Sharon Speedway
Another page-turning season for swift Pierce
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Bobby Pierce in victory lane at Sharon. (Paul Arch)
HARTFORD, Ohio (July 11) — When Bobby Pierce was told he secured yet another 20-win season after Friday’s dominant showing at Sharon Speedway on the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series, he whipped out his iPhone to do some digging. | RaceWire
“How many wins did I have in 2021?” Pierce asked himself, implying that he wanted to know how many consecutive 20-win seasons he’s strung together now. He then remembered, thanks to his family keeping personal record on his website, he reeled off 21 wins that year, the same amount as 2022.
Pierce continued scrolling through the page on his website where all his accomplishments and win totals over the years are kept.
“Only eight wins in 2020?” Pierce added before making an exception for himself through a rising smile. “That was Covid, that year doesn’t count.”
The 28-year-old superstar of Oakwood, Ill., simply likes keeping personal tally of his ever-growing resume, but also because the statistical overlay keeps him motivated to break his own records. Five straight 20-win campaigns are nothing to gloss over, but Pierce won’t be able to call this a successful season until he reaches 30 wins for the third year in a row, a stretch that would rival the heydays of Hall of Famers Scott Bloomquist and Billy Moyer.
“It’s like any other job. This quarter, we’re behind quota, and we need to catch up,” said Pierce, who’s actually right on pace with his win total last year where he reached 20 victories July 13.
But Pierce may have the perpetual feeling he’s falling behind this Quarter 3 because it was this weekend one year ago that launched him into his rip-roaring summer. July 8’s FloRacing Night in American victory at Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway, along with July 11’s WoO win at Bedford (Pa.) Speedway and July 12-13’s Sharon sweep, ignited the stretch of Pierce ripping off 15 wins over a 24-race span through the end of August.
That doesn’t count the seven races he won from September through the end of the year, including Eldora Speedway's World 100, the Knoxville Late Model Nationals, the Dirt Track World Championship, the Mason-Dixon 100 in Pennsboro (W.Va.) Speedway’s revival and World Finals victory. Can Pierce win 30 again? That’s the plan.
But can he duplicate his crown jewel mastery? While Pierce aims high, he’s a realist, too,
“Like you said, I won all the big races, which is super hard to do. Like, I won the World, Knoxville, the Dirt Track World Championship, the North-South (100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky.), Cedar Lake (Speedway’s USA Nationals in New Richmond, Wis.),” Pierce said. “I mean, frick. It’s going to be tough. If I can win one of them or a couple of them, I’ll be happy.”
Pierce left last weekend’s Deer Creek Speedway’s Gopher 50 in Spring Valley, Minn., with double-whammy disappointment: First that one of his trusty race cars needed chassis repairs from July 4’s rollover, then Saturday’s finale raining out.
Taking advantage of an extra day off last Saturday, Pierce and Co. trucked 6.5 hours home, landing back at the race shop around 8 p.m. There, Pierce saw the bare chassis that’d been sitting in the race shop for a few weeks and decided that evening that some long nights were ahead him.
“We were like, ‘Man, we’re not really wanting to do that,’ ” Pierce said of assembling a brand-new race car with the chassis they were saving for the end of the year. “I call it the Bobby shift, working second and third shift. I worked until the sun came up everyday until we left Thursday.
“The first and second day, once you’re out there all night, you’re like, well, you just keep doing it. And then there wasn’t anything else on my mind other than getting the car ready. So (father and crew chief) Bob was freaking out. He said, ‘I don’t know if we’ll have the time. We’re not going to have time.’ ”
Pierce and one crew member worked 9 p.m. through 6 a.m. while two more crew members worked 9 a.m. through 6 p.m. On top of building the brand-new car he won with Friday at Sharon, Pierce had to re-decal his second race car that carried his father’s throwback blue-and-white colors from 1995.
Because Pierce’s team rushed to prepare for the first of two weekends races at Sharon Speedway on Friday, the start of six races over a nine-day span for Pierce, he was worried something wouldn’t be buttoned-up. The only weak link Friday was a loose power steering line in Friday’s hot laps.
“It was good, good hard work by everybody on the whole crew. Everything was in tip-top shape ready to go, really except that one power steering line,” Pierce said. “It’s good to take a new car out, not have any bugs for the most part, and go out and win with it. It’s neat, Longhorn builds a pretty consistent car. It’s nice to have something that’s fresh and where everything is supposed to be. Where every shock mount is, it’s not bent or twisted racing on rough tracks or getting in wrecks or hitting the wall.”
