When Kyle Strickler awoke at his home in Mooresville, N.C., on Monday, he had no plans to spend his upcoming weekend at Eldora Speedway — which, of course, makes the fact that he found himself standing on the famous track’s winner’s stage on Thursday night a truly remarkable turn of events.

View full coverage from the Eldora Dirt Late Model Stream

Strickler, 36, won the 30-lap opener of the Dirt Late Model Stream Invitational just three days after receiving a last-minute opportunity from Eldora general manager Roger Slack to join the race’s 48-car field as a replacement for one of four drivers who declined their invitation.

“We were ready to go to Tennessee for (Schaeffer’s Iron-Man Series shows at) Wartburg and I-75,” Strickler said of his original weekend schedule. “Then Roger called me (Monday afternoon) and says that we’re in (the Stream Invitational) if we want to race, and I thought he was kidding. I thought he was messing with me because I was giving him a hard time (about being left off the invitation list) the day before, saying, ‘Come on, man, you know how much Eldora means to me. I want to go bad.’ ”

Slack was dead serious, though, and once Strickler realized that he hastily shifted the focus of his self-owned team to Eldora’s unique three-night replacement affair for the Dream.

“We had to change everything around, all of our tires around,” Strickler said. “It was just me and (crew chief) Vinny (Giuliani) and a couple of other guys who come over and volunteered to help get us ready to go.”

After Strickler ran away to a dominant, flag-to-flag victory worth $10,000, he felt like he was living a dream.

“This is fairy tale right here,” Strickler said while standing alongside his Longhorn Chassis in the postrace inspection area, a mega-watt smile stretched across his face.

There was more to Strickler’s Eldora’s story than his 11th-hour berth, however. It clinched a dramatic turnaround in the open-wheel modified star’s floundering Dirt Late Model effort.

“Honestly, a week and a half ago, everybody was ready to quit,” Strickler related. “We were ready to give up and go back modified racing."

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“It’s been a struggle, just trying to search for the feel (of a Dirt Late Model). When I get in my modified I know exactly what I’m looking for, the feel I’m looking for. I drive this thing, I don’t know if the motor doesn’t run right or the car doesn’t feel right or I’m messing up as a driver.

“We really needed a boost,” he added. “What a difference a couple weeks can make, that’s for sure.”

Strickler, who launched his own Dirt Late Model program last fall after his first shot at regular action in the division driving for Wells Motorsports ended following Eldora’s World 100, returned from the sport’s coronavirus-related shutdown in promising fashion with a third-place finish in May 2’s Palmetto Invitational at Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C. But then he fell into a funk, sandwiching a 12th-place finish on May 16 at 411 Motor Speedway in Seymour, Tenn., with DNQs on May 7 at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway and May 25 at 411.

Guliani, an experienced 33-year-old wrench who left Chase Junghans’s World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series team to join Strickler’s operation just before Covid-19 brought racing to a screeching halt in mid-March for more than a month, was as frustrated as Strickler with the May slump.

“The first night out was Gaffney (after the layoff) and we run third, but we were all excited, new team,” Guliani said. “Then we struggled for three weeks. We didn’t even make two of the shows, so then you’re questioning everything: ‘What have we done?’

“We were struggling there for a few weeks, but he never gave up on me and I never gave up on him.”

Neither did Strickler’s backers, including Bilstein Shocks, which has its Mooresville, N.C., headquarters in a shop right next door to Strickler’s.

“It’s really a unique situation with Bilstein,” Guliani said. “I’m able to kind of bounce back-and-forth. Bilstein employs me and Kyle employs me, and I can walk back-and-forth between the two shops and we’ve got great people to work with — (Rum Runner Racing crew chief) Harold Holly, (Tim McCreadie engineer and Bilstein rep) Kevin Rumley, Aaron Morey and Tim Gotschall at Bilstein.

“And Aaron, when we were struggling, I felt terrible, and Aaron had my back 100 percent: ‘Don’t worry about it, keep digging, you’re fine.’ I mean, we weren’t even making shows, but he encouraged us and we kind of went, regrouped, put this motor in (a Cornett powerplant Strickler purchased last year from Clint Bowyer Racing in place of a more economical Mullins LS engine that Strickler had been using) … we kind of went back to the drawing board with our program, our car, and the biggest thing is we do what works for us.”

Stricker said Guiliani’s efforts have been “absolutely huge. He’s helped my confidence. I think there for a little bit I was bringing him down because I was second-guessing everything that I’ve done. Once I told him, ‘Look, no matter how bad we’re running, I still believe in you 100 percent. I still think you’re the guy for the job, and when I ask you questions I’m not second-guessing you, I’m trying to learn from you.’ After that we just kind of decided we’re gonna go with our gut and do what we think we need to do.” 

Strickler showed great progress Saturday at Tazewell (Tenn.) Speedway, racing to a third-place finish in a Schaeffer’s Iron-Man Series 50-lapper with the Cornett motor back under the hood of his car.

