DirtonDirt Dispatches

Dispatches: Rebounding Erb rallies, wins at Taz

April 20, 2025, 3:19 am

From series staff, team, track and contributor reports

Tyler Erb celebrates at Tazewell. (mrmracing.net)

Among the latest notes and quotes from around Dirt Late Model racing the third weekend in April, including MARS action from an Iowa tripleheader and Schaeffer's Spring Nationals competition in Tennessee (look elsewhere for Northern Allstars coverage): Also find a listing of live-streaming video from specials around the country:

Erb survives

Tyler Erb’s trip to Tennessee with his Ohio-based Best Performance team wasn’t looking so great after he failed to make Friday’s Schaeffer's Spring Nationals feature at I-75 Raceway in Sweetwater, Tenn. But the 28-year-old New Waverly, Texas, driver got back on track Saturday with a $21,000 victory on the Ray Cook-promoted series at the high-banked Tazewell Speedway, his first checkered flag of 2025.

"I got beat up so bad yesterday. I mean, it even looks like it,” Erb said gesturing to his car in victory lane at Tazewell. “It looks like I got my ass beat. These places down here are tough. They're not my cup of tea. Qualifying, I’d have bet you a million dollars I broke the track record and I was like 11th (quickest).”

Erb rallied from his 11th starting spot in the 75-lap feature, inheriting the lead on lap 42 when Brandon Overton had a flat tire — the fate of several drivers in the 22-car event.

“It was awesome, man. I enjoyed it,” Erb said. “We broke a transmission today, knocked a radiator out in the heat race. We didn't work harder than anybody else, we just ain't had (things) go our way, but tonight it did. I told my guys, they've never been here, I told them when they came here this is like top-five, one of the coolest places ever — the fans being packed, the fried Oreos, everything about it. It’s just so cool and I'm honored to win here at Tazewell Speedway.”

Erb used the high groove to make his way to the top, taking advantage of drivers pitting for tires and rolling around others.

“Once I kind of found the top, I figured it would be good,” Erb said. “I got behind Brandon and when I got to him I was like, 'OK, he's gonna set a good pace.’ … I tried to just pace with him, you know what I mean? He’s good down here. He's won a lot of these races and I knew if I kept pace with him, I was hoping we'd hit lapped traffic and I could do something exciting.

“It was crazy, man. I don't know why they kept having flats. There's obviously something there they're running over or whatever, but I was kind of just getting nervous.”

Erb tamed his nerves enough to finish out the victory in topping runner-up Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., who started 13th, and Overton, who rallied after pitting.

“(Erb) was a little bit better at getting up through there a little bit quicker and I think it was just a matter of who got in front of who first — and he beat me to the punch,” Owens said.

Overton took his flat tire in stride.

“It's all right,” he said, “as long as our car's fast we can take the tough luck.” — Staff reports

Hanging on

Bobby Pierce’s hopes for a fifth career Slocum 50 victory seemed to be deteriorating with every circuit he struggled in lapped traffic as Saturday night’s MARS Late Model Championship Series event wound down at 34 Raceway in West Burlington, Iowa.

It didn’t matter that the Oakwood, Ill., star had taken the lead from Carson Ferguson of Lincolnton, N.C., on lap five and with just over 10 laps remaining held an edge over 2 seconds on Ferguson. He found himself hanging on for dear life in the race’s final moments.

“I was kind of sitting duck there, I guess, with the lapped cars,” Pierce said. “It made it interesting. I knew how much slower I got when I got stuck behind them guys, but I just didn’t know what to do there and I was just waiting for that checkered flag. It couldn't come soon enough.”

Pierce, 28, was able to survive and claim a $10,555 victory that completed his sweep of the two-race weekend at the 3/8-mile oval, but it took a slick move on the last lap to make it happen. He said he “knew it was a matter of time” until he would receive a challenge, and that moment came in earnest heading to the white flag when the 25-year-old Ferguson slipped underneath Pierce off turn four and came within inches of leading the lap.

Ferguson had managed to shake Pierce off the prime inside lane by making a top-side run, opening the door for Ferguson to make a last-lap bid.

“I saw Tanner (English) get around me for a split second there (on the outside) and, you know, obviously he was a lapped car, but he got around me there, so I knew Carson was probably gonna try it and then he was out there,” Pierce said. “And I didn’t know if there was like two laps to go, one lap, three laps … I knew it was around there, and man, he snookered me up there.

