Jimmy Owens Wins World 100 Prelim at Eldora Speedway

The Biggest Dirt Race In The World, the 48th annual World 100 commenced with the first of two Prelim Nights at the famed ½ (0.500) mile high-banked dirt oval of Eldora Speedway (OH), located just east of the Indiana/Ohio state line in Rossburg, Ohio on Thursday, September 6th. The first of three full nights of racing for the “Granddaddy of them all” featured the popular “Every Lap Matters” format highlighted by twin 25-lap features paying $10,000 to win each. An even 100 cars were in the pits and a pair of former Globe winners stood in victory lane at the end of a very long evening that had two rain delays totaling over five hours with the final checkered flag falling at 3:53a.m.

In the Even Feature, 2007 World 100 winner, Jimmy Owens, also one of just seven drivers to have won both tracks’ crown jewel events, the World 100 and the Dirt Late Model Dream, started on the pole and made no mistake the entire race in his #20 Ramirez Motorsports / Rocket XR1 Chassis / Durham Racing Engines ride. The Newport, TN veteran fended off consistent strong challenges from another former World 100 winner, Brian Birkhofer (2002 & 2012) to secure his second Prelim Night Feature victory of his career to move into the 46-year-old into five-way tie for second all-time in that category.

“We had a good car all night long except for Qualifying. I don’t know what I did there, but we missed it real bad. But in the heats, we were good, a couple of things went our way. Then we made a couple of changes for the Feature and we had a good hot rod.” Offered Owens in victory lane. “I felt like I could run through the middle of the race track a lot better than when I was going around the top. You could get some good momentum off the corners by just touching that right rear up in the stuff.” He added.

It would be Owens and Birkhofer leading the field to the green flag for the Even Feature and it was Owens rocketing out to the front of the field. Now a two-time and reigning DIRTcar Summer Nationals Champion, Brian Shirley slipped past Birkhofer for second from his fourth starting spot and tried to pressure Owens who held the point. Owens would keep a safe piece of real estate between himself and Shirley as the second-place driver was being pressured himself from Birkhofer who was looking to reclaim the runner-up spot.

With nine laps to go, Birkhofer got past Shirley and set his sights on Owens for the race lead. He was able to get close but couldn’t quite muster up a charge as Owens would hang on to lead all 25 laps for the $10,00 paycheck. Birkhofer settled

for second as Zack Dohm, who started 12th, completed the podium finishers in third. Shirley fell back to fourth as Tim McCreadie completed the top five. Two-time and defending race winner, Jonathan Davenport started 14th and came through with a sixth place showing while Chad Simpson, Jimmy Mars, Chris Ferguson and 2006 World 100 winner, Earl Pearson Jr., would finish off the top 10.

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