Bobby Pierce doesn’t need much incentive to stoke his competitive fire. It naturally burns hotter than the surface of the sun.

Nevertheless, the 28-year-old superstar from Oakwood, Ill., roared into the 2025 World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series with a deeper, single-minded focus bordering on maniacal. After falling short of defending his ’23 title last year because he couldn’t quite overcome the 146-point penalty he received for failing an early-season tire test, he wanted his crown back.

Oh, he wanted it bad — and he got it, clinching his second WoO championship in three years when he simply took the green flag in last Friday’s next-to-last series feature of the season during the World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C.

“This was the Vengeance Tour,” Pierce said, smiling slyly as he described the motivation he gained from finishing second to Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., in last year’s WoO standings. “We were wanting to win it again, because, you know, obviously kind of the BS we went through. I mean, we’ve been pretty fired up since then really.

“I said last year (after the penalty), ‘Oh, I’ll come back and win it anyways.’ And we went on a heck of a tear and got close, but we had a couple of mechanical failures, some bad luck, and we fell just short.”

Pierce gained his redemption with a spectacular 2025 campaign. He seized the points lead with his first win of the season in Race No. 6 on March 14 at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn., and never relinquished it. Rolling up a series-leading 11 victories among 27 top-five and 34 top-10 finishes in 43 starts, he entered the World Finals with the title effectively in hand. His final championship margin was a relatively modest 56 points over Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C., only because he struggled at Charlotte, going without a top-10 finish in the weekend’s three features.

While standing alongside his car in Charlotte’s pit area during down time before Saturday’s WoO season-ending 50-lap feature, Pierce maintained his denial of wrongdoing in last year’s tire episode and asserted “we should be at three championships now.” But he can’t change history, so he has to be satisfied with proving himself worthy with a grand response this year.

“It is what it is,” Pierce said of last year’s frustration. “We got another championship now.”

Pierce’s father and crew chief, Bob, certainly never had any doubts that Bobby would respond triumphantly this year. He knew 2024’s disappointment would fuel him.

“I kind of like (extra motivation) for him sometimes, too, because he really digs deep, does things that, you know, I ain’t saying he can’t ever do, but it’s like, ‘Oh s---, man, how’d he do that?’” Bob said. “Just determination and not giving up.”

Pierce and his crew — his father along with full-timers Austin Hemmen, Justin Steuhl and Darian Delattre, plus UMP modified veteran Jeff Leka as a volunteer addition at half the season’s events — produced at a high level. He won’t match his otherworldly 38-victory 2024 season (he has a still-amazing 30 victories overall with this weekend’s FloRacing Night in America doubleheader at Georgia’s Senoia Raceway and Dec. 4-6’s Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., remaining on his schedule), but he added the WoO title that was missing from his ’24 ledger.

“This year we were very focused and determined and set out for that (championship) goal,” Pierce said. “Every year we make our goals, I guess, in our mind, and that was one of them. And just to try to win a lot of the big crown jewels, but, you know, after last year (six crown jewel victories), to try and repeat that was going to be hard. I knew going in, I’m probably not going to win all the races, but we tried our best and got some of them done (capturing three crown jewels).

“Going into Charlotte with a big (points) lead was my goal, too, so we got that done. I didn’t qualify too well on Wednesday, and once you don’t qualify well here, you’re really behind the eight-ball because, well, it’s hard to pass and it’s hard to make up ground here, and those prelim nights set you up for Saturday, so fortunately we we came here with a big enough lead that we clinched (the title) early.”

Pierce continued to expand his swath of success this season as well, winning for the first time at six tracks, including five on the WoO tour. Especially noteworthy was his early-season checkered flag run in the Southeast with WoO triumphs at Smoky Mountain, Swainsboro (Ga.) Raceway and Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala., all red-clay ovals that aren’t in the wheelhouse of a Midwestern cushion-pounder like Pierce.

Conquering new areas is a byproduct of Pierce’s transformation into a full-fledged national touring series driver. He made his first national-circuit assault in 2018 when he chased the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series driving for North Carolina’s Dunn Benson Racing, but then he stuck with his formula of heavy DIRTcar Summer Nationals action and hitting various crown jewels and other specials until 2023 when he decided to take his own racing program on the road with the Outlaws.

