Deer Creek Speedway
Notes: Avoiding Big One, but still finding trouble
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Brian Shirley (3s) early in Friday's feature. (tylerrinkenphoto.smugmug.com)
SPRING VALLEY, Minn. (July 4) — Brian Shirley somehow avoided involvement in the massive crash that swept up nearly half the field in Friday's 30-lap NAPA Gopher 50 preliminary feature at Deer Creek Speedway.
But it was close. Very close. | RaceWire
“Just luck,” Shirley said of his near-miss on the second lap of the race. “I just know I was on the bottom, and, I mean, it was just cars everywhere. I just kept trying to turn left and not hit the cars that were going everywhere.”
The 44-year-old driver from Chatham, Ill., actually made it through the calamity — an incident that began when leader Tyler Bruening of Decorah, Iowa, lost control in turn four as eventual winner Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C., slid in front of him and left nine of the top-10 cars in a heap — without a scratch on his Bob Cullen-owned Longhorn Chassis. He then found himself all the way up to third place for the restart after starting 14th.
But the good fortune that vaulted Shirley into position for his elusive first World of Outlaw Real American Beer Late Model Series victory of the season turned 180 degrees later in the A-main as he was trying to outduel the 32-year-old Hoffman for the lead.
“Luck went good that way, and then it went bad with about nine to go,” Shirley said, shaking his head in disgust.
On lap 22, in fact, Shirley was chasing Hoffman through lapped traffic when he tangled with the slower car driven by 18-year-old WoO regular Tristan Chamberlain of Richmond, Ind. Shirley’s attempt to dive underneath Chamberlain entering turn three resulted in contact that sent him spinning between the corners.
While the wheels of Shirley’s car never stopped so he restarted in fourth place thanks to the circuit’s “blend” rule, the damage to the right-side sheetmetal on his machine hampered him for the remainder of the distance. He settled for a seventh-place finish and expressed dismay over his fate.
“He’s running the top the whole time (as the leaders approached), and then Hoffman got by him and then I go down to go by him on the inside and he turns left,” Shirley said of Chamberlain, who ended up occupying the same real estate as Shirley on the bottom of turn three. “That old saying, ‘Hold your line?’ It could go a long ways. But we all make mistakes.
“It knocked the whole right side off. And after that, you’re just dead in the water because all the air’s gone and you have no side force.”
The scrape with Chamberlain ruined what had shaped up as an expected shot at a $10,000 checkered flag for Shirley, whose hopes seemed dismal with a midpack starting spot. He caught Hoffman quickly after passing Jake Timm of Winona, Minn., for second on lap seven but couldn’t match Hoffman through slower traffic.
“(Hoffman’s) guys did what they should do, moved him up (to the top lane) when we were catching him,” Shirley said. “But we was right there running with him through lapped traffic. It’s just, he got by Chamberlain one way and I was going the other way. It was just one of them nights.”
How’d he do that?
WoO points leader Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., found himself in a precarious position after rolling over amid the lap-two accident. With his car coming to rest on its left side, he couldn’t simply climb out through his driver’s-side window.
Nevertheless, before the track’s safety crew settled his machine back on its wheel, the 28-year-old superstar was already out of his car and assessing the situation. He had taken the unorthodox approach of escaping the cockpit by slithering across the inner bodywork and through the right-side window.
“Matt (Langston) from Longhorn was just over here looking,” Pierce said while assisting his crew in going through his damaged Longhorn Chassis following his 20th-place DNF. “He’s like, ‘Man, you fit through there?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ ”
It wasn’t easy — especially with his car still lying on its side — but Pierce escaped the car rather than wait for it to be righted.
“I’d say I’m probably one of the few drivers that probably can fit through the right side there, because I’m kind of a smaller dude,” Pierce said. “I mean, it’s a tight squeeze, but I’ve been in the shop before, kind of like testing that stuff out. Like to get out the left side, I can have all my gear on, but to get out the right side, I have to take my helmet off. It takes a little longer, but I can still get out the right side.
“At first I was like (to safety crew members), ‘I’m fine, just put the car back on all fours.’ And then I kind of thought about it for a second and I was like, ‘Hey, no, by the way, just keep it here. I’ll climb out the right side,’ but it’s a tight squeeze. Actually, like, my knees, I got short legs, and my knees were hitting everything on my way through (the decking). My knee hit the starter button as I’m trying to get my knees legs situated to get out, but once I got aimed out, I was fine.”
Pierce was running third when he was collected in the crash. He couldn’t avoid Bruening and fourth-running Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., coming together in front of him.
“T-Mac’s nose knows went, like, right under the right door, and I launched over his nose,” said Pierce, who walked to the ambulance for a precautionary check up but reported no ill effects from the accident. “And that launched me in the air and when it came down I landed hard on all four tires and it launched me in the air again, and then (Chad) Simpson slid in, hit me in the (chassis) X, and then it rolled over on the cage.