“He showed me he was out there, so I went to the middle and it was just nothing but crumbs there and he got by me.”

Working the final circuit, Ferguson surged ahead off turn four as Pierce skated high. He immediately knew what was necessary if he was going to avoid a heartbreaking defeat.

“Down the backstretch, I’m looking into three and four,” Pierce said. “I know there’s a wall down there, so if I was gonna have to beat off the wall, I’ll get ‘er done. I was gonna do what I had to do.”

Pierce railed the top of turns three and four, building enough momentum for him to beat Ferguson to the finish line by 0.554 of a second.

“I actually knocked the rear end out of it coming to the checker there,” Pierce said of his Longhorn Chassis. “I got the wall pretty good with the tires, so we’re gonna have to check that out, but it’s an awesome finish. I’m sure this will make some highlights with one of the best finishes (of the year), so that was pretty cool.”

The victory was Pierce’s 10th overall of the 2025 season and his fourth in five MARS events. It also added to his previous Slocum 50 wins in 2014, ’16, ’19 and ’20.

“It kind of reminds me of my dad's PDC, you know, five wins there, so this is my five-win race,” Pierce said, referring to his father Bob’s five career victories in the Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway. “I’ve been coming here a long time. I think (the 2014 Slocum 50) was my first win here, and man, just many, many years later, here we are now. To see what we've done is pretty cool, and everyone with the Brent Slocum Foundation, thank you so much for having this race.”

Ferguson, meanwhile, gracefully accepted his loss to the country’s No. 1-ranked driver.

“The bottom was obviously where you had to be,” Ferguson said. “There was a couple of times you could hit momentum in the middle, and I thought if I could get (Pierce) off the bottom, you know, he might try to run the middle.”

Ferguson did just that. Pierce just found a way to survive.

“It’s Bobby Pierce,” said Ferguson, who also ran an open-wheel modified on Saturday (he finished second in the 20-lap feature). “He’s gonna rip the lip, so he got it done.

“I guess I should’ve tried the very top there, but I'm not very coordinated when it comes to that, so I try to stick with middle-bottom,” he continued. “But I really feel like we had the best car. He got around me early (when) the bottom was still a tick slimy and I was able to get it worked in and he just protected there. But I’m really proud of (finishing second).” — Staff reports

Weiss on top at I-75

Cory Hedgecock has been the driver to beat in all kinds of Late Model races at I-75 Raceway recently with the Loudon, Tenn., driver winning at least one Super Late Model event at the track near Sweetwater, Tenn., every season going back to 2020.

But Ricky Weiss of Headingley, Manitoba, the 36-year-old driver who now lives in Monterey, Tenn., outdueled Hedgecock on Friday in Schaeffer's Spring Nationals action, earning his second straight Super Late Model victory at the 3/8-mile oval.

Weiss, who earned $10,053, gambled on tires, used clever signaling from his crew and survived multiple Hedgecock challenges, including a turn-one slide job with 11 laps remaining in the 53-lapper.

“I heard them,” Weiss said in victory lane after topping Hedgecock and Dale McDowell, who ran second much of the distance before settling for third. “I could see shadows. I seen them slide across my nose. I felt them one time.”

But Weiss was able to officially lead every lap and win his second straight I-75 start following last month’s $20,000 Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series victory, when Hedgecock finished third.

Hedgecock, who slipped over the turn-two banking at the halfway point Friday when Weiss switched up his groove and ran high into turn one, said "it seems like he was just wherever I wanted to go, he was gonna be there,” Hedgecock said. “So his stick guy must be apparently pretty good, but all in all we had a good night.”

Weiss agreed it was a “signal game” in trying to keep Hedgecock behind his No. 7 Sniper Chassis.

“We’ve all got signal guys, and that plays a big part,” Weiss said. “I wish, there's times I'd like to talk back to them and ask them like, ‘What about this, what about that?’ But I mean they got a lot going on. I knew what they had on for tires and if they were gonna beat me, it wasn't gonna be in the bottom.

“Dale might have, he's pretty good down there, so I was worried about slipping off the bottom, but I was also worried about not losing too much speed on Cory on the top. I know he's really good here. It’s been years since I beat Dale, so, I just love it.”

Weiss said his Sniper team members have "been working on these things real hard and everybody back in the shop, Travis (Wiesner), he had to go back home and work and he busts his butt off and Tom (Schramm). … I'm just ecstatic and now we can pay for our tires we bought this week.”