“We came from 17th to third and just something stupid happened … you know, brake pads,” Strickler said of a problem that hampered his hopes of climbing higher in the final rundown. “I finally got some confidence back and figured out the feel I was looking for.”

And with Strickler carrying the momentum to Eldora — he timed ninth-fastest Thursday, transferred with a solid second-place finish in his heat and landed on the pole position for the feature — he felt primed for another strong outing.

“I made a career in the modified being easy in (the corners) and trying to keep the tires attached and just rolling through the corner,” Strickler said. “In these (Late Models) you got so much more grip and so much more downforce, you have to drive ‘em so hard. It’s just totally different, but when you come to a place that I love coming to as much as Eldora, and then you get to start on the pole, I was trying to make the best of it for sure.”

Strickler became a man on a mission. He grabbed the lead at the initial green flag and never looked back, pushing his No. 8 to the limit every circuit around the half-mile oval’s cushion as he built an edge of over a straightaway en route to a convincing triumph. He wasn’t challenged even after thoroughly crunching the right-rear bodywork on his car when he lost concentration and slapped the turn-two wall one-third of the way into the race.

“I was getting so nervous running the cushion like that, and then I was watching (Guliani signaling inside off turn two) because I wasn’t sure, people come and go with different tires and all that stuff,” Strickler said. “I was watching him trying to see signals and I lost my focus on driving. It gets so dusty and dirty here that I couldn’t really see him that great and see the wall, and I was looking down at him and I was trying to conserve … and the easier you drive these things, that’s when they don’t drive good. You just gotta drive ‘em hard all the time.”

“He said he was watching me on the backstraightaway, and like (runner-up Shane) Clanton said, the wall comes back in, so it’s kind of a bad spot,” Guliani added. “If you’re right up against it and you happen to look away … and he’s trying to watch me to make sure we do the right things, and I’m just telling him to, ‘Slow down, slow down,’ but I knew he couldn’t because here, or a lot of these places, you’re at that perfect angle, that yaw angle, and if you slow down and get off of that angle, you’re gonna be way too tight and you’re gonna be worse. Then you try to swing it the next corner and that’s when you get in trouble.”

Strickler spent the remainder of the race focusing on the track instead of Guliani.

“I wasn’t hurting the tires — our car was just that good — so I just had to quit looking at him and focus on hitting my mark and putting the car right on the cushion and going right around there,” Strickler said. “I was just trying not to screw up. When I hit the wall that first time I was like, ‘You’re gonna lose this if you’re thinking too much. Just run off of natural ability and instinct and quit worrying about all the stupid stuff.’ I just tried to put myself in the frame of mind where it was another modified race and it all worked out.”

Strickler survived a final slip with three laps to go as well. He ducked low through turns one and two to try sliding by a lapped car and lost traction, allowing Clanton and Brandon Overton, who ran third until slowing on the final lap because mud busted his radiator, to close the gap, though not enough to seriously threaten the native of Sinking Spring, Pa.

“They were blowing so much dirty stuff up top that if I got any off the cushion I felt like I was on top of the racetrack,” Strickler said. “(The lapped car) was staying on the top and I’m like, ‘Maybe I can just come across there and slide up to him,’ and it was terrible. Thank God (Clanton and Overton) weren’t close because I think they would’ve ripped right by me. I went back to the top and then fortunately (the slower machine) moved to the bottom and I could get right around him.”

With that move Strickler essentially secured his uplifting, milestone victory, just the fourth overall of his brief Dirt Late Model career. He bore the look of a driver who understood the significance of his accomplishment afterward.

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“It’s just … the Late Model world is so tough,” said Strickler, who won two Dirt Late Model features during his five months with Wells Motorsports last year and also owns an $8,000 victory in 2018 at Greenville (Miss.) Speedway driving for Lance Landers. “In the modified stuff, I think you can sit up in the seat and get up on the wheel and make something happen, but everybody’s so good here and so much matters on the Late Model stuff that everything has to go right and you can’t get down on yourself. You just gotta take the good with the bad and roll on.

“That’s the great thing about Late Model racing — when it’s bad, it’s bad, but when it’s good and everything aligns, it’s easy. It’s stupid how crazy the ups-and-downs, the roller coaster, is in Late Model racing.”

Strickler, who entered Eldora’s Dream and World 100 for the first time last year, was thrilled to add his name to the track’s Dirt Late Model winner’s list.

“Eldora has such a special place in my heart,” said Strickler, who started from the pole and led laps 1-2 and 16-47 before finishing 14th in last year’s Dream (he didn’t qualify for the World 100). “I love coming here. We run the (NASCAR) Truck race here, won modified races here. I’d race at Eldora every week if I could even if there were no fans.

“To win at Eldora, to win a Late Model race … this is my career highlight for sure.”