ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 12) — Takeaways and analysis from Saturday’s 56th annual World 100 finale, a $100,000-to-win feature captured by Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C. (RaceWire):

DESTINY DELIVERED: It felt inevitable that Nick Hoffman would eventually claim an Eldora crown jewel. The Dream. The World 100 — at some point, he was going to win one. For most of Saturday’s 100-lapper, it appeared to be Ryan Gustin’s time. But whether Gustin’s car failed or not, Hoffman seemed destined to overtake him down the stretch. Two indicators became impossible to ignore. First, Hoffman essentially erased a 10-second deficit to Gustin's leading machine from laps 59-88. Then, as the race wore on, the driver-side door of his Tye Twarog-owned Dirt Late Model became increasingly caked with Eldora’s light-brown clay. Hoffman was running so low that mud splashed onto his door panel as he carved out a groove entirely his own. That extreme inside line also helped him keep his left-side tires cooler than anyone else’s. Nobody could consistently run what Hoffman — and many throughout the sport — calls the Dale McDowell line. Hoffman has spent years studying McDowell, one of Dirt Late Model racing’s greatest bottom-feeders, and learning to master that line himself. He has also spent years picking Jonathan Davenport’s brain about building a race car for Eldora’s demands and pacing himself across 100 laps. On Saturday, those lessons became his path to immortality. Hoffman has cracked Eldora’s crown jewel code — and now it feels inevitable that more victories will follow.

CONTENDERS COLLAPSE: What an absolutely unhinged series of heat races Saturday. Bobby Pierce went up in smoke. Devin Moran withdrew from the remainder of the program with engine trouble. Josh Rice lost a fuel line two laps into his heat. Dale McDowell encountered the worst possible scenario when Dalton Cook, hampered by a left-front flat tire, failed to accelerate on a late restart; McDowell had nowhere to go and plowed into him, ending his streak of 18 consecutive World 100 feature appearances. Chris Madden was swept into an opening-lap consolation crash. Factor in Brandon Overton (birth of child) and Mike Marlar (neice's wedding) leaving the grounds ahead Saturday’s program, and seven of the top 14 drivers in my pre-World rankings failed to make the feature. I can’t recall another World 100 A-main missing so many legitimate heavy hitters.

WIDE OPEN: Though unfortunate to see so many contenders collapse, it was refreshing to enter an Eldora crown jewel feature without a clear sense of who would win. For years, Jonathan Davenport carried that aura of inevitability. More recently, Bobby Pierce had taken up the mantle. But with Pierce absent from Saturday’s field and Davenport appearing vulnerable without his trusty "Eldora" car, the World 100 felt genuinely wide open — and the race unfolded accordingly. I believe more drivers are capable of winning an Eldora crown jewel now than at any point in the past several years. Pierce, Davenport, Nick Hoffman, Ricky Thornton Jr., Brandon Sheppard and Hudson O’Neal lead the pack, but Tyler Erb and Ryan Gustin are pounding on the door. Max Blair is approaching the fringes of that conversation. Chris Ferguson had a legitimate opportunity Saturday before missing the 100-lap setup. Brandon Overton never got to see through what began as a promising week with Thursday’s victory, but recent changes to his car may have rekindled his old Eldora feel. Next June’s Dream remains nine months away, yet it’s difficult not to look ahead at the growing list of contenders. For once, the outcome no longer feels inevitable — and Eldora is more compelling because of it.

GUSTIN’S HEARTBREAK: You have to feel for Ryan Gustin. He ran just about the perfect race. He paced himself. He navigated traffic without blemish. When Jonathan Davenport trimmed a multisecond deficit to less than a second by lap 45, Gustin responded, rebuilding his advantage to 2.5 seconds by lap 54 and three seconds by lap 66. Every time the race appeared ready to tighten, Gustin regained control. Even when Ricky Thornton Jr. and Nick Hoffman closed to within a second, the No. 19r had yet to fall into their clutches. Gustin wasn’t merely hanging on down the stretch. He still might have had an answer. We never got to see him duel with the charging Thornton and Hoffman due to his car's broken driveshaft on a lap-88 restart — and that’s what makes the ending sting even more.

FLAT-TIRE RULE: For the love of the sport, can someone please institute a rule requiring a driver with an obvious flat tire to pit and change it? How difficult can that be to adopt? I don’t fault Cook for doing all he can to make the show, but come on, this is the second time this year that someone has risked far too much money — and ignored common sense — by remaining on the track with a flat tire, only for the gamble to backfire and trigger a multicar crash that ruins other drivers’ nights (McDowell the most prominent Saturday). At some point, protecting the rest of the field has to take precedence over allowing a disabled car to keep its running position.

STAT OF THE NIGHT: 9.197 seconds. That’s how much ground Nick Hoffman gained on leader Ryan Gustin from laps 59-88 while charging from eighth to third. Hoffman trailed Gustin by 10.129 seconds on lap 59 but had closed to within 0.932 of a second when Jonathan Davenport’s lap-88 caution flew — an average gain of nearly one-third of a second per lap.