ROSSBURG, Ohio — No driver carries more confidence into Saturday’s 54th annual World 100 at Eldora Speedway than Jonathan Davenport, whose quest for a record-tying sixth globe trophy can't go unacknowledged by his closest competitors, including last year's winner Hudson O’Neal.

“If anybody should have confidence at Eldora, it’s Jonathan,” O’Neal said. “He’s earned every right to have confidence. Every time we come in here, we know who we’re going to have to outrun on Saturday and try get ahead of by lap 80.”

The newly-turned 24-year-old doesn’t shy away from speaking about Davenport’s dominance at the Big E because he has the utmost confidence his No. 71 SSI Motorsports team have everything they need to rise to the occasion in Saturday’s 100-lap finale.

After winning $12,000 semifeatures Thursday and Friday, O'Neal said he's “more pumped up for this one than I have been for a win in a while” and that “I’m more excited than I was last night” through a megawatt smile.

“I think a lot of that is because we feel good about (Saturday),” O’Neal said. “I think we have a shot. We just have to play our cards right and hopefully that ball keeps rolling. … To even be able to talk about it, I’m forever grateful to be in the opportunity I’m in and be competitive in the big stage like this. We’re trying to live in the moment and take advantage of it while it’s coming at us.”

Surviving Eldora's Wheel of Misfortune — an invert of three rather than four, five or six — has O’Neal feeling even better about his chances Saturday, too. Lining up third in Saturday’s fifth heat, he has a chance to start outside the front row for the sport's most prestigious event if he wins the 15-lapper.

But even outside those advantageous circumstances, O’Neal feels supremely comfortable that his Anthony Burroughs-prepared Longhorn Chassis can navigate any sort of traffic and any sort of challenge Saturday.

On Thursday, he ran down and overtook fellow front-row starter Joseph Joiner in traffic to lead the final 12 of 25 laps. On Friday, he kept a determined Cory Hedgecock at bay for another 25-lap triumph.

While O'Neal's Friday victory wasn't against some of the event's top entrants — Davenport, Bobby Pierce, Ricky Thornton Jr., and Devin Moran were in the other semifeature of the split-field event — O’Neal was ecstatic about his Longhorn Chassis.

“I felt like our race car was more balanced. We hit on something for tomorrow to carry us for 100 laps, maybe,” O’Neal said. “It’s going to be tough, but I feel better tonight than I did (Thursday) night. The three helped us on the (inversion) wheel, too. We just have to get through this heat race and do the best we can. We’re in good shape. We just have to take advantage of it.”

O’Neal, who said that “90 percent of (Eldora) is your mind,” has worked as hard as possible over the years to get his mentality right at the legendary and often intimidating half-mile.

While O'Neal won last year’s event and posted a fourth-place finish in 2021 (the year two World 100s were held after the Covid-postponed season), he’s taken his lumps at the World 100 since making his 2016 debut, including failing to make the lineup in two of his first four appearances with 11th- and 18th-place finishes in his first two feature starts.

O’Neal’s Eldora career has been in the middle of Davenport’s dominant stretch (five World 100 victories between 2015-23 among victories in the Dream and Eldora Million) and “eight years of getting your butt kicked and lapped by Jonathan so many times here, and everything else, it adds up,” he said.

“Every lap is important,” O’Neal said. “It’s laps, that’s all I can say. Laps, laps, laps, laps. I didn’t not enjoy it whenever I used to come here. But, man, it was frustrating. It would eat you up, chew you up and spit you out. Whenever you think you’d have something figured out, you’d come back again and be terrible.

“I’ve grown to love Eldora. I used to not necessarily so much because one day I really sat down and began watching these guys and I was like, ‘Man, I’m not driving this place right.’ You have to have a great car to go along with it. This is not one of those places where you can’t fake a good car. You have to have great equipment and great balance.

“But you have to put the pieces together. Every time I come here, I do my best to study. The racetrack seems like it changes a little every time we come.”

Last year, O’Neal leveraged the top side of the Eldora half-mile, particularly the cushion, to defeat Davenport in giving the Rocket Chassis house car team its first World 100 victory. Most of Davenport’s Eldora crown jewels have come by mastering the middle of the racetrack, a place that O’Neal is comfortable with. But O’Neal is led to believe, like last year, that Saturday’s 100-lap finale will see the cushion become a factor at the end of the feature.

“I think it’s going to be there. But the racetrack is hard, harder than I’ve seen it in a long time,” O’Neal said. “Even with the rain, it still got really slick. It just kind of depends on what they do (with track prep) and how much they decide they’re going to work it. It’s not that it being hard is a bad thing. It’s just going to change what happens at lap 80.

“Last year on lap 80, Jonathan was trying to roll the middle and I was banging the wall. (Saturday), that might not be there. The good thing, and the reason I’m so excited about (Friday), is I felt really good. We could go out (Saturday) and not good at all. But right now I feel good about it.”

What gives O’Neal confidence is that he can maneuver his race car all over Eldora’s track surface. And that he’s experienced a smooth week where “everything’s fell our way” in winning twice.

“To be able to go through lapped traffic and be able to move around and find the right places in the racetrack, it’s really awesome to have the confidence you need going into (Saturday),” O’Neal said. “Ninety-percent of it is your mind, and I feel really good about it.”

O’Neal can also become the race’s youngest two-time winner.

“I haven’t really thought about it. I think about my age, I’m just 24, but I feel like I’ve been doing this a long time,” O’Neal said. “This is my eighth year on the Lucas Oil Series. Age, yeah, I’m young. But eight years at anything, you become not a veteran, but a seasoned pro. Even though I’m just 24, that’s how I look at it.

“As long as we can continue to have the luck that we’ve had all week, that’s what it takes. We hope to have a little more (Saturday) in the heat race.”