Eldora Speedway
'Big swing' DTWC setup ends Pierce's dry spell
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Abby Foster and Bobby Pierce in victory lane. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
ROSSBURG, Ohio (Oct. 18) — Success, as described by Bob Pierce, can be a double-edged sword.
The National Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer has been a key figure in his son Bobby Pierce’s superstar career, which includes 30 or more victories for three straight seasons. But with such dominance comes weighty expectations — pressure that can wear on a driver the longer he goes without winning.
Saturday’s 45th annual Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway was no run-of-the-mill crown jewel for the 28-year-old Pierce. His charge from 13th to snap a 15-race winless streak, his longest drought in more than three years, impressed his father.
“For him to keep his focus, it’s rougher when you’re winning all these races,” Bob Pierce said. “As a young driver, he ain’t been through the ups and downs that much. It wasn’t happy times in the trailer.”
Since switching to Longhorn Chassis at the start of the 2023 season, the Oakwood, Ill., driver has collected 105 victories in 264 starts — a staggering 40 percent win rate. But before Saturday’s triumph, his last victory came two months earlier in completing a sweep of Aug. 22-23’s World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series Sooner State Showdown at Arrowhead Speedway in Colcord, Okla.
Those eight weeks tested Pierce in more ways than one. Some nights, pain was self-inflicted, like Oct. 4 at 81 Speedway in Wichita, Kan., when his team added air pressure to a tire in the staging lane — a rules infraction that forced him to start on the rear, costing him the pole position.
“The only good thing about that was we were fast that night,” Bob Pierce said. “We changed a little like we’re used to doing, and we were right there. That gave us confidence going into Boothill.”
Other nights were frustrating because he simply wasn’t quite the fastest car. At Boothill Speedway in Louisiana on Oct. 10-11, he finished an unsatisfying second two nights in a row.
“For the longest time throughout the summer, we were counting on one win a weekend,” Bobby said. “A lot of the tracks lately didn’t provide good feature racing, that’s some of it. We had like five top-threes in that stretch, so it’s not like we were struggling. Last weekend, if I had a couple more laps, I felt like I could’ve passed (Ryan) Gustin for the win at Boothill. That’s just racing. We can’t complain.
“I mentioned Gustin, I don’t even know if he made the (DTWC) this weekend, and he was really good last weekend. You see things like that happen. (Jonathan Davenport), I don’t know what happened with him (Saturday at the DTWC), but he wasn’t even in the picture … you never know, it just gets tougher and tougher.
“Cars get more similar. You see it in qualifying. If you miss by a little bit, you’re third in your heat race instead of the front row.”
On Saturday, the Pierces made more changes on their race car overnight from Friday’s heat race ahead of the 100-lapper than any race the last three seasons. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision either. After Oct. 10-11’s World of Outlaws stop at Boothill, they logged a test session with Longhorn Chassis staffer Matt Langston at ArkLaTex Speedway in Vivian, La., attempting to work through some setup kinks.
“I’d love to hire him full time, but he’s locked in with Longhorn,” the elder Pierce said. “I understand the program. He’s a really good guy, really easy to work with. I think he’s the coolest guy I’ve ever been around in racing for a long time. He just knows racing.
“These cars, everything’s changing. Everybody's coming up with different shock combinations, spring combos,” Bob Pierce continued. “We’re not exactly on, say, the straight Longhorn setup, but it's in that same range because that's the numbers and the springs that we knew when we got these cars.
“And when you're winning with them, it's hard to venture too far away. So, we got over here for the World (100) after going to the Dirt Track (World Championship) last year, we put it right to the letter with the same car. We knew it was fine … and we were terrible. … It was bad.”
At last month’s World 100, Pierce had to hustle from the ninth starting spot of the first consolation race simply to qualify for the fourth and final transfer spot. In the 100-lapper, he rallied to ninth from 27th, failing to contend in a race he’d won twice.
“We just started so far back in our heat race with inverts and stuff, and the invert got us on Saturday, kind of struggled to really get on up through there,” Bobby Pierce said.
Fast forward to Friday’s prelim night at Eldora's DTWC, and Pierce found himself off the pace in time trials, more than four-tenths of a second slower than Carson Ferguson’s fast time (15.940 vs. 16.350). That forced Pierce to hustle from the fourth starting spot in his heat Friday just to make the third and final transfer spot. It also prompted the Pierces to mull dramatic suspension changes.
“I said, ‘Look, we have to find something different,’ ” Bob told Bobby after Friday’s prelim action at Eldora. “So we went and tested … trying some different things, different spring combinations, moving some bars around just to see if we got better or worse. Actually, we stayed good from start to finish. … We knew we were getting on something.
