ROSSBURG, Ohio — No specific words, backstory or interaction could fully encapsulate Brian Shirley’s World 100 semifeature victory Friday at Eldora Speedway.

Everything that transpired involving Shirley, who seized an Eldora shining moment many years in the making on the eve of the sport’s most prestigious event, had been sentimental or downright meaningful.

The 42-year-old’s shout for joy when celebrating the $12,000 victory, his first on a crown jewel weekend at Eldora, could be heard overtop the hodgepodge of celebratory noise in victory lane. As he walked back to his transporter, he could hardly make five steps before being stopped by somebody’s congratulatory remarks.

Among those that stopped Shirley? Rocket Chassis co-founder Mark Richards. Despite winning the night in his Bob Cullens-owned Team Zero Race Car, the Chatham, Ill., driver shared an embrace with the leader of the chassis brand that’s carried Shirley much of his career.

Once Shirley finally arrived back to the transporter, he brought the night and its many moments back to perspective.

“Tomorrow is why you’re here,” Shirley said. “If you’re lucky enough to come in here, make a little noise and have people see you, that’s important. And to put on a good show for your sponsors. As far as where it is in your heart? It’s up there. Where it is as far as big races? Obviously it’s not the biggest, but it’s one of the toughest. It’s hard to win here.”

Shirley’s postrace happenings had been so full of activity one could be quick to forget he edged one of the sport’s hottest drivers, Ricky Thornton Jr., to the finish line for one of the two semifeature wins. When someone approached Shirley and told him they didn’t think he could flip script once Thornton passed him for the lead in the closing laps, Shirley responded: “Every sport needs an underdog.”

Before Friday, Shirley’s only Eldora triumph had been during the 2010 DIRTcar Fall Nationals. That’s it.

“I thought I was doing something then,” Shirley said. “Heck, it’s nothing when you show up in Dream weekend or for the World 100.”

In seven previous World 100 starts, he has a best finish of sixth in 2008, but hasn’t finished inside the top 10 of the event since. Perhaps most observers counted Shirley out in the closing laps.

“I’ve been coming here getting my head beat in for a long time,” Shirley said. “You wonder, will I ever find that balance? It’s just a balance. You have to come here and find the balance that fits you.”

And on Friday, Shirley’s seemed to have found that very balance that’s eluded him really since he first stepped foot onto the half-mile’s property. The Team Zero Race Car — a 2018 model chassis acquired from Chris Ferguson earlier in the year — has been the propellant, which is a “bittersweet” thing for Shirley, the longtime Rocket Chassis user that simply needed to diversify his race team solely at the Eldora half-mile.

It’s nothing against Richards or Rocket Chassis — “I feel like Mark will get us there,” Shirley said — but rather a difference in driving styles between he and Hudson O’Neal makes it difficult for Shirley to relate setup-wise with the chassis brand.

“It’s just, like, Hudson, the way he drives, something doesn’t suit me to where I can drive the car the way he does,” Shirley said. It’s not a bad thing. Everybody drives differently.

“The setup (at Eldora) with my Rocket, I seem to struggle. My setup for this car is really based for this racetrack. I mean, you watch (Team Zero chassis builder) Scott (Bloomquist) in all those years that he won the racetrack is right in the middle, turning left, the car’s always able to turn. All in all, it’s a preference of what our car owner wanted to do to get us on that stage.

“Sometimes in life, you don’t always see eye to eye, or you go off path a little bit. Throughout my career, I’ve always been with Rocket. Mark’s always been there for us. We’re still running our Rockets. We’re just making life a little easier here.”

Shirley’s learned a lot about himself and his race team this year, perhaps more than any year before. Being a full-time competitor on the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series has certainly fostered that. While Shirley has a touring win and has had speed a lot of nights, “we’ve had bad days, too. That’s where you want to learn to be better,” he said. “You want to learn to be better on the bad days. We know what are strongpoints are, normally, and when we’re really good. At the end of the day, you have to step your game up like RTJ and little Bobby (Pierce).

