When Eldora Speedway was last open for action in June — well, the only time Tony Stewart’s half-mile oval in Rossburg, Ohio, has been open in this coronavirus-hampered season — Kyle Strickler made an impression that definitively established him in the Dirt Late Model world.

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Strickler, you’ll recall, won June 4’s 25-lap preliminary feature that opened the Dirt Late Model Stream Invitational — after earning a berth in the field as a last-minute replacement for a driver who turned down an invite, no less. The 36-year-old from Troutman, N.C., finished 24th in Saturday’s 67-lap finale after an early scrape with Bobby Pierce while running inside the top 10 forced him to retire, but his $10,000 triumph had already made his weekend a roaring success.

Now Strickler returns to Eldora for this weekend’s Intercontinental Classic — another spectator-free, limited-entry event created because the 50th World 100 can’t be contested until 2021 because of Covid-19 crowd restrictions — not as an alternate but a full-fledged contender for the 10-grand preliminary checks and the finale’s $50,000 top prize. He remains a fledgling Dirt Late Model driver with only three career full-fender trips to Eldora on his resume, but he earned his invitation with his June performance and the development he’s shown this summer.

“I think we’re definitely gaining on it and I’m getting a lot more comfortable in the car,” Strickler said of his Late Model maturation. “These things are very physical to drive and they’re very complicated, and you have to be comfortable in ‘em. We’re getting there.”

An open-wheel modified ace who has shifted his focus to the Late Model division over the past two seasons, Strickler still fields a relatively modest, self-owned operation. He notably has just a single Longhorn Race Car currently sitting in his Mooresville, N.C., shop. He has, however, enhanced his engine program in triplicate since launching his own Late Model effort last fall following the end of his five-month run driving for Hazard, Ky.-based Wells & Sons Motorsports, going from one powerplant to three (Clements, Cornett and a Mullins LS) with assistance from the financial backers he’s cultivated.

Increasing his motor inventory this year has been a critical step in Strickler’s progression — and for his peace of mind.

“I’ve always been a chassis guy so I can fix stuff. I can build bodies, I can weld, I can do all that stuff,” said Strickler, who since 2014 has operated High Side Bodies, a fabrication and car-assembly business that helps him pay the bills alongside his racing. “But the motors are what worried me so much, because when we have one motor and it breaks, we’re done. Now we’ve got some stuff built up there. We just need to get another car and keep building.”

Strickler’s results have certainly been on the upswing, especially since his victory three months ago at Eldora. He spent the entirety of the summer concentrating primarily on running Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series and World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series events, highlighted by an extended trip to the Midwest to run Lucas Oil-sanctioned shows at Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, Ill., Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., and I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Neb. He also hit the road in August for another long-distance haul to enter the WoO’s USA Nationals at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis., and the following week added a crown jewel attempt in Lucas Oil’s North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky.

While Strickler didn’t land another checkered flag in his national touring starts, he made his presence known. He finished second in July 18’s Show-Me 100 at Wheatland and earned another runner-up finish Aug. 27 in the opener of Lucas Oil’s Rumble by the River meet at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway. In addition, in WoO action, he led 22 laps — all with a left-front flat tire — in the circuit’s June 19 feature at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn., before mechanical trouble stopped his top-five run and he advanced from 20th to finish seventh in the USA Nationals finale.

Strickler and his full-time crew chief, Vinny Guliani, were also hardened by fighting through a dose of mid-summer adversity. After Strickler’s momentum was dulled by a rough four-night visit to Florence — he finished 23rd in Wednesday’s opener and didn’t qualify for Thursday’s feature nor Saturday’s North-South 100 — they scrapped plans to enter the following weekend’s Topless 100 at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark., in order to overhaul their machine.

“We were all yelling and screaming at each other and were miserable after Florence,” said Strickler, whose crew also includes Trey Weaver. “We got back, we stripped the car completely down and sent it to Longhorn (in nearby Trinity, N.C.).”

The Longhorn staff found that Strickler’s chassis was in need of some significant repairs. In fact, he said Longhorn’s Justin Labonte quipped to him during the Port Royal weekend that he hadn’t told him “how bad your car really was.”

“It was screwed up,” Strickler said. “They had to put a front clip on it, but it was bent a little bit in a lot of places, let’s put it that way.