Speaking of tires, Weiss used the newly unveiled Hoosier Racing Tire right-rear and he had success.

“These are the new tires tonight and we took a little gamble on it,” Weiss said. “I said, ‘You know what, this is what we’re going on from here on out, so either we’re going to win it on tires or lose it.’ ” — Staff reports

Evaluating the new tire

Hoosier Racing Tire this week unveiled a revised version of its National Late Model Tour right-rear tire, and Thursday’s MARS Championship Series event at Cedar County Raceway in Tipton, Iowa, marked the first time the tire was in competition — no doubt a factor in the program drawing a solid 43-car field.

Most organizations are allowing the new tire, which has a taller, softer sidewall and dimpled tread pattern, along with the existing tire, an LM-style tire with a shorter, more rigid carcass and traditional block-style tread (the hardness of the compounds remain the same for NLMT 2s, 3s and 4s).

Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., says he’s fully committed to the future.

“I told my guys this week, they said, ‘What do you wanna do?’ I said, ‘Well, dismount every single one of the old ones and leave them at the shop. We’re gonna run the new ones — because that’s the new tire.’ That’s what we’re going to have to be on eventually anyway,” Sheppard said.

Whether that made a difference or not we’ll never know, but the 32-year-old Sheppard led all but two laps of Thursday’s 40-lap feature for a $5,000 payday, outrunning fellow Illinois driver Bobby Pierce (who used the new right-rear tire) and Tanner English of Benton, Ky. (he stuck with the older version), who finished third but briefly took second from Pierce.

English did run the newer tire through his heat, but reverted to the original right-rear because his one and only newer right-rear blistered in the heat race. He could have bolted on another newer right-rear, but reasoned the blistering is from not grooving the newer right-rear properly.

“We picked it up at the racetrack, and we only had one grooved up,” English said. “We were going to study it and see what we needed to do before we grooved up the next one. We blistered it, and I really wanted to go run a (newer) 4 (right-rear). I guess since they're so new, the new 4 isn't much harder than the old 3. ... I just felt like we needed to do more studying before we try to run a whole feature with it.

“I think (the tire blistering is) just something we can fix on our own, the way we groove them. I don’t think it’s all on the tire,” said English, who added he “wasn’t necessarily” at a disadvantage on the older tire, “but I don’t think I had an advantage, either,” he added.

Sheppard, who was able to make practice laps with the new tire a night earlier, considered the new tire worthy and said it caused him no problems, maintaining the balance he’s been accustomed to in his car.

“Right front, right rear, left rear were all wore about the same,” Sheppard said. “I mean, my car is good and balanced, and that helps, but you know you can easily destroy a right-rear tire on a deal like this if you’re too hard on it or whatever. So I think overall it was good.”

The jury is still out, but Sheppard says he’ll learn more in the coming weeks on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series and in other events.

“We’re soon to find out because we're getting ready to go to a lot of different racetracks across the country, and I know there’s gonna be some guys that run old tires,” Sheppard said. “I’m sure there was a few guys that ran the old tires tonight. … a lot of people (question) everything that goes on in the sport, so you wonder in the back of your mind, is this tire gonna hurt me? Is it gonna be as good? Well, we don’t know.”

Pierce wasn’t able to test with the new version of the tire before Cedar County and said it was virtually impossible to know the differences in race conditions.

“I really need to get some more laps on it,” he said. “I haven’t raced here at this track before, so probably a lot of it (I’m) trying to guess on a track I've never been to. It’s tough when you can't really test it back-to-back, because I was on the new tire all night tonight. I never went to the old tire.”

Initially skeptical of the new softer sidewall, Pierce said he wasn’t “really sold on it because I didn't feel great tonight. The problem is when you’re racing, you can never go out there, go make a couple of laps, pull in, change tires, go make (another) couple laps. Every time you get back out there, the track's way different, so that kind of throws a wrench in it.”

Pierce said the tire seemed to make his car feel different from time trials to his heat race to the main event.

“In the heat race, I felt like I was about to flip over, like it was leaning over a lot. Maybe that soft sidewall they talked about was soft (and the) car was leaning over,” Pierce said. “Then in the feature, I was completely opposite. So far for the first night I felt like a little inconsistent with it.” — Some information gathered by Mike Ruefer