ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 7) — Wednesday night was going to be the end of Chris Madden’s crown jewel frustration at Eldora Speedway. He had absolutely no doubt as he powerfully paced the field in the resumption of the 100-lap Dream that was held over by rain after 14 circuits were run on June 11.

“I thought today was it, especially after the way we took off,” Madden said. “Hudson (O’Neal) got by me (to lead laps 17 and 19-24), but this is a brand-new car for here and I was still trying to feel it out and get it to where I like it … and we did. We worked on it all day today and the Penske (Shocks) guys worked on it with me to get me what I was looking to feel. And we found it. We had the best car here.”

At that moment Madden paused. The next words he uttered told the story of the night.

“The best car didn’t win,” he asserted.

Madden, 47, of Gray Court, S.C., spoke while standing alongside his Franklin Enterprises-backed XR1 Rocket car in the postrace technical inspection area of Eldora’s pit area. Fireworks and flames above victory lane — that hallowed ground maybe a hundred feet away from Madden — lit up his face, which showed the pain and heartbreak of a crushing late-race loss.

After leading laps 1-16, lap 18 and 25-91, Madden was overtaken by Brandon Overton and settled for a runner-up finish behind his 31-year-old rival from Evans, Ga., who captured a third straight Dream and its gargantuan $128,000 top prize.

Madden seemed almost resigned to his fate. Sure, the fiery, ultra-competitive racer had to be burning up inside after remaining arguably the most accomplished active driver without an Eldora crown jewel victory, but he still calmly answered questions from multiple interviewers rather than running off to sulk alone inside his hauler.

“I don’t know,” Madden said, shaking his head in exasperation. “We just can’t break through for that win here. We can run second, we can do everything we need to do here except win the one that gets us up on stage and gets our big picture made.”

This was Madden’s 32nd futile feature start in a marquee event at Eldora, including 15 appearances in the Dream, 14 in the World 100 and single starts in the Eldora Million, Dirt Late Model Stream and Intercontinental Classic. It was also his third bridesmaid finish in the famed half-mile oval’s last five crown jewels.

But while Madden’s second-place runs in the second of last year’s double Dreams and June’s Eldora Million were both near-misses — he overtook Overton for the lead in 2021’s Dream before ceding it back on lap 86 and he momentarily (but unofficially) nosed ahead of eventual winner Jonathan Davenport on a two-to-go restart in the Million — his latest defeat was especially difficult to accept. This time there was a mechanical reason for his misery.

With “probably 25 laps to go,” Madden noticed the tell-tale signals of a problem under his car’s hood — what would afterward be immediately diagnosed as a spark plug wire that came loose.

“You know when it goes down a cylinder,” he said. “It sounds terrible, and it loses power. I knew if we had a caution I was a dead duck. I wouldn’t be able to take off with him.”

The race was rolling uninterrupted since lap 15, though, and Madden had built a comfortable edge of nearly a straightaway on Overton. If green-flag conditions just continued, Madden was confident he could hold on for his elusive Eldora triumph.

“I wasn’t worried about it because I was just cruising at that time and I had my momentum up, my speed up,” Madden said. “I knew if we had a caution I wasn’t gonna be able to take off because I had a motor on seven cylinders.”

The development that Madden didn’t want occurred on lap 91 when the caution lights blinked on for a tangle between turns one and two involving Hudson O’Neal, Devin Moran and Bobby Pierce, who were battling for sixth place.

“I couldn’t even spin my tires under caution to try and clean my tires up,” Madden said. “I knew what was gonna happen. We was just a sitting duck right there. So what can you say?”

Madden chose the inside lane for the double-file restart. He tried to get a jump on Overton, but sufficient power just wasn’t at Madden’s disposal. He watched helplessly as Overton barreled through turns one and two on the outside and pulled ahead on the backstretch, and his attempt to mount a last-ditch bid after winding up his car brought him close to Overton on lap 97 before Overton’s deft lane change stymied Madden’s hopes.

“I just couldn’t take off on a restart.” Madden said. “Hell, he had me by four car lengths by the time we made it to turn one. There was nothing I could do. I just had to run him back down, and then he dirtied my air up a time or two and I got in a push because I didn’t have enough motor to drive through it.”

Madden had done everything right to put himself in position to win, including preparing a new car to replace the potent machine in which he had led the first 14 laps of the Dream on June 11 before rain postponed the remainder of the distance to Wednesday night. The car he ran in June was destroyed July 22 in a Silver Dollar Nationals heat race at I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Neb., and he entered its replacement in just one race — Aug. 4’s World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series-sanctioned show at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis. — before bringing it to Eldora.

“So we come here with a whole new program,” Madden said, but he proclaimed that the car change didn’t hamper him at all. “It was mine to lose. That’s all you can say. Heck, it was mine to screw up.”

It was a quirk of fate that snagged him — ironically, an identical episode of misfortune that had nearly hampered his Eldora Million effort in June.

“When we was here and won that day race (preliminary feature before June’s evening Eldora Million program), and I was telling them to hurry up because we got to change motors? Same thing happened then,” Madden said, noting that he feared terminal engine trouble when his powerplant laid down in the final laps of his 25-lap preliminary triumph only to discover a spark plug wire had popped off. “So I don’t know. We’ll glue ‘em on or something. I’ve never had this problem. We’ll get it fixed somehow.

“There’s nothing I can do about the bad luck,” he added. “That’s out of my control. We’ll just keep trying.”

The only silver lining for Madden? With the three-day World 100 starting on Thursday, he doesn’t have to wait nine months to take his next shot at an Eldora crown jewel.