“In the car it felt like a soft rollover. Watching the video at regular speed, I was like, ‘OK, it was a little harder than I thought.’ But I think the cage is all right. The X looks fine underneath. It ripped the right side four-bar rods out of the heim but I think the four-bar plates are OK, so as far as like assessing the frame, we might be all right. So suspension and body mounts (are the primary damage).”
Pierce, who won Thursday’s 30-lap preliminary feature, was expecting to run the same car in Saturday’s $50,000-to-win finale if heavy rain hadn’t led Deer Creek officials to cancel the program early in the afternoon.
Picking up momentum
Tanner English of Benton, Ky., is one driver who was especially disappointed to leave Deer Creek without contesting Saturday’s 75-lap finale. After back-to-back fourth-place finishes in the preliminary features, he was feeling better than he has all season on the WoO trail.
The solid runs marked English’s first top-five finishes of 2025 in WoO competition. His had a modest five top-10 placings in his first 23 starts of the campaign, which has lagged with the 32-year-old’s Coltman Farms Racing team hampered by engine problems.
English’s struggles came to a head on May 17 at Marion Center (Pa.) Raceway, where a lost motor left him without a powerplant for the next night’s weekend finale at Bedford (Pa.) Speedway. He maintained perfect attendance by picking up a ride offered by Pennsylvania veteran Jim Bernheisel and then returned to his shop to regroup.
“When we got home, I think that Wednesday we got a motor (back from Clements),” English said. “When we went to Eldora (Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, for June 4-7’s Dream XXXI) we had just got this new (Longhorn) car and motor. Now that we got a new one (waiting) back at home, we have three (in the arsenal).”
“Glenn (Clements) has been trying real hard to get me back in some motors so I can’t thank him enough.”
With the team’s engine program back on track, English’s performance is noticeably improving.
“I finally got to work on the car,” said English, who sits 10th in the WoO standings but just 24 points away from seventh. “I’ve been changing so many motors and having so much bad luck. Now I’ve really gotten to work on my car and get back in tune with everything.”
English’s visit to Deer Creek even demonstrated that his luck is changing for the better as well. Not only did he manage to avoid involvement in Friday’s big multicar wreck — helping him turn a 20th-place start into his second straight fourth-place finish — he survived an odd mechanical malady that threatened his Thursday feature run.
“I had sparklers going off the whole time,” English said of his Thursday run. “When I’d go in the corner, (the car) would shut off. The starter fell off, and the hot wire was sitting there grounding out on the frame. So every time it would ground out, it would shut the motor off.
“I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ The harder I would go in (the corner), the worse it was, so I was having to baby it entering. When (Nick) Hoffman got by me, I really drove in hard and it, like, died completely.
“Never had that happen before,” he added. “The gauge was just shutting off so I knew it was losing power. I guess it was drawing the battery down as it was going out.”
Odds and ends
Bobby Pierce’s early departure from Friday’s feature tightened the WoO standings, shrinking his lead over Friday winner Nick Hoffman from 90 to 50 points. … Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, benefitted from missing the lap-two accident as he finished second after using a provisional to start 23rd. “Even though we gained a lot of positions with that deal, we passed a lot of cars in the first couple of laps, too, like right through the middle,” he said. “I felt a lot better down the racetrack than I have in a long time, especially up here.” … Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill., who finished third after starting 16th in Friday’s feature offered a simple explanation when asked how he avoid the big crash: “I just seen ‘em all crashing and just turned left. I just got down into the grass.” … With significant right-front damage to his ASD Motorsports Longhorn from the multicar accident, Ethan Dotson of Bakersfield, Calif., would have run the team’s second car if Saturday’s finale hadn’t rained out. … Making just his fourth Dirt Late Model start of the season, Jake O’Neil of Tucson, Ariz., had a great night going (group fast time, runner-up heat finish) until he was collected in the big wreck. He felt fortunate that his Longhorn Chassis didn’t sustain serious damage. … Chris Simpson of Oxford, Iowa, brought out the lap-two caution flag in Friday’s feature when his car went up in smoke with terminal engine trouble. He immediately headed home and wouldn’t have competed on Saturday. … Missing from the weekend’s field was Ashton Winger of Hampton, Ga., who had perfect attendance on the tour but was 15th in the points standings because he failed to qualify for the season’s first five events at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla. … This year’s Gopher 50 turnout of 34 cars was just under the 36-entry average the event has boasted since it became a national touring series show in 2005. It was up three cars from last year’s field. … With officials announcing upon Saturday’s rainout that the Gopher 50 finale would not be rescheduled, it marks the third time since 2020 that the race will not be run. It was canceled in ’20 by Covid-19 restrictions and rained out in ’21.
