ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 6) — Another crown jewel at Eldora Speedway. Another disappointment for Chris Madden.

There were signs Saturday that karma might finally shine on Madden in his 17th World 100 feature appearance and 43rd overall crown jewel start at the famed half-mile oval, but ultimately it was the same old sad story for the accomplished 50-year-old from Gray Court, S.C. He ran in second place for laps 3-39 but didn’t have the juice to climb higher before a late-race scrape left him with a 13th-place finish.

As badly as Madden craves a major victory at Eldora, though, his latest loss didn’t send him heartbroken over an opportunity missed. He remarked afterward that his Kale Green-owned Longhorn Chassis was solid but not a winning car, especially once Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., turned up the wick following a lap-39 restart to snatch second from him, overtake Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., for the lead two circuits later and control the remainder of the distance for the $72,000 top prize.

Madden started third after a heat win and paced in second behind Davenport for much of the race’s first half. He even nosed underneath Davenport through turns one and two on lap 38 — raising the possibility that he was ready to make a move — but that was best, and last, gasp.

“I guess Ricky just got better,” Madden said while leaning on the counter in his team’s trailer shortly after the race’s conclusion. “We got too tight. On that (lap-39) restart, I couldn’t turn down here (in turns one and two) and we went from second to fourth.”

Madden’s final summation: “We had a top-five race going, for sure. We wasn’t going to win it.”

Discussing the reason his top-five bid ended is what brought an emotional response from him — some clear agitation, if not anger. He had some fire in his eyes as he recalled the feature’s 89th lap and contact he had with Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C.

Running fifth one circuit after a lap-88 restart, Madden entered turn one with Hoffman underneath him. The cars came together at the extreme inside of the corner, causing Madden to pull up lame with left-front damage for a caution flag while Hoffman sped away and went on to finish third despite damage to the right-front bodywork of his Tye Twarog-owned Longhorn.

Madden pulled no punches with his analysis of the incident.

“That last restart we had right there, we just got run over by Nick Hoffman,” said Madden, who pitted and returned to salvage a lead-lap finish of 13th worth $6,500. “He’s just a complete idiot every time I race with that guy. He just tore the whole left front off of it. He’s nowhere near making the pass. He just runs you over. He’s not good enough to race by you.

“We definitely got off (the lead pace) there at the end, but we weren’t bad enough to be run over like that. The guy’s got no respect for nobody. I mean, that guy’s got one coming, I can tell you that. You can print it, you can mark it, you can do whatever you want. He’s got one coming.”

Hoffman, 33, brushed off Madden’s comment when asked about the contact following his participation in the postrace press conference for the top-three finishers.

“It just got to the point where he held me up kind of a lot of the race and got me in bad spots and stuff, and I was tired of racing with him and I got underneath him,” said Hoffman, who recorded a career-best finish in his sixth World 100 feature start. “He should see me all the way down the front straightaway. I’m planning on sliding him in one, and he had me pinned against the inside wall. So it was either hit the infield wall or hit him, and was a lot easier to just hit him.

“That’s what killed my right-front fender. The fender was pretty much junk again at the end from just running into him, but like, I had to go, you know? He held me up a couple times and had me in bad air, and it’s like he races me harder than anybody else I feel like that gets around him, so I was frustrated with him anyway, and it was like, ‘I gotta go.’”