“I told him, ‘That might not work over here (at Eldora) on the big ol’ racetrack. Then we ran third (in the heat race) and got in the show. He muscled his way in.”
Unsure of how to exactly apply the information gained from their recent test session, the Pierces consulted with Langston on Saturday prior to the DTWC finale.
“I said, ‘Look, you think any of that stuff we tried over there in the test would even be close to this place right here?” said Bob Pierce, who continued saying that Langston told him that “bar angles, bar this, bar that, it works everywhere.”
“I told him, ‘We have nothing to lose,’ ” the elder Pierce continued. “We weren’t good enough to win (after Friday’s prelim), so why not?”
The Pierces eventually retooled every shock aside from the left-front and repositioned “different” suspension bars on the car, an aggressive approach “of moving some stuff around that we would normally do not do,” said the elder Pierce, who typically encourages minor adjustments rather than a complete overhaul.
“That is a hard thing because when you’re winning, winning, winning, and you have three years of winning, winning, winning, I’m not a big swinger like (Saturday). But we had to,” the elder Pierce said. “I knew that wasn’t going to win the race, and I figured if we’re not trying, we run 10th. If we’re going to be bad, at least try and run 10th. Or try hard and run 10th. But if we settle running 10th, then we give up. We’re not good at doing that.
“I tell him, ‘Look, we got to work on what we’ve got. Like, quit changing every damn thing.’ But when we worked on what we got (Friday), nothing was getting better,” the elder Pierce added. “I said, ‘OK, we’re back to big swings, we have nothing to lose. Let’s go.’
“Next thing you know, we went out for (Saturday’s) hot-lap session and we're third (quickest). Normally when you get ready for the feature, it’s hard to be good in the three laps they give you. We were third on the board, I say, ‘Let’s stay with it.’
“We figured we had nothing to lose but money. You know, we come back next year. If all these guys are changing, and they're getting better, and we're just staying stalemated, and we're not getting any better. We gotta do something.”
The younger Pierce isn’t shy about trying new setup concepts.
“You just have to dig down and try something,” he said. “I mean, guys are constantly getting better. You have to stay on top of it.”
On Saturday at the DTWC, the track conditions played into Pierce’s favor as the reigning DirtonDirt Driver of the Year leaned on his gung-ho and high-flying abilities to blitz through the field in leading 44 of 100 laps, pulling away from a midrace duel with first-half leader Chris Madden.
“Once the track started cleaning up a little bit, widening out, I had a good line going around the top. And then once the line got going in (turns) three and four, I was picked off cars lap after lap,” the younger Pierce said. “Tires looked great the whole race. It was digging the whole 100 laps. Just awesome, awesome race for us. Track was good, too. Had a little character in it, which made it interesting.”
One of Pierce’s gripes about his performance last month at the World 100 was that the half-mile racetrack didn’t have enough of a top groove for him to utilize. Saturday there were no such complaints.
“They had the track really dry (Friday) where there wasn’t anything up there. (Saturday), for 100 laps, I think it was a really good track. … I had a really good line going both in corners, kind of different lines,” Pierce said. “I wasn’t running the top in three and four like I normally am. I think it goes to show our car was good. I could kind of maneuver around some. Luckily we hit the restarts almost every time.”
Starting 13th and with Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series title contenders Devin Moran, Ricky Thornton Jr. and Jonathan Davenport among those in front of him, Pierce was aware of his surroundings, knowing he “didn’t want to mess them up” as Moran, Thornton and Davenport vied for the $250,000 series championship.
“Coming up through there, if I did a slider, or whatever, I was just making sure it was extra clear,” Pierce said. “That’s the last thing someone wants to do is mess up their championship.”
But as the race wore on, and especially as Thornton and Davenport encountered midrace troubles, Pierce noticed that when he passed Moran for second on lap 45, that Moran didn’t race him as hard as usual.
“In a way, I used it, as my advantage,” Pierce said. “When I passed Ricky earlier, I caught Devin and, for example, when I was in the lead, I knew Devin wasn’t going to do something too risky on a restart. At that point, Thornton was in the back. I used that to my advantage.”
He raced to victory in a car that won last year’s DTWC and last season’s Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals, but it hadn’t been adorned with the neon-infused, pink graphics scheme designed by fiancee and Eldora trophy presenter Abby Foster that some had considered unlucky.
“I thought, ‘Man, I really wanted to win a big race with this one,’ ” Pierce said. “Got the job done. It’s not unlucky.”
