Michael Page’s Thursday effort at Eldora Speedway’s Dirt Late Model Stream Invitational was forgettable, at best.

"The more we was on the racetrack,” the Douglasville, Ga., driver said, “the worse we got.”

As prelims for the $50,000-to-win event continued Friday, Page ran into more problems when a couple of daring moves in his heat race put him in danger of a wall-bashing demise.

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Somehow, with the track surface evolving to the 37-year-old’s preferred taste, he was able to survive both nights, capping his prelims with a solid 15th-to-seventh charge in Friday’s 30-lapper won by fellow Georgian Brandon Overton.

“We dug a little hole, but the car’s good,” said Page, who is scheduled to start inside the fourth row of a Saturday heat race. “We’ve got to qualify better and just maybe get a little luck (Saturday) and see what we can do.”

Page’s career high-water mark at Eldora came with an eighth-place finish in 2016’s World 100 at the historic high-banked oval owned by Tony Stewart. He’ll try to better that if he can make it into Saturday’s 67-lap feature in an invitation-only event celebrating the track’s 67th anniversary amid coronavirus restrictions without spectators.

To get there, Page will have to put his Thursday performance out of mind. He was just 29th quickest in time trials, finished eighth in a heat race and retired from a consolation race with a 14th-place finish before watching the feature won by Kyle Strickler.

“We were awful (Thursday). So awful in the consy, I just stopped and came in,” Page said. “I knew you need to be out there, but it couldn’t have got no worse. The more we was on the racetrack, the worse we got. We all, my guys, we changed everything on it and just tried not to give up.”

On Friday, he qualified marginally better at 23rd to start fifth in a heat race, and — for the briefest of moments — actually took the lead in the 10-lapper. On the second lap, Page pulled a slide job between Jimmy Owens and Chris Madden in turn four.

Owens dropped Page back to third on the frontstretch, and Page went all slide job again in turn one, diving under the Madden-Owens combo. But Page misjudged the move and ended up scraping the wall exiting turn two as he dropped back to fifth, nearly wrecking a third time when he made contact with Chris Simpson entering turn three.

“I just messed up,” Page said. “I just wanted to make sure I cleared ’em, and you don’t never know. I went in way too hard and I thought I could keep it out of the wall, but I didn’t. We didn’t even get to work on the front end. The front end’s still bent.

“It’s one of them things, we go down the front straightaway and they started like switching (grooves), back and forth there and slowed their momentum. I had a run. Here, you’ve just gotta go — and hope you can make it. I didn’t know, but I shot it in there and it bottomed out with me and shot up the track. I thought I was going to keep it out of the wall, but it just sucked me in there. I was just trying. You know, you’ve gotta go here, and if you’re not, you just ain’t going to make it.

“Luckily I kept it out of the wall enough not to tear the car up too bad and come back and got the transfer spot, which means everything. … I was just telling myself, ‘Calm down, calm down.’ But the car was still pretty good and we’ve worked (hard).”

The team wasn’t able to make complete repairs to the car before Friday's 30-lapper, but Page still drove from his eighth-row starting spot up to seventh, finishing one spot behind Brandon Sheppard.

“The front end, we have a bent spindle or balljoint or something,” Page said. “I’m having to drive it with the back end. The front end won’t do nothing. We’re going to work on that and I think we’ll be better for tomorrow if we can make it in the show.”

“The car was pretty maneuverable. I could do a little bit more than other guys could (moving around the track). And it was getting better and better. It took me too long to find the top in (turns) three and four, but when I did, the car, it was good. I was really good out of (turn) two there, we could exit like good and straight and the car would go if I hit it right.

“It was pretty fun. It’s fun when the racetrack’s like that, you can just kind of move all over and don’t know where to go. It was a good time.

“We know we’ve got a good car in the feature. It’s just not as good as the other cars when it’s wide open and top-dominant. ... When we can start moving around and really racing and moving on the racetrack, we have as good as a car as anybody. I’ve just gotta get myself where I have a decent starting spot and can try to win the race."