATCH: Jack Hewitt Talks Close Calls at Eldora

Then Overton paused. He considered the aura of Eldora, how the events there carry more importance than any other in Dirt Late Model racing, and he went on to succinctly sum up the mindset you need to race at the house Earl Baltes built.

“We all know, pretty much, you go to Eldora for one thing: to win,” Overton said. “And if you don’t win, it don’t mean a damn anyway. That’s what it’s about — going there and winning.”

Overton, of course, has done plenty of winning at Eldora over the past two years. He began entering the track’s major events in 2014 while driving for trucking company owner Troy Baird — he was a DNQ for the Dream but finished 19th in the World 100 — and gained his first real success in ’17 when he piloted the Stone-Weaver No. 116 to a third-place finish in the Dream and 10th-place run in the World 100 while also capturing a preliminary feature during both weekends. His explosion into Eldora’s hierarchy came in 2021, when he swept the double Dreams — the track doubled up with both the Dream and World 100 that because the 2020 events was lost to Covid-19 — to the tune of $273,000 and returned in September to win his first World 100 and finish third in the second race of the weekend. In 2022, he added a $128,000 Dream victory and runner-up finish in the World 100.

Authoring one of the best big-show stretches in Eldora history put Overton on a new level. It also made him almost addicted to Eldora glory.

“Yeah, for sure,” Overton said. “Once you win there, not to say you don’t want to win nowhere else, but once you feel that, being in front of all those people … It almost spoils you when you do good there.

“There’s only so many people that have won there. There’s a lot of good race car drivers that still haven’t won there.”

Overton will tell anyone that, even with his recent success, he feels a type of anticipation before hitting the Eldora surface unlike that of any other track.

“Once you race enough, you almost quit getting nervous. You go to a different racetrack, it’s no big deal,” Overton said. “But Eldora … the first time I went (in 2014), I remember, I was like so sick, nerved up, when I was about to qualify, and it’s still, to this day … like, I feel fine hot-lapping, but when we get ready to qualify the first day, I’m like, ’All right, here we go. This is gonna tell me how my weekend’s gonna be.’ ”

As Overton points out, Eldora is “always gonna be the biggest and the most prestigious.” He recognizes that much of his identity with fans across the country comes from his exploits at the Big E.

“That’s what everybody says. They’re like, ‘You ain’t been doing good this year, but damn, you kicked their ass at Eldora.’ So, every fan that talks to me, they either say, ‘We don’t care if you run (bad), we like the way you talk,’ and if they don’t say that, they’re like, ’Man, you gonna beat ‘em at Eldora again? When you swept Eldora, that was cool.’ It just depends on where I’m at and who says it, but that’s my two reactions I get the most.

“(Tim) McCreadie’s won back-to-back (Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series) championships, right? That’s tough as s---, man. That is really tough,” he continued. “But I feel like, honestly, winning Eldora, that’s more of an impact. That just shows you how much that place means to Dirt Late Models and racing, period. Even people that don’t follow us all the time, they still know what happens at Eldora.”

Overton noted that even people in other forms of racing who only casually follow Dirt Late Models know what he’s done at Eldora.

“Kyle Busch, that (sweeping the Dreams) was the first thing he said when I talked to him,” Overton said, recalling a conversation he had with the NASCAR star. “I went to (Eldora owner and former NASCAR champion) Tony Stewart’s sprint car shop, and his sprint car guys, they’re like, ‘You getting sick and tired of taking Tony’s money yet?’

“Eldora’s always gonna be the No. 1 on everybody’s list. Everybody knows it.”

June, however, put Overton in the Eldora spotlight for different reasons. He ended the weekend without making the 100-lap feature and feeling like he had been jumped and pummeled in a street brawl.

“We qualified bad (on Thursday) I think,” Overton said, recalling his weekend. “I made the (preliminary) race (through a B-main) and I had come from way back and got up through there (to finish ninth), so I wasn’t worried, because I’ve done that before. I was passing cars, so I’m like, ‘All right, I’m gonna be alright. We just gotta qualify better tomorrow.’ And we did … I qualified good (11th-fastest), and I was winning my heat when everything went down downhill.”

Indeed, Overton was just two laps away from a Friday heat victory when the right-front tire blew on his Wells Motorsports Longhorn, veering him directly into the turn-one wall. The sudden impact stretched his neck and knocked the wind out of him.

“When I went into one, it was like, ’Phew!’ ” Overton said, describing the sound he heard when the tire popped. “It happened (to him) before at Bristol (Motor Speedway’s dirt race). You could hear it, and it didn’t matter how hold you hold the brakes, you’re going into the wall wide-open and you just stop.

“I think that’s what hurt me, like, I had no time to think and I was in the fence. If you know it’s coming … like at Bristol, I was in the bottom and blew it out and I had that much time to hold myself, or push myself off of it. At Eldora, I was just numb, limbered, and stopped.”

Overton didn’t sleep much that night his “neck was hurting so bad,” but he was back in his repaired car for Saturday’s grand finale program. It didn’t go any better.

