ROSSBURG, Ohio — The opening night of Hudson O’Neal’s big week at Eldora Speedway ended with a crumpled race car. The 22-year-old Martinsville, Ind., driver’s fortunes took a decided turn for the better Thursday at the historic half-mile oval with his night ending in victory lane, holding a trophy for his $12,000 World 100 preliminary victory for the Double Down Motorsports team.

O’Neal’s turnaround had him thinking about the possibility of being the first Indiana-based driver to capture Dirt Late Model racing’s most prestigious event with $55,000 on the line for Saturday’s 52nd annual World 100.

"It'd be special. You know, I've came to Eldora and I’ve had good runs — and I've had some real bad runs, too,” O’Neal said. "I’m happy that we came back this time and we got a good piece underneath of us and, who knows? Maybe we can have (another) good showing tomorrow night and get a good starting spot in (Saturday’s) heat races where we can put ourselves in contention.”

In Thursday’s caution-free 25-lapper, O’Neal led all but the first lap and kept fellow front-row starter and first-lap leader Shane Clanton of Zebulon, Ga., in check the entire distance, winning by a 1.455-second margin. Chris Ferguson of Mount Holly, N.C. — whose Wednesday night also ended in a wreck in the conclusion of the rain-postponed Dream XXVIII — was third with Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., and upstart Garrett Smith of Eatonton, Ga., rounding out the top five.

O’Neal and Clanton ran door-to-door the first lap but O’Neal slipped ahead on the second circuit and was never headed.

"I got off to a really good start there and I knew I just needed to get the lead and get out in clean air as fast as I could,” said O’Neal, who got a bear hug from his father and retired Hall of Fame racer Don O’Neal in victory lane. “It looked like that first (preliminary feature won by Jonathan Davenport) went caution-free, so I figured the second one probably would, too. I just knew I needed to try and get out in clear air as fast as I could and try — I didn’t know if I was good enough to — but get away from (Clanton) a little bit so that way when I got the lapped traffic I’d have a little bit of a cushion.

“The air plays such a big factor here, man. I swear it felt like I'd slow down two seconds whenever I caught lapped traffic, but we had a phenomenal race car. There's been a lot of people that helped us this week. And you know, I just can't thank all of them enough. We're finally starting to start to come around and maybe we will be able to contend for my first World 100.”

O’Neal, who last week accepted the Rocket Chassis house car ride to replace the departing Brandon Sheppard, thanked Double Down car owner Roger Sellers and his crew in victory lane for his 24-hour turnaround.

“It was a late night last night for sure,” O’Neal said of his Dream demise. “It was just unfortunate. You know, we were going to come out of there probably right around the top five, fifth or sixth, and it was just unfortunate, wrong place at the wrong time. It just looked like a mechanical failure (that caused Devin Moran to get out of shape and trigger the wreck). So it's a good bounce back, a great way to start the weekend.”

VIDEO: Hear from Shane Clanton following his runner-up finish on Thursday.

Clanton’s only answer to how he could’ve won? “Just don’t let him pass me there,” he wisecracked in his postrace interview. “Our car’s good, we had a good starting spot. Hopefully we can do it again tomorrow, but the Capital Race Cars pretty good right now. Hopefully we can keep it up.

“The fuel pressure is just a little bit too high and it’s stumbling there in the middle of the corners. We know what we've got to do to fix that, so hopefully that makes the final adjustments.”

Ferguson went to his backup car after wrecking on the first lap of Wednesday’s Dream action, which resumed on the 15th lap following June’s rainout.

"I just want to give a special thanks to my crew for all the hard work,” Ferguson said. “The car was really good. I could just kind of hang with Shane and Hudson (but) couldn't really get the momentum going like we needed to. But (I’m) tickled to death. This is the first time I've raced this car here since 2018, so hats off to Team Zero Race Cars.”

The driver with five World 100 starts, including a fifth-place finish last season, is confident he’s got a shot Saturday.

"I think we got the race car to do it. Just got to make some good decisions Friday and then Saturday and the heat races, but I feel like we're in the show. We've got a shot at it. And you know, that's all you can ask for,” Ferguson said. “This team has really, we're hitting really good at these big races, so maybe we can knock another one down.”