July 13, 2023 | By Kirk Elliott, RacinBoys.com

Rico ready to make history at Eldora

(Rossburg, OH) -- Rico Abreu is having the best season of his career. The St. Helena, California star enters the Eldora Million as one of the big favorites and stands eighth in points heading into Thursday night's all-important heat races.

Abreu has been especially strong at Eldora Speedway. In 2023, Rico has posted two feature wins at Eldora, including Thursday night's second 25-lap Eldora Million prelim, and in all has six Eldora victories in 59 starts.

This season, Abreu has a total of five wins, including 27 top-ten finishes in 35 starts. He's posted finishes in the top-five 20 times and has reached the podium 17 times.

"The balence in my car has been unbelievable this year," he said. "We've been really consistent. I really feel my team has just developed into understanding my driving style.

"We're all just a bunch of friends having fun racing all across the country. We get along really well, and I have the best guy in the country Ricky Warner working for me."

Rico is ok with the stoppage at around lap 20 of the 50-lap race, but with one big exception. "I don't think we should be allowed to change tires," he said. "If they're going to allow to change tires, they should just do a 40 lapper."

Rico thinks the track will be similar to Wednesday night's surface. "It's going to be technical and slick and you're going to catch lap traffic in ten laps. In the race before us I counted they were in lap traffic in six laps

"What was most important to me tonight (Wednesday) is when I caught traffic I was able to run where those guys weren't and maintain pace."

Abreu will lineup outside front row of heat 2. The six heat winners will draw to determine the first six starting positions.

Hot laps get underway at 6:30 ET. Six heat races, a C-Main and B-Main will precede the A-Main which has a $1.4 million dollar total payout. $1,002,023 goes to the winner