“All the stuff that I was complaining about, about not being able to feel the front end, and how we could take traction in and out of the car but we could never get it to steer right … that’s what our problem was. It was definitely worth our efforts to take a week off, regroup. We went completely through the car and it’s like a brand-new race car.

“We were gonna nickname (the car) ‘Plato’s Closet’ because it’s like the used clothes store,” he added with a smile. “It’s not new, but it’s slightly used.”

Strickler still has an open-wheel modified in his stable, but he said he’s “not gonna run too many modified races anymore.” A winner of nearly 200 Midwest-style modified features since he began competing in the class in 2009 — three years after he ended his Northeast big- and small-block modified racing to move south to the Charlotte area from his native Sinking Spring, Pa. — he wants to chase national success on the higher-profile Dirt Late Model level.

“The media attention that you get with Late Models is so much different than what you get with open-wheel modified stuff and the Late Model races pay so good, so if we can make it work financially …” Strickler said, his voice trailing off for a second. “That’s the toughest part. We’ve got a lot of people who help us out and there’s a lot more money to be made, but there’s a lot more money to be spent in Late Model racing. The tire bill alone on these things is not cheap. And they’re a ton of work. I told (Kyle) Larson (at Port Royal), ‘When you wreck a sprint car, you put a new front axle in it and a new rear end in it and you got a brand new race car. When you wreck like you did on night one (Larson slapped the wall on the final lap of the feature), you’ve got to spend the whole next day working on it because these things are so complicated.’

“The driving end of (Late Model racing) I’ve gotten better at. The tire aspect of it is hard for me. (Port Royal was) my first weekend on 14-and-a-quarters and 1300s (compound rubber). I don’t know when I should go really, really hard, or when I shouldn’t, but it’s part of it.

“I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life. To be able to come out here and run with the big guys, that’s a lot for me. We’re just trying to keep on running good, and hopefully somebody notices and we can get them to come on board.”

Strickler does have a solid base of Dirt Late Model knowledge to draw upon in Guliani, an experienced wrench who worked with Chase Junghans of Manhattan, Kan., before joining Strickler this year, as well as K&L Rumley Enterprises’ Kevin Rumley (he’s friendly with the engineer from Lexington, N.C.) and the staff at Bilstein Shocks located across the street from his shop. He also feels he’s well equipped for the rigors of Dirt Late Model racing thanks to his background in both Northeast and Midwest-style modified.

“I’m telling you, those Northeast modifieds are some of the hardest cars you could ever drive,” said Strickler, who competed in the division from 1999-2005. “They don’t handle good at all. The straight front axle and torsion-bar rear suspension — which now they’re going to the coil stuff — I think that’s what makes guys like (Tim) McCreadie and (Tim) Fuller, guys that made the jump back-and-forth from modifieds to Late Models, so successful.

“That’s even what (Midwest-type modified driver and builder) David Stremme told me when I was driving the UMP modifieds — that the modified made him learn how to drive with the pedals because those things don’t steer, so you’ve got to steer with the throttle.”

While Strickler owns just a handful of Dirt Late Model victories — a 2018 triumph at Greenville (Miss.) Speedway’s Gumbo Nationals making a cameo for car owner Lance Landers, two regional wins in ’19 with Wells & Sons Motorsports and and his Eldora score this season — he’s showing the speed of a driver with plenty more checkered flags on his ledger. He getting an increasingly stronger sense of his accomplishments and potential from how he’s treated by familiar faces and people he’s respected for decades.

Racing at Port Royal — a track just 90 minutes from his childhood home that marked the first time he’s raced a Dirt Late Model in his home state — brought him many “attaboys” from those in his past.

“All the people came up and said, ‘I watched you race at Susquehanna (Speedway, now BAPS Motor Speedway, in Newberrytown, Pa.),’ or, ‘I watched you race in Delaware,’” Strickler said of his weekend at Port Royal. “A lot of people haven’t seen me race since I left here. A lot of people were really proud of me and how far I’ve come with my racing career, so it’s always good to come home.”

Port Royal was, in a sense, a trip back in time for Strickler. His parents, Randy and Liz, attended Friday and Saturday events. His younger brother was there. Other family members were on hand. He finished second in Thursday’s feature to Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., a driver he looked up to during his Northeast modified days. And short-track legend Kenny Brightbill, who drove a small-block modified for Strickler’s father from 1989-94, came up on Thursday with his son Brad, a Pennsylvania sportsman racer who has been close to Strickler since both were toddlers.

