As Josh Richards walked with his father, Mark, from victory lane to the infield technical inspection area after winning Thursday’s 30-lap Intercontinental Classic preliminary feature at Eldora Speedway, he received a congratulatory handshake from a reporter.

Then the elder Richards succinctly summed up his son’s $10,000 triumph: “He needed it.”

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Josh readily agreed with his dad. The 32-year-old driver from Shinnston, W.Va., earned just his fourth overall victory — and first in nearly two months — of a 2020 season in which he feels he’s left many more checkered flags on the table.

“We’ve had a lot of great speed this year,” Josh said of his performance in his second season with NASCAR Cup regular Clint Bowyer’s Dirt Late Model operation but first without a teammate. “But I feel like every time we’ve had speed something would happen, or we’d qualify a little off and then we’d just kind of ride about seventh or eighth (in the main event).”

Indeed, it’s been a frustrating campaign for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series regular. He has certainly enjoyed some success — including a World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series win March 6 at Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn., and Lucas Oil scores May 21 at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., and July 13 at 300 Raceway in Farley, Iowa — but just not enough to match his distinguished pedigree as a five-time national touring series champion. His struggles to win regularly have been pronounced enough that he mused, albeit with a grain of salt, after Thursday’s action, “I feel like everybody’s wrote me off.”

The Dirt Late Model world knows Richards possesses otherworldly talent, talent that hasn’t disappeared and at any time can carry him to his previous heights. His father is one observer who understands that Josh has been percolating on the edge of a breakout this season.

“Josh has had a lot of tough luck this year,” said Mark, who fields the Rocket Chassis house car that Josh piloted from 2004-16. “He’s had some good runs, he’s been fast, he’s just had some crazy stuff happen. Every time he seems like he gets going with a good run, a flat tire or something else happens. It’s been all summer like that for him.

“I’m just glad to see that he had a good night. He’s my kid, and even it wasn’t my kid I’m glad that he had a good night because he’s been having a tough year of incidents and stuff happening, a lot of it uncontrollable.”

No such problems presented themselves on opening night of the Intercontinental Classic. In fact, Richards even caught a huge break when the feature’s polesitter, Josh Rice of Verona, Ky., slowed with terminal engine trouble on the opening lap, negating the start and moving Richards up one row from the third starting spot to the pole for the second attempt. He seized the opportunity to lead the entire distance in his XR1 Rocket car.

“We finally were able to start up front, stay in clean air and move around,” Richards said. “It feels good to be in control of the race here because once you get put in the back at this place you start questioning everything. You get back in dirty air and you try to race and you don’t know where you’re at. Now I know where our car is at out front and it feels pretty good.”

The uncharacteristically heavy Eldora racing surface suited Richards as well.

“When that track has got the cushion on it like that, that’s like the old days for Josh,” Mark said of his son. “Josh was always really good in that condition.”

The younger Richards wasn’t entirely surprised by the speedway that greeted him and his 47 other invited rivals on Thursday.

“I live 20 minutes from here (he relocated to western Ohio with his wife, Andrea, in 2017 when he left his father’s team to run for Best Performance Motorsports), and man, we got some killer rain a couple days ago,” Richards said. “It was a lot. It all came with in an hour-and-a-half. Then we rolled in today and I was like, ‘Man, that’s the wettest I’ve seen that track in a while.’ ”

Richards was at his best during June’s Dirt Late Model Stream Invitational at Eldora when the track surface had traction, so he thrived with even more available to him on Thursday. He knows he will have to adjust to what will likely be an increasingly slick track as the Intercontinental weekend builds towards Saturday's 67-lap, $50,000-to-win finale.

“The track was definitely way faster than normal,” said Richards, whose Stream results included a DNQ (by one spot) on Thursday, fast time and a fifth-place feature finish on Friday and an eighth-place run in the headliner (after he started second). “Once it gets cleaned up we have to work on our package a little bit.

“I know we have a really good package early. Even back in June, I felt really good all the way up until feature time and then I was like, ‘Man, I just need a tiny, tiny bit.’ Our balance was just a little bit off (in the Stream finale). When the track had just a little bit of a grip we were fast, but we were just OK when it cleaned up.

“I can always look back at my notebook and say, ‘Don’t do this, do this,’ ” he added. “So that’s what we did tonight and luckily it worked out.”

While his triumph boosted his confidence as he seeks his coveted first-ever crown jewel victory at Eldora, Richards will be fighting history a bit the rest of the weekend. Thursday marked the third time that he’s won a crown jewel weekend preliminary feature at the track, and on both previous occasions — the

2013 Dream and 2018 World 100 — he followed up his victory by falling back on a provisional spot to start the marquee events. He went on to cross the finish line second in the ’13 Dream only to be disqualified for weighing in light and placed seventh in the ’18 World 100.

Richards asserted that he would relish a checkered flag in the Intercontinental Classic — a race that’s serving as a placeholder for the 50th World 100, which was postponed to 2021 because of Covid-19 crowd restrictions — with the same verve as Eldora’s usual crown jewels.

“Any time you’re on the stage up there, the names (of the race) don’t mean anything,” Richards said. “It’s the same guys, same competition, so the World or the Dream, or this race, it’s all the same to me.”

But Richards admitted that celebrating in front of an empty grandstand was … strange.

“It’s different,” Richards said. “I got up on top of the car (in victory lane) and then you’re like, ‘Well, OK.’ It’s definitely eerie without (fans).

“As far as the operation (on race night) and our job in the pits, and how it flows, it’s way faster (without fans), but we’re here for them,” he continued. “Usually when you watch those heat races you can listen to their roar and if something happens on the track you know because the excitement is just overwhelming. Now we’re just watching guys slide each other, we’re all in the pits, and we’re like, ‘Man, that looked pretty close, didn’t it?’ It’s just not the same, but it’s still great to win.”