“Little Bobby maybe before was a little here and a little there like us. We’ve had racetracks we’re really good at and then racetracks we’re not so good at. Bobby’s figured out how to win at all costs, no matter what track we’re at. It has helped to be on the national tour. I feel it. I see it. It’s just hard for the outside world to see it on your bad days.”

The bad days haven’t been as prevalent of late. And Shirley truly believes, “if all the cards fell our way, I do believe we can win the race” on Saturday at the World 100.

“Are we going to win the race beating down the wall? No,” Shirley said. “If the good Lord says the race won’t be won around the wall, I feel like we have a shot, possibly. First you have to get in the race. That’s the hardest part. Hitting the invert, stuff like that … at the end of the day, that’s the hardest battle. Once you get to the race, it becomes 50 percent easier.”

There’s still a good ways to go before Shirley has to game plan for how to win Saturday’s coveted finale. First, as he mentioned, he has to make the race from the sixth-starting spot of the third heat. Only the top three transfer. Take care of business there, and then Shirley will be focused on trying to go the distance in the World 100 main event for the first time since 2015.

“We might not win … and that’s OK. If we can run top-five, put a notebook together for when we come back in October, and then put another part of that together for next June, that’s how these guys are really good,” Shirley said. “They build a notebook. For years I’d make the race and, heck, normally by 50 laps I’m pulling in because we’re no good. That’s how you don’t figure out how to win them. You have to stay out there, finish in the top five, finish in the top 10, to build a notebook to try and come back to beat the guys next time.”

At age 42, Shirley and the Cullens-owned team are pushing to assemble a national touring program that’s set up to again run the WoO’s gamut and the sport’s array of crown jewels again next year. Considering the greater investment into life on the road and uptick in success at Eldora, does Shirley think his best years are ahead of him?

“I hope so,” Shirley said. “It’s been trial and error. It’s how long and how willing are you to get better? As long as we’re getting better.”

Pondering the question if he’s just tapping into his best years brought Shirley’s formative years back to his remembrance. It was 2001 and Shirley, two years removed from motocross racing, was working for his father’s construction company at the time and dating a girl whose father, Bill Givens, raced UMP modifieds locally in Illinois. Shirley had no prior of the dirt racing discipline, and because Givens’ modified wasn’t the prettiest thing to behold, he’d tease Givens that he’s just wasting his time.

“I’d make fun of him. Finally, one night he got tired of me making fun of him because he was horrible,” Shirley said. “And I love him. He’s the reason why I race. He was like, ‘You think you’re so good, why don’t you get in this thing?’ So the next week we went racing and damn near won the race. He was like, ‘Well, I won’t race this thing ever again.’"

Later that year, Shirley’s modified class was the support division to the Hav-A-Tampa Dirt Racing Series at Macon (Ill.) Speedway, the place he’d been immersed in his first big-league Dirt Late Model atmosphere. There he met Billy Moyer and Shannon Babb, and was utterly astonished that these home-state figures were superstars in the public eye.

“I’m like, ‘Holy cow, there’s a whole other league here,’” Shirley said. “I didn’t know who any of these guys were. I didn’t even know they existed. Then it was like, ‘Holy s--- we could make some money doing this if we got serious.’”

The following year Shirley splurged on some Late Model equipment, winning the Macon track championship and setting foot on the career he’s still assembling today. If it weren’t for Givens, who Shirley noted passed away a few years ago, “Nobody would know who Brian Shirley is.”

Shirley’s father, Jay, had always left the door open for his son to return to the construction business if racing never worked out. Fortunately for Shirley, he’s still going strong with four DIRTcar Summer Nationals championships and scores of big victories on his resume.

“I know at the end of the day, if I needed to get back to work, I had a job,” Shirley said. “I was just lucky enough I never had to go back.”