Now there’s no turning back. He’s figured out the ebbs and flows of following a national tour, he’s developed into a more versatile driver, and the money-making opportunities now available on national series are too attractive for a racer of Pierce’s skills to pass up.

“I guess it’s definitely like a mindset change, because that’s what I do now, is run for a national title,” Pierce said. “Points is a big thing. And every race is so challenging. I don’t remember the last time I just went and raced like a local race or something like that, so every race we race is very challenging and tough and our focus is 100 percent on every race damn near. That’s a lot of racing in a year to be focused on, and our season never really stops for the most part.

“Just going to all these different tracks in the country makes you better and more well-rounded for sure. You get your butt kicked at a lot of places. Everyone’s always trying to improve themselves. I think from the beginning of this year to now, like, there’s numerous teams that have went from being terrible in the beginning and now look at where they are now. So, it’s like, things happen quick in this sport. If someone finds a little bit, they get a lot better. It’s just a constant battle to stay on top of everything.”

“I do like running the tour,” he continued. “Prestige-wise, obviously, it doesn’t get bigger than winning a national title, whether it’s Outlaws or Lucas. And as far as, like, race winnings, in 2022, my last year running the Summer Nationals and stuff, I won like 22 races or something (in fact 21), and race-winnings wise, you know, it doesn’t even compare to the last three years with all the points money and the showup money” on a national tour.

Indeed, entering the World Finals, Pierce had already eclipsed the million-dollar mark in season earnings for the third consecutive year. The $225,000 WoO championship pushed him even higher, and, if he can secure the $75,000 FloRacing title this weekend, his ’25 take will exceed $1.3 million with a shot at reaching his career-high ’24 total of $1.4 million if he can add a $70,000 Gateway Dirt Nationals victory.

The financial numbers point Pierce, who fields his own team, to national touring, even though as a driver based in Illinois he has plenty of opportunities to race close to home. An increase in investment in points funds, appearance money and race purses by the national circuits in recent years has caught his attention.

“You kind of have to do (a national tour), where in the past, I feel like a few years ago, five years ago, it almost wasn’t enough, incentive-wise, to actually go and run a series,” Pierce said. “Now I feel like they have stepped it up pretty good. Hopefully it continues to grow. Obviously, (live) streaming, I think, helps that out.

“When you sit at the beginning of the year or end of the year, and you think about, OK, what am I going to do next year?, it’s kind of hard to pass up running a series. I mean, it obviously pays the most to win, but, like, second in both series pays really well (six-figure sums). They’ve made it to where the race teams can, you know, have decent years, even if you don’t win 30 races.”

“I think my average (earnings) per race this year — and this isn’t including the point money I’m gonna get — is like $10,500,” he added. “So if I go race a $5,000-to-win Summer Nationals race, I’m racing for half of my average or a bit more.”

Bob Pierce saw the financial rewards rising on the national tours and encouraged his son to make the leap with his own team, which Bobby formed to control his own destiny, also with some prodding by dear ‘ol dad.

“To talk him into doing it on his own after doing the Dunn Benson thing was a scary part for him,” Bob said. “Of course he understood the reasons why he needed to do it on his own — make your own calls, do what you want to do — but it is scary. It’s hard to do. So thank God it’s working out for him, and I’m not the bad dad for talking him into it. I’m just the bad dad when things don’t work right.

“Two years before he decided to do the World of Outlaws deal, and he was still in our (family) car, and he kicking those Summer Nationals races out and winning some other big races, and we had $600,000 and $800,000 years with our little team. It was me, my daughter (Ciara) and (wife) Angie — she was selling a lot of shirts — and one guy. That’s a lot of money not doing a tour, but the benefit of doing this (national series) is you can make that kind of money and then you hit the big points money at the end. This right here, this is what ramps you over that million.”

After topping out at a single-season earnings high of $280,000 during his own Dirt Late Model driving career, Bob is amazed that his son is cranking out million-dollar campaigns. He envisions more of them in Bobby’s future as he gains even more experience and savvy from his national touring.

