Chris Madden was primed and ready to break his big-show hex at Eldora Speedway. He even had an inkling that a pre-heat mechanical scare before Saturday night’s Dirt Late Model Stream Invitational finale might have served as a fortune-changing omen for him.

Alas, the Big E’s racing gods would not permit him to leave the group of Best Drivers Who’ve Never Won an Eldora Major. In fact, the 45-year-old standout from Gray Court, S.C., saw his hopes ended without touching the half-mile oval surface, let alone completing a circuit in the 67-lap feature contested before an empty grandstand amid coronavirus concerns.

View full coverage from the Eldora Dirt Late Model Stream

Madden’s Scott Bloomquist Racing machine simply wouldn’t come to life in the pit area as the 25-car field was called to the track, and nothing Madden’s crew and an army of friends from other teams tried could get it roaring. The furious effort to decipher the problem ultimately ceased as the race commenced and Madden’s car was pushed back to his pit stall, leaving the ultra-competitive driver to stand atop his trailer and watch a feature that he was scheduled to start from the pole position.

There was little Madden could say to explain his demise after he climbed down from his transporter and stared solemnly at his No. 0M following the event’s checkered flag.

“I don’t know,” Madden said, shaking his head in utter disappointment when asked if his team had discovered a definite culprit. “Something electrical. It won’t fire.”

Madden had earlier experienced a preview of his electrical woes. Moments after he rolled onto the track to start the fourth heat from the pole position, his car lost power on a pace lap and he limped to a stop on the inside of the backstretch. The machine turned over after he switched to a secondary battery and received a nudge from a push truck and he went on to score an uplifting pole-winning prelim victory, but there was obviously an underlying situation that would come back at the most inopportune time.

“We had done some carburetor adjustments (before the heat) and I just thought that it got flooded when I pulled on the racetrack because it refired and ran fine after that,” Madden said. “I didn’t know it was an electrical issue until feature time.

“I fired (the engine) and left here (the trailer) and went to tire tech (in the pit area),” he added, “and then it shut off and wouldn’t refire.”

Madden’s crew was quickly joined by an array of other team members — including his former teammate Shane Clanton and Ricky Weiss’s crew chief Shawn Gage — in a flurry of activity to beat the clock and get Madden on the track. Nothing worked.

“We changed the ignition boxes, put a whole new dash in it,” Madden said. “It’s something between the dash and the motor.”

Madden found himself leaving Eldora in frustration once again. He’s been victorious in a Dream preliminary feature (2018) and contended for several crown jewel victories over nearly 20 years of competing at the famed facility — he owns a top Dream finish of fourth (twice) in 13 feature starts and a best World 100 run of fifth (2019) in 12 A-main appearances — but all too often cruel twists of fate have kept him from busting through for his a coveted triumph at a track he lists as his favorite.

Now Madden has another high-dollar heartbreaker on his resume — and “no idea” why the black cloud continues to hover over him at the place.

Adding to Madden’s despair was the fact that he watched Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., march to a dramatic $50,000 victory in a largely bottom-hugging manner that Madden certainly recognized.

“That racetrack that just won this race tonight would’ve played right into my hands and my race car tonight,” Madden said. “I run a lot of maneuverable lines in that heat race there. We were good. We had a real good race car.

“I told Scott (Bloomquist, who didn’t qualify for the feature and watched from the trailer next to Madden’s) with about 20 laps to go, I said, ‘The 39’s gonna win this race,’” he continued, referring to McCreadie. “I thought the 17 (Dale McDowell) was gonna be the one to win the race (running the bottom), but I don’t know what happened to him on that restart. I don’t know if he sealed his tire up or what, but he couldn’t go and McCreadie got by him. And McCreadie was running the same line that Dale was running.”

And the one that Madden would likely have been using if he had been on the racetrack.

“Just you know … it was my kind of racetrack tonight,” Madden concluded, shrugging his shoulders in exasperation. “Just didn’t get to participate.”