After a season full of near-misses and heartbreaking defeats, Josh Rice thought his luck couldn’t get much worse. But during the first night of Eldora Speedway’s Intercontinental Classic on Thursday, it did.

Starting from the pole of the $10,000-to-win preliminary night feature, the 22-year-old Verona, Ky., driver was in prime position to finally get a breakthrough win on a big stage. But after pulling ahead of fellow front-row starter Ricky Weiss of Headingley, Manitoba, at the drop of the green and making a strong run through turns one and two, Rice’s XR1 Rocket slowed suddenly down the back straightaway and headed to the pits.

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“It’s crazy, but you can tell when your car’s good, and I felt like it was the best it’s been all night in that one corner right there,” a dejected Rice said following Thursday’s feature as he watched his crew get to work trying to diagnose the engine problems that caused his untimely exit. “I really thought we had something. I don’t know if we would’ve won, but I know we were fast all night and it sure felt good then. But off two the motor went crazy and started vibrating like crazy. I knew right away it wasn’t good.”

Rice was indeed fast all night during the first of two preliminary nights at Eldora that lead into Saturday’s $50,000-to-win Intercontinental Classic finale. After qualifying sixth fastest of the 48 drivers invited to compete in the World 100 replacement event, Rice outran Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., for most of the night’s second heat race before Overton got the better of him on a late restart and stole the win. An invert among the top six starters put Rice on the pole for the feature, setting up his dramatic downfall.

Thinking things over after the race, Rice figured his weekend was probably over. He had a backup car available to him, but with the motor in that car already needing to be refreshened, he figured he probably wouldn’t risk hurting another engine on an extremely fast Eldora Speedway surface.

“This has pretty much been the story of our year,” said Rice, who confirmed to DirtonDirt.com on Friday afternoon that his weekend was indeed over early. “It feels good to come here and be fast and be a contender, but that doesn’t pay the bills.”

The inauspicious end to Rice’s promising Eldora weekend does fit all too perfectly with the theme of Rice’s 2020 season, which has seen the second-generation racer contend for a number of big wins only to come up short or drop out altogether. His close-but-not-close-enough performances include losing a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series race by inches at Florence Speedway, getting passed on the second-to-last lap for $10,000 at Brownstown Speedway and rallying from 19th into the top five in Florence’s North-South 100 last month only to fade after making contact with the wall.

“It’s heartbreaking. We’ve been good in a lot of races, but we’ve had them get away from us,” Rice said. “We’ve had so many chances to win races this year and something stupid has happened. It’s almost unbelievable the bad luck we’ve had. I don’t know what I’ve got to do to change our luck, but I need some good luck back.”

While he was understandably disappointed with Thursday’s result, Rice took some solace in his team’s strong performance during yet another big-race weekend.

“Just to be one of the 48 cars here this weekend is awesome. To come up here and start on the pole, just awesome,” Rice said. “I brought my best five guys and we clicked tonight. We were fast all night and adjusted well on the car. A lot of guys were struggling to turn, but I was turning good all night. I felt like I was more left than I was anything all night.

“We’re getting better and better. I’m learning to take care of my stuff. I know it didn’t look like it at the North-South, but I am learning. Our stuff’s really good and it’s cool going to these races and knowing we have a shot. It would’ve been huge for us to come up here and get a big win to make some money for the team and to show people what we’re capable of and maybe pick up a sponsor to help us keep racing at this level. Would’ve been huge, but all we can do is keep trying.”