Eldora Speedway
'Very close,' but Madden again Big E bridesmaid
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Winner Bobby Pierce (32) and runner-up Chris Madden (44) at Eldora. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
ROSSBURG, Ohio (Oct. 18) — Chris Madden didn’t sulk. He didn’t rip off his helmet and racing gloves and throw them down in frustration.
When Saturday’s 45th Dirt Track World Championship ended at Eldora Speedway with Madden finishing second to $100,000 winner Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., the 50-year-old driver from Gray Court, S.C., seemed oddly serene about his fate. His burning desire for a crown jewel victory at the half-mile oval — and heartbreaks suffered along the way — are well known, but he didn’t dwell on his latest brush with glory. | RaceWire
“We had a good race car and we’ll try again,” Madden matter-of-factly said while standing in street clothes inside his Kale Green-owned team’s trailer. “Second place is my place at Eldora I guess. Everybody else is racing for first or third on back.”
Madden grinned a bit as he said those words. Getting close to a major victory at Eldora has indeed become a thing for the veteran racer who’s made 44 overall crown jewel feature starts at the track without reaching victory lane. Saturday marked his fifth runner-up finish in an Eldora major after three consecutive in the Dream (2021-23) and another in 2022’s Eldora Million; he’s only lacking a bridesmaid result in the World 100 (his best is third in ’22).
What does Madden need to do to finally get over the hump? He’s tired of answering that question, so he’s decided to just go with the flow and hope that someday before he’s done in the sport he’ll have the necessary critical breaks go his way.
That day, of course, wasn’t Saturday. He started strong from outside the front row to lead the race’s first 49 laps, but after swapping the top spot with Pierce four times between laps 50 and 60 he didn’t have quite enough speed to seriously bid for the win. Madden actually briefly fell back as far as fifth before rallying to regain second on a lap-88 restart from Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, who finished fourth to clinch the 2025 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship, and cross the finish line 1.390 seconds behind Pierce.
“I couldn’t get through the holes down there in (turns) three and four,” Madden said when asked about his biggest vulnerability. “Really, I was not low enough. I thought I was low enough, but I wasn’t low enough. I was still out there against the wall and (pursuers) were cutting the corner off.
“Bobby was able to get a good run down there on me a couple of times. We raced hard for a number laps right there and he finally got me. I still didn’t get low enough for three or four laps, and then, you know, he got a little distance on me right there. Then I finally got low enough and I got back to second, but we needed the racetrack to slow down just a little bit more.”
Despite Madden’s apparent control of the 100-lap race’s first half, he conceded that the Eldora surface throughout that stretch wasn’t really in his wheelhouse. There was plenty of bite in the track, as well as an ample cushion to lean on, even though the feature started before sunset because officials pushed forward the schedule with rain threatening.
Madden likes the slick, no-cushion conditions at Eldora, and he didn’t get them until very late in the distance.
“I just knew (the track) was gonna have a little bit more speed in it than than it normally does, and it’s harder to race on when it has that speed in it,” said Madden, who made his first start in Green’s Longhorn Chassis since Sept. 11’s FloRacing Night in America event at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn. “But hey, hats off to them (track) guys for preparing a good racetrack for daytime (racing). What they did today to give us a good racetrack and trying to rush us through because of the weather coming in, they done a great job.
“A little sun wouldn’t have hurt them. That would have been fine,” he continued, noting that overcast conditions rolled in during the afternoon. “But it was great, you know, overall. The racetrack was actually coming to us, getting close (to his desired slick condition) there at the end.”
So perhaps Madden just needed a few more laps?
“Yeah … more laps, that’s it,” he said with a hearty laugh. “We had 100, but obviously, I couldn't get it done tonight.
“I wish we would have raced last night. I feel like we had them really covered last night (in winning the second heat). The racetrack was slick wall-to-wall, didn’t have no cushion nowhere, and we were really, really good and maneuverable in that condition.”
The change in track conditions overnight was an example of how Madden just doesn’t have the racing gods on his side at Eldora. He admitted he did think about that quirk.
“I was up on top of the trailer earlier and I was looking at the racetrack when they were running the B-mains, and I just looked over there (toward’s Pierce’s nearby trailer) and I see (Pierce’s father) Bob and you can tell what he’s saying (to Bobby) — ‘Man, it’s gonna have a little cushion here tonight,’ ” said Madden, who didn’t enter the 2023 and ’24 DTWC events at Eldora and in fact only had two previous feature appearances in the Carl Short-promoted event (finishes sixth in 2006 at Ohio’s Atomic Speedway and fourth in 2020 at Ohio’s Portsmouth Raceway Park). “I said to myself, ‘Yeah, that was my racetrack last night and today it’s yours.’ ”
That Madden was able to battle Pierce and finish second, though, in the prevailing conditions gave him a reason to be extra proud of his latest close-but-no-cigar performance at Eldora.
“We gave our best,” said Madden, who plans to finish 2025 with action at The Dirt Track at Charlotte (World Finals) and Senoia (Ga.) Raceway (FloRacing Night in America Peach State) and then talk about possible racing with Green next season. “I think we give it a really good shot today. We raced with Bobby on Bobby's racetrack condition today, and we were very close, so I feel good about that.
“Like his dad said when we were talking after the race, he said, ‘Dang, boy, I think you’re getting younger instead of older. That was a young man’s racetrack and you’re out there giving him a hard time.’ I said, ‘Yeah, we was having fun,’ but it was a young man’s racetrack today for sure. I think we done real well.”
Bobby Pierce wasn’t surprised he had to deal with Madden. The 28-year-old superstar praised the race’s runner-up.
“Me and Chris were talking (after the race), we were talking back to the (Eldora) Million,” Pierce said. “That restart (in the Million’s final laps), he came off two, he was really clean with J.D. (winner Jonathan Davenport). In my opinion, he could’ve slid him in that corner. It was like two to go or something — we were talking about the (purse) dropoff, it was $1 million-to-win and 100-grand for second, $900,000 split.”
So “thanks to him for racing me clean” midway through Saturday’s feature, Pierce continued. “Chris is really good, so if he keeps racing and coming back like he is, he’s like Dale McDowell. You can count those guys to be there at the end of the race.”
Madden just wants to be the first guy across the finish line at Eldora. Just one time.
