ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 10) — Sometimes life happens and throws an unexpected twist that turns a race car driver’s single-minded focus on the biggest event of the year into a completely secondary pursuit.

So it was on Thursday for Brandon Overton and Justin Duty, who found themselves abandoning the prestigious World 100 at Eldora Speedway for virtually identical reasons: their significant others going into labor hundreds, or in Duty’s case thousands, of miles away.

Overton, 35, of Evans, Ga., learned that his wife, Heather, was at a hospital in Augusta, Ga., shortly after winning Thursday’s second 25-lap semifeature to end a four-year victory drought at Eldora. Duty, a 29-year-old racer from Molalla, Ore., received the same information about his girlfriend, Jessica Larsen, when he returned to the pit area following his involvement in a tangle during the evening’s third shootout qualifier.

The news immediately flipped the trajectory of the weekend for both men. Rather than attempting to figure out how to make their cars go faster around the high-banked, half-mile oval, they shifted to trying to get home as quickly as possible.

Overton was still processing how he turned back Josh Rice’s full-throated challenge in the closing circuits to capture Thursday’s second 25-lapper when he checked his phone and found a message from his wife. There on the screen was a photo Heather sent showing she was at a hospital in Augusta, Ga., because she started feeling labor pangs — a bit early with Monday being her due date to deliver the couple’s second child, this one a boy — and headed there while Overton was battling for his $12,000 preliminary triumph.

So shortly after conducting some postrace interviews and collaborating with his Riggs Motorsports crew in the postrace technical inspection area, Overton returned to his trailer, showered and changed while talking to his wife, and then made for Eldora’s exit around 3 o’clock in the morning at the end of a long, rain-delayed program.

“I’m leaving and flying home,” Overton said just before jumping on a four-wheeler to be whisked to the parking lot for his ride to the airport.

Overton began the World 100 weekend hoping that Heather’s Monday due date would hold true, but he was prepared for all eventualities. His planning started Sunday when he flew commercial to run the Baltes Classic at Eldora as a shakedown for his new Longhorn Chassis (he finished second in a semifeature) and then caught another flight home on Monday morning to be with his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Stevie, for a few more days. He flew back to Eldora on Thursday afternoon in a private plane provided by his wife’s stepfather, arriving around 3 p.m.

That plane and its pilot remained on call at the nearby Darke County Airport in Greenville to immediately whisk Overton to Georgia if Heather went into labor. The standby aircraft was pressed into service with Heather’s admission to the hospital; Overton was even more thankful to have access to the plane when Heather relayed to him that her blood pressure was elevated, further fraying Overton’s nerves.

Overton safely made the approximately three-hour flight to Georgia and was by his wife’s side by early Friday morning. The baby had not yet arrived as of noon, according to Overton’s crew chief Ryder Cantillo.

Of course, Overton’s departure effectively meant the end of his weekend at Eldora. Family comes first — and even if the baby would come into the world safely sometime Friday and raise the thought he could return for Saturday’s $100,000-to-win finale, missing the second preliminary program would bury him in a Saturday heat race.

Overton realized Heather’s due date could throw a monkey wrench into his World 100 plans, so he knew the possibility of missing a race he won in 2021 was real. It’s a bit harder to deal with, though, since he started the weekend so well with his first victory at Eldora since September 2022 when he captured his third Dream in an event postponed three months by rain.

Eldora hasn’t been especially kind to Overton since the 2021-22 seasons when he won three straight Dreams and added a World 100 triumph in the second of the event’s post-Covid doubleheader in ’21. He finished second in the ’22 World 100 but has tallied finishes of 22nd, 18th and 23rd since then. His last four Dreams have produced a DNQ in ’23 (following a painful wreck), a third in ’24 and pedestrian 14th- and 13th-place runs the past two years. He also failed to qualify for 2022’s Eldora Million.

So Overton’s bid for another Eldora crown jewel will likely have to wait until next year as his trophy for the weekend becomes the birth of a son. His crew was planning to stay at the track to spend the remainder of the weekend assisting Overton’s Riggs Motorsports teammates Jason Riggs and Jadon Frame as well as Ches Chester, a first-time World 100 entrant from Twin City, Ga.

Duty, meanwhile, was even more surprised than Overton to learn of his girlfriend going into labor during the World 100, a race he was attempting for the first time in his career after previously tackling the Dream in 2025 and ’26 (with DNQs on both occasions). He was planning to travel home Sunday to be with Larsen’s due date of Sept. 30 approached, but their baby girl decided to make an early arrival.

As Duty was on the track for the third qualifying race, Larsen, knowing that he didn’t have his phone, called Iowa racer Nick Marolf’s wife, Amber, to report that her water had broken and her mother was taking her to a hospital outside Portland, Ore. The Marolfs are extremely close to Duty — he bases his Midwestern racing from Nick’s shop and stays at the couple’s home while away from Oregon — and Amber came running down from the grandstands to inform him of the development.

“I immediately started looking for flights and loading the trailer to leave,” reported Duty, whose car sustained significant left-front nose damage in a crash during the qualifying race. “Once I found my flight, Matt James with Race Ranch (T-shirts) called me and offered to drive me to the airport during the races.”

Duty caught a flight out of Cincinnati at 5:30 a.m. Friday and made a connection in Chicago. He was scheduled to land in Portland at 9:30 a.m.

While on the plane just over one hour from his scheduled arrival time in Portland, Duty relayed by text message that Larson had not yet delivered their daughter. He was anxiously counting down the minutes to the aircraft’s touchdown.

“It feels like I’ve been on this plane for hours” longer than the actual flight time, wrote Duty, who was hoping to race through the airport and make the short 15-minute drive over to the hospital before Larson gave birth. And Duty was quite certain that once he had that little girl cradled in his arms, the disappointment of crashing out of Thursday’s qualifier would become a distant memory.

“I could really care less about that stuff now, ‘ya know?” Duty wrote when asked about his rough night at Eldora. “It’s crazy how fast your life can change.”

Duty added that his whole cross-country experience to be there for his girl’s birth is “something I’ll never forget.” It’s also a great story he’ll someday be able to tell his daughter.