“It was awesome to have one of my childhood heroes come out and watch me race,” Strickler said of the elder Brightbill, who hung around the Strickler trailer throughout Port Royal’s Thursday program. “Kenny drove for my parents so Brad and I grew up together. We’d ride up to Big Diamond (Raceway in Forestville, Pa.) together every weekend. We grew up at the racetrack, so it’s kind of cool to be (at Port Royal) and have Kenny coming up and asking me questions about technology and stuff like that. I mean, he was a racing god to me when I was little.

“Never would have imagined that I’d be in this position today,” he continued. “It means so much to me, even when I’m down (in North Carolina. I mean, Brett Hearn (an all-time big-block modified great from New Jersey) will call me, or Kenny (Brightbill) will call me, or Frank Cozze (another big-block modified veteran from Pennsylvania) will call me … these guys who were my heroes growing up, and now they’re calling me wanting to know setup stuff and talk about race cars and racing. That means a lot that they think I know some of that stuff.”

Strickler still has Eldora’s Intercontinental Classic and a couple more months of 2020 racing left to continue burnishing his reputation in the Dirt Late Model ranks. He conceded that he’s already looking ahead, though, to ’21, which he is hoping to spend as a full-time Dirt Late Model racer chasing Rookie of the Year honors on one of the national tours.

“Next year, that is the goal,” Strickler said. “If we get some financial backing and things come together, that is the goal. That’s what I want to do. I want to run a tour next year.

“I haven’t decided exactly what I’m gonna do, whether I would do Lucas or World of Outlaws. I think we have the crew guy deal kind of figured out. The biggest thing we really need is another car and a rig. If you’re gonna run full-time up and down the road, it’s kind of hard to do it with the old 2000 Renegade I have. This is the trailer I had when I first started racing modifieds. You don’t have a back door, don’t have any AC, so if we can get a rig, I’d love to run the tour.”

Strickler has plenty of moving parts that he still needs to put in place before making a national-tour assault, but things are headed in the right direction. His parents recently retired from the operation of their excavating business in the Keystone State — Kyle’s brother now heads that enterprise — and moved to a home just 10 minutes from Strickler, his wife and their two children (9-year-old daughter, 4-year-old son).

“My goal is to try and do this Late Model full time, to be able to run a tour and have my mom and my dad run my T-shirt trailer and go around with their motorhome,” Strickler said. “My old man enjoys it and my mom does too, so it’s cool to have them down (in North Carolina) close to me. They’re ready to go racing.”

And so is Strickler.

Ten things worth mentioning

1. The Dirt Late Model world has been flooding Rick Eckert and his family with support following the freak pit-area fire before Saturday’s program at Port Royal Speedway that left the York, Pa., driver’s 5-year-old grandson, Lennox, hospitalized with serious burns. Eckert’s wife, Kristal, wrote on Facebook that “words cannot express our gratitude for everyone reaching out and keeping Len in their thoughts and prayers” after the accident, which Kristal said occurred when static electricity ignited gas as Eckert’s car was being fueled for hot laps and the fire rushed into the back of the trailer where Lennox was playing with his Matchbox cars. Lennox was Life-Flighted to Lehigh Valley Burn Center in Allentown, Pa., and initially put under sedation; his father, Cody Mobley, the husband of the Eckerts’ only daughter Courtney, reported on Tuesday that his boy was brought out from sedation and his breathing tube was removed just before lunch. Mobley went on to write that “most of his afternoon was spent napping,” but by evening was “much more active” and his family “even managed to get a couple smiles out of him” as he ate two ice pops, drank chocolate milk spent the remainder of the night “relaxing and watching toonies.” While a long road to recovery remains for the youngster, the news of his current condition is uplifting.

2. Rocket Chassis co-owner Mark Richards responded to news of his good friend Rick Eckert’s grandson suffering serious burns in a pit-area fire by posting a heartfelt message on social media encouraging racers to take a close look at how they fueling their race cars and/or transferring fuel product. He noted that “over the last 6-8 years there has been quite a few incidents that we have heard of” in which fires were ignited during such instances — including shop fires experienced just this year by Ryan Gustin and Jason Feger and last year by Chase Junghans — and found that the “one common denominator is a filter of some kind in the fuel (funnel).” Richards wrote that the filter “is causing the fuel to aerate (more air-to-fuel) and become more fume-like, and fumes will ignite easier than fuel” when touched by static electricity. He recommends teams “get rid of any type of filter (mesh-type, steel filter or paper filter) that is in the funnel” and instead “use a hose attached to the top of the 5-gallon jug and eliminate the funnel completely.”