“The next day I just said, ‘All right, don’t be a baby, get out there and race,’ ” Overton said. “And we hot-lapped, and I was like, ‘Man, this sucks. I’m actually hurting.’ I’ve never been put in that situation where I’m hurting and I don’t want to race. Then after I wrecked the second time, I was like, ’Man, that’s enough. I’m over it. Just load this s--- up.’”

Overton’s weekend’s officially ended in his Saturday heat when Joseph Joiner of Milton, Fla., caught the turn-one wall and Overton slammed into the left side of Joiner’s stricken car. Overton’s machine bounced into the air and appeared close to flipping as he clipped Joiner, but, while the crash might have seemed to be rougher than Friday’s, it really wasn’t.

“The second one I hit sideways, and that didn’t hurt like the first one,” Overton said. “And that one looked way worse. Everybody was like, ‘That looked terrible.’ That one wasn’t nothing compared to the first one. The second one did not do anything to me.”

Overton stuck around to watch Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., march to another crown jewel victory at Eldora in the Dream — a race that he wasn’t all that disappointed to have missed because the track surfaced rubbered and became a follow-the-leader procession for more than half its distance. But before heading home with his fiancee, Heather Curry, he stopped at a local hospital for a precautionary checkup. No concussion or head injury was found, but he was told that his neck muscles were stretched to the point that he would likely be dealing with soreness for an extended length of time.

After visiting another doctor near his home a few days later, Overton was given clearance to race in the following week’s Lucas Oil Series event at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn. He would have to deal with continued pain, however, and that weekend was difficult.

“Right when I went back racing I went to Smoky Mountain, and it was, like, rough, bouncing all over,” Overton said. “That hurt me. That night I was about to damn cry. Like, if it would’ve been one more lap, I would’ve pulled in.

“Pretty much what happened was, my neck went so far forward (in the first Eldora wreck) that the ligaments or whatever in your spine up here, they’re are all pointed, and they lay into one another. Well, my neck had moved so far, it had knocked … they’re like flat-spotted. They said at first it would take six to eight weeks till I’d start feeling any better.”

The diagnosis was correct, perhaps even optimistic considering what Overton dealt with through the summer. The neck pain was relentless.

“This is how I knew something was wrong,” Overton said. “I used to be able to sleep a good bit — you know how it is, we stay up all night driving these rigs, we’re not gonna get up at 7:30 in the morning. But I could go to sleep (after the crash) , and I’m telling you, 5 o’clock in the morning, I’m up. Like, I can’t lay there no more, because it starts hurting my neck. 

“It’s so damn aggravating. You don’t think about any of that stuff until it happens, and then you’re like, ’This really does suck.’ ”

Overton did what he could to manage the pain as he gradually recovered. He said he would ice his neck, and “lay flat and put a bottle under your neck to try and put the curve back in your neck.” His fiancee, who is a pharmacist, and her sister, who works as physical therapist, helped Overton find a sports medicine specialist near his home and, in between road trips, he would stop in for treatments, including an alternative medicine known as cupping therapy in which a suction is created on the skin with the application of heated cups.

“They use eight cups, stick ’em on your back and line ’em up right down your spine, and they pump ’em and it sucks the air out,” Overton said of the therapy that is believed to help muscles recover quicker but leaves round bruises on the skin.

When Overton spoke during Port Royal’s Lucas Oil Series-sanctioned weekend, he said he had noticed a definite improvement in his neck. Finally, it seemed, the pain was disappearing.

“The last week is the best I’ve had with not hurting,” Overton said. “It taken that long to finally ease up.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, with Overton feeling better than he has in over two months, he won Aug. 25’s 25-lap semifeature at Port Royal for his first victory since a $50,000 World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series checkered flag on April 22 at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala. He went on to finish fifth in Port Royal’s 50-lap feature and add Lucas Oil Series runs of fourth on Saturday at Portsmouth (Ohio) Raceway Park and third in Sunday’s Hillbilly 100 at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va.

So Overton, who also finished second in Aug. 24’s Lucas Oil event at Georgetown (Del.) Speedway, now heads to Eldora’s World 100 feeling better and in the midst of his best stretch since before Memorial Day. Blue skies seem to be opening ahead of him after a rough summer for the David Wells-owned team.

“That’s what I told Big Dave,” said Overton, who has seven wins this season and currently holds fourth place in the Lucas Oil Series points standings (putting him in position to battle for the $200,000 championship in the Oct. 21-22 Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora). “Ever since I started driving for him, everything’s been great. I’ve won, we’ve done all this stuff. We’ve had no adversity. Not one thing after another after another.

“We won all those races and we didn’t think about it, but then when you don’t win for 44 races, you’re like, ’S---, we took that for granted.’ It just makes you appreciate it more, but that’s just part of it.”

Overton noted his team “still got time to turn it around.” Entering the World 100 with some momentum and good vibes certainly is a start.

“As bad as it’s been, to win Eldora …” Overton said, his voice trailing off for a moment. “I’ve won one there at least for the last couple years, so to not get one, it would be like, ‘Oh, man, this has been a s----- year.’ So yeah, (winning the World 100’s $56,000 prize) ain’t gonna catch us up moneywise as much, but it would be a big relief.”