Pierce also takes pride in winning three straight debuts when unveiling a new car, those most recent wins coming June 24, 2024, at Independence (Iowa) Motor Speedway and Jan. 4 at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park. He followed both with consecutive trips to victory the very next night.
It’s a testament to the team’s thoroughness when preparing a brand-new race car and their universal setup packages. On Friday, Pierce said he didn’t do anything special for Sharon other than employ his baseline setup for a prototypical slick track. He let his instincts take care of the rest.
“I could go all over the place: Bottom, middle, top, whatever it took to get the space there, get passed the lapped cars,” said Pierce, who led Friday’s feature by as much as 7.2 seconds. “Yeah, the car was good. … It was a good track, a smooth track. That’s another reason why I wanted to get this new car here, because we knew it’d be smooth. We weren’t going to take this car to a rough track.
“There’s a lot of good cushion-riders on this tour. A lot of good guys in the slick, too. I like a track that makes you have to chase the moisture. That’s my favorite racetrack; not it necessarily being smooth, rough, a cushion, this or that.”
What’s given Pierce structure in staying mentally organized these last few years is his ability to compartmentalize the year-long Dirt Late Model campaign into mini seasons. For instance, he’s essentially broken down the year into seven sections, starting with the year-launching Wild West Shootout in January.
There, he usually debuts new cars and any setups he’s conjured up from research over the winter.
“Wild West Shootout is its own chapter. This year, it was, OK, we won four races this year, now let’s compare to what we won last year though we lost a race this year weather. Then it’s OK, Chapter 1 is complete and we’re where we need to be,” Pierce said, beginning his long train of thought. “Chapter 2 is Florida. … Speedweeks is tough because it’s so different. Like, the Florida tracks are just different. And then you have everyone racing on top of it, so it takes some luck to run good there.”
Florida-Georgia Speedweeks could be Pierce’s weakest part of the season, but it’s a stretch that stresses good points finishes more than anything.
“Then the next chapter is March-April. It’s whatever races you get in those months,” Pierce said. “It’s like, ‘OK, we’ll get ready for the weekend, but you’ll never know if it’s going to rain out or not.’ This year, that consisted of tracks I’d never been to: Smoky Mountain (Speedway in Maryville, Tenn.), Swainsboro (Speedway in Georgia), and I won at them, so I’m like, ‘OK that puts us ahead of last year though we didn’t win in Florida.’
“Then we won ($50,000) at Talladega (Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala., on April 26). That race, in a way, was like my Prairie Dirt Classic win last year. I was going to win it, (the Alabama Gang 100 in 2023), then broke a wheel (on lap 46 of 60 while leading).”
Pierce says that “the fourth chapter is when you start getting into these big races,” like spring's Show-Me 100 and Eldora Speedway’s Dream in Rossburg, Ohio.
“After the Dream starts a new chapter. Right now, we’re in the summer chapter,” said Pierce, who added that everything after the Dream and before the USA Nationals is all about gearing up for the Prairie Dirt Classic and the monumental months of August and September.
So if there’s a time to unveil a new car before the end of July, it’d be this weekend at Sharon because “when we get to Cedar Lake, I’d say Cedar Lake starts a new chapter because you have the USA Nationals, the North-South 100, and every weekend is like a big race.”
“August is crown jewel month, September is crown jewel month,” Pierce said. “October, you have the Dirt Track World Championship. Those months speak for itself.”
Everything after the DTWC is about making sure he finishes the World of Outlaws title chase strong at November’s World Finals before the winter months. In December, he’d like to win the Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals for the third time and first since 2018. When January rolls around, he’ll repeat the cycle all over.
But right now, Pierce is about to reach the crescendo of the drawn-out, compartmentalized way he paces through the year-long Dirt Late Model season. And he’s doing his best to keep up with his personal records that seemingly grow by the year.
“Now, looking into that, we won a lot of those crown jewels. This year, Deer Creek got rained out and I won that last year, so I’m like, ‘Man, I wanted to win that three times in a row,’ ” Pierce said. “Now I have to tally that as a little behind, or maybe not behind, but, man, it’s going to be a lot. And no XR (Super Series) races, so it’s going to be tougher. It’s going to be tougher to get to 38 wins," the total he reached in 2024