3. Summed up Richards in what served as a PSA to the racing community: “In over 45 years of racing I have never used any type of filter to filter the fuel going into a car or container. I have always looked at it that the car has a large fuel filter and if you service it regularly there is no need to filter the fuel prior (to filling the fuel cell). I don’t want to see or hear of anyone else having a fire. It’s been too many lately; one is too many, and when it hits someone you consider as family it makes you want to do something in letting people know.”

4. Brandon Thirlby of Traverse City, Mich., was hoping to secure a top-five finish in the Allstar Performance Challenge Series points standings over the Labor Day weekend with events Friday at Tri-City Motor Speedway in Auburn, Mich., and Saturday-Sunday at Merritt Speedway in Lake City, Mich. He didn’t get the opportunity, however, because he found himself spending the weekend in the hospital being treated for a wicked infection he developed in his jaw. “I had a wisdom tooth pop and it jarred the tooth in front of it enough to get an infection down inside,” the 33-year-old Thirlby related after being discharged on Tuesday. “I went in to get the tooth extracted and the infection spread like wildfire after that.” The infection swelled Thirlby’s neck, leaving him with “more chins than a Chinese phone book there for a minute.” Doctors had to insert two tubes — he called them his “rhino tusks” — into his chin, up through his jaw and into his gums in order to drain the infection. He was allowed to go home after spending the final 24 hours in the hospital having antibiotics pumped into him through an IV. “I’m a lot better now that the swelling is down, but it’s definitely still really uncomfortable,” noted Thirlby, who added that strapping on a helmet might be a bit difficult for him until the spots on his chin where doctors placed the drainage tubes heal up.

5. Thirlby’s hospitalization continued a rough few years on the medical front for him. Just two months ago, in early July, he broke both wrists in a last-lap incident at Merritt. (He said his wrists are “back to about 75 percent” with “plenty of movement and no real pain unless I try doing something I shouldn’t be doing.”) Last year he was plagued by a sore lower back during the summer after tweaking it while showering at home. And in 2018 he suffered a broken foot in a work accident. “None of the s--- seems to happen in the offseason!” Thirlby quipped.

6. The wild fires currently raging across the West Coast have drawn too close for comfort to the Duty family’s home in Mulino, Ore. Tricia Duty — wife of John and mother of Justin, both Dirt Late Model racers — posted Tuesday on Facebook that they were under a Level 2 evacuation order, leaving them just short of Level 3 mandate requiring immediate evacuation. She said they were wetting down their property and were packed and ready to depart if told to do so; as of her latest update on Wednesday morning, she reported that there was “no immediate danger to us at this point” but they had slept little overnight while listening to fire scanners and hearing about many people near them losing their homes. “So far we are lucky,” Tricia wrote. “Keep praying for those that have not been so.”

7. Justin Duty, 23, is not currently in Oregon with his parents. He said he’s still in the Midwest — where he’s spend the season racing — and was actually on the road the last two days picking up a couple race cars at Rocket Chassis in Shinnston, W.Va. “It’s been a pretty surreal experience for sure,” Justin said of the West Coast fires threatening his homestead. “The worst part for me is not being able to be there to help.” He added that he had his “fingers crossed” that the fires can be stopped before reaching his parents’ property.

8. Social media was abuzz Monday with memes and jokes about “Chase Jenkins,” the name that Chase Junghans of Manhattan, Kan., was called repeatedly by Beckley (W.Va.) Motorsports Park’s announcer as Junghans led Sunday night’s Beckley USA 100. There were even requests put out for “Chase Jenkins” T-shirts.

9. What was the deal with so many fans standing in the grandstand at Lancaster (S.C.) Speedway during Saturday night’s World of Outlaws feature? I noticed the standing spectators while watching DIRTVision’s coverage of the race (which was hampered by those patrons blocking the camera’s view of the homestretch). Come on, dirt track fans — don’t stand during the races! You’re not at a NASCAR race.

10. Condolences to Billy Moyer and his son, Billy Moyer Jr., following the passing last Friday of their 77-year-old uncle Jerry Watters of Des Moines, Iowa. Watters was a longtime backers of the Moyers’ racing effort.