“When we go to different racetracks, whether you run good or bad, it’s just … I guess it takes you out of your element, your comfort zone, so to speak,” Bob said. “And even though you might not have done it right, it’s funny how then when you go to a racetrack you know, it makes you better there too. So much you get this cookie-cutter mindset, and all of a sudden you go to a place like (Charlotte) and you struggle, but you find another underlining thing that you never knew it was there because you didn’t know how to try it, so, yeah, it does make you a better driver.

“And I always said, I always felt like the guys from the South can come up by us (in the Midwest) and be better than us because they’ll see our racetrack, and where we see a cushion, and we see a bottom, they see a middle. It’s like, ‘How the hell do they do that?’ Well, they do that (at Charlotte and other Southeast tracks). They don’t rely on that cushion, and that’s what (Bobby’s) learning.”

Pierce will celebrate his 29th birthday on Nov. 24, putting him on the precipice of the big 3-0. His resume is already Hall of Fame-worthy as he approaches the age frame where most drivers hit their prime, which puts his prospects for the future — WoO records? Crown jewel milestones? — into unthinkable categories.

Will Pierce maintain his focus as he grows older and takes on more adult responsibilities? For one, he has another life milestone coming in April with his marriage to Abby Foster. Perhaps fatherhood could come sometime after that. That hard-charging kid who’s been tearing around dirt tracks in a Dirt Late Model since he was a teenager is becoming a veteran, though he still professes to be young at heart.

“In my mind I’ll be like 21 forever,” Bobby said. “I think my mind state just stays in that — I think I’m just 21. You ask Abby, she’ll probably agree.”

Pierce understands how life changes for a driver as time passes. He feels fortunate to have a partner in Foster who’s on board with his racing.

“I told someone earlier, I said, she she’s very supportive of this as long as I’m winning, so I have to keep winning. She says she won’t date a B-main Bandit,” Pierce said with a laugh. “But she’s into it. She can’t be at every race, but she’s been to, I’d say, probably half the races this year at least. She’s got a job where she can work remote.”

Pierce said he and his soon-to-be wife have no timeline on starting a family, but his father said becoming a parent could push Bobby even harder as a racer.

“He’s had his house for a while, five years now, so’s he got over the homeowner experience, you know, the water heater, the furnace, all that stuff,” Bob said. “Now he's just got to get into the married thing, but they’ve been living together, so they kind of know that thing. If they have kids, that’s going to be another big, big thing. And basically, then she’ll tell him what my wife did: ‘You gotta drive harder. We got a kid now.’ ”

That doesn’t seem like it would be a problem for the now two-time WoO champion. He’s fully locked in with his profession and pursuing more national titles.

“I mean, (national touring) gets tiring for sure, but like, I think the mindset of us is that it just is what it is,” Bobby said. “I don’t really have a lot of other hobbies or anything I’d want to be doing. And as far as other jobs, I definitely don’t think there’s another job I want to be doing. So if I’m going to make it, I probably better be running the national series and trying to win championships.”

Ten things worth mentioning

1. The World Finals is absolutely a marathon — each of the three race days with features for the trio of divisions typically lasts around six hours — but there’s a facet of the weekend that does make the length of the shows more bearable: the event’s enormous attendance figures means there are a lot of familiar faces to bump into. Time between the Dirt Late Model races moves quicker for me because I’m seeing and chatting with so many people, a large number of whom I haven’t seen in quite some time. Walking through the big-block modified pit area also allows me to renew acquaintances with Northeasterners I know well from my days covering the class, providing a fun opportunity to catch up with them.

