ROSSBURG, Ohio — No blown engine is a good one, but the three failures Zack Dohm has suffered during his Eldora Speedway career have been particularly harsh.

The third came Thursday night while the 36-year-old Cross Lanes, W.Va., driver was leading the fourth heat of the opening preliminary night for Dream XXXI. Starting on the pole of the 10-lap heat, Dohm’s race went up in smoke on the sixth lap, ending his chances for a $100,000 weekend at the legendary half-mile oval.

"That sucks,” Dohm said in the upper pit area before rain postponed the night’s 50-lap feature to Friday. “I've blown a motor up here three times. Every time is leading a heat race.”

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Ouch. Ouch. And ouch.

Before Thursday, he broke a motor Sept. 11, 2020, during the Covid-year Intercontinental Classic prelims while leading a heat race. The occurrence 10 years earlier was even tougher to swallow.

“The first time I ever came here was for the World 100 in 2010, and I blew a motor on the (ninth) lap of Heat 5. I’d have started outside pole of the feature. I cried on that one — I'm over the crying,” Dohm said.

The West Virginia-based team will make the best of it and spectate during Friday’s program, which will begin with the complete originally scheduled program and be followed by the makeup feature. Both 50-lappers will pay $30,000 and help set the heat race lineups for Saturday’s $100,000-to-win Dream.

"Tomorrow is my son's birthday. We'll just sit in the bleachers and root for our buddies,” Dohm said. “I wish I did T-shirts, you know, maybe somebody feel sorry for me and go buy some shirts.”

While Dohm discussed his downfall, brother and crew chief Nick tried to diagnose the engine problems along with other crew members. The details weren’t immediately clear on a night with high-speed track conditions.

"It's just part of it when it's like this,” said Dohm, whose departure handed the heat victory to Tyler Erb. “I mean it's humid out, and the track is juiced up as you could get it, wide open. I mean, I never lifted. I'm just holding it wide open for five laps until that caution and then after that …

"I mean it ran great. I pulled Terbo on every start. I can't do signals so I don't know how big of a lead I actually had, but I felt really good, but the motor just let go.”

It wasn’t overheating, but he sensed issues before the plume of smoke appeared entering turn one.

“Just one lap it just started kind of vibrating and running (poorly). I got out of the gas back in it in the corner and it's still (poor) so I just let off on the back straightaway and it started smoking,” Dohm said. “Then I saw the smoke. It may have been smoking before that, but I never smelled nothing. I don't know.”