2. One of the big-block modified racers at Charlotte whom I wrote about many times in the past was Tim Fuller, the 58-year-old veteran from Watertown, N.Y. I stopped by his pit stall during the World Finals and we reminisced about his days traveling the WoO tour from 2007-2014, a period that most of which I served as the tour’s P.R. director. Fuller immediately brought up one moment from the 2013 WoO campaign at Black Hills Speedway in Rapid City, S.D. “Remember when I packed the track with the rental car?” Fuller said. I certainly did. After rain washed out the July 8, 2013, event, the track surface was left so wet that it was impossible for the teams to drive their haulers across the track at the turn-four crossover gate. Fuller, though, had a plan: he commandeered the rental vehicle that then WoO series director Tim Christman and I had and began to drive it back-and-forth across the track from the infield to the turn-four gate. He did it dozens of times in hopes of working in a lane with enough traction for the rigs. Finally, then WoO regular Bub McCool of Vicksburg, Miss., volunteered to be the first to attempt a crossing with his hauler. “He got a good run through the infield and made it across,” Fuller said. The rest of the teams followed after being stranded in the pits for probably a couple hours.

3. Regarding Fuller’s Black Hills story, his track work with our rental car left the vehicle rather, uh, dirty. Mud was splattered all over the automobile, but it was the undercarriage where it really collected. During the next day’s short trip to Gillette (Wyo.) Thunder Speedway for a WoO, we had chunks of dirt falling off as we rolled down the highway. There was so much mud accumulated under the car that we were still dropping pieces the following day on our long haul to River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks, N.D., until we finally had to stop at a self-service car wash and try to blast away the remaining mud, which piled up in the car wash bay after repeated washings.

4. And do you happen to recall how I mentioned here a few weeks ago that Fuller had one of the quotes of the year after dropping out of a Super DIRT Week 358-modified race at Oswego (N.Y.) Speedway? He deadpanned in a broadcast interview that he retired because he “broke an interest rod,” a humorous comment that brought him plenty of attention. Fuller said he’s been using that term with his buddy and fellow big-block modified driver, Billy Decker, for years, but the Oswego race marked the first time either of them said it in an interview. Also notable is that someone made a few T-shirts with the quote on the front — with the term “Fullerism” above it — and showed it to Fuller during the World Finals weekend.

5. In the Charlotte pit area I had a nice conversation with veteran Dirt Late Model racer Willie Milliken of Roanoke Rapids, N.C., who spent the weekend spectating. While talking about his 2026 racing plans, Willie said he’s seriously considering making his first-ever trip to the North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky. His wife Crystal’s uncle, late North Carolina racing standout Jimmy “Porky Edwards Jr., will be posthumously inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame that weekend and Crystal will be among the family members in attendance, so Willie remarked that he “might as well bring along our car and race if everything’s going OK.”

6. The three-division four-wide parade lap that has become a Friday-night staple of World Finals and certainly excites many fans, but no one gets more pumped up over the spectacle than World Racing Group director of communication and creative Chris Dolack. The longtime WRG employee came up with the idea and eagerly awaits the moment. “This is my favorite laps of the year,” Dolack said in the Charlotte media room before going outside to watch from the grandstand.

7. Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., had a couple familiar faces hanging around his pit stall during the World Finals: his former crew members Ricky Arnold and Stephen Eldridge, who both now live in Texas and have non-racing jobs but traveled to Charlotte for the weekend. They pitched in to help Madden throughout the weekend, though Arnold had some other duties that kept him busy: babysitting his 4-month-old daughter, Riley, while her mother, Hannah Newhouse, worked on the DIRTVision broadcast of the weekend. Newhouse, who delivered the couple’s first child July 3, departed her role as DIRTVision’s pit reporter for the WoO Late Model Series earlier this year while in the final months of her pregnancy but returned to the broadcast provide commentary during the World Finals.

8. Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., had to jump into his Koehler Motorsports teammate Ricky Thornton Jr.’s car to start Friday night’s World Finals feature after engine trouble was discovered in his own machine after he transferred. He only ran a few laps, which was enough for him to help Thornton’s crew diagnose ignition trouble that had caused RTJ to miss qualifying for the feature. Owens’s short stint in Thornton’s car also meant he could start breathing again because, well, the 53-year-old Owens had a tight squeeze in the seat. Owens joked that he thought he “might have cracked a rib” getting himself into Thornton’s seat.

10. Check out the Ross Wece-produced video that was posted on social media Tuesday morning to announce the 2026 World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series schedule. Filled with an array of memes, cartoon characters and movie and television show clips related to each stop on the national tour, it’s an entertaining way to view the schedule.