Central Arizona Raceway
No winners after contact between O'Neal, Pierce
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Hudson O'Neal (6) and Bobby Pierce (32) mix it up. (mikerueferphotos.photoreflect.com)
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (Jan. 14) — Hudson O’Neal and Bobby Pierce’s spirited lead battle in Wednesday’s Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout appeared ready to serve up Dirt Late Model racing’s first head-to-head, down-to-the-wire showdown of the new season. | Complete WWS coverage
That is, until O’Neal’s left-rear and Pierce’s right-front came together down Central Arizona Raceway’s dog-legged frontstretch. Before the two could settle the battle for the bottom groove, and lead, into turn one with eight laps remaining, O’Neal’s left-front tire went flat. Pierce, apart from slight right-front bumper damage, escaped unscathed.
O’Neal supporters blamed Pierce on social media. Pierce supporters pointed the finger back at O’Neal. Neither ended up prevailing Wednesday as Ethan Dotson was the beneficiary of the lap-23 restart triggered by O’Neal’s flat tire, going on to the $10,000 victory with Pierce as the runner-up.
The lap-23 contact left the 29-year-old Pierce and 25-year-old O’Neal, driving the Kevin Rumley-prepared No. 6, a little bitter when dissecting what went awry, but short of airing any grudges with a day off before Friday’s $10,000-to-win event.
“I definitely think we had a good run on Bobby there on the restart. I slid him getting into (turns) three and four,” Martinsville, Ind.’s O’Neal said. “I tried to protect a little bit, and just, really, a freak deal. I think his front bumper got into my left-rear tire and cut the valve stem out of it. Yeah, it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. It was just hard racing, just trying to do what we got to do to win.
The intensifying lead battle with O’Neal had Pierce looking forward to a clean, hard-nosed fight for Wednesday’s top spot.
“Yeah, it sucks to cut Hudson’s tire down. … We got hung up for a second, and I guess it cut his tire down and it bent my bumper up a little bit,” said Oakwood, Ill.’s Pierce, who “would’ve really loved to just race it out cleanly there at the end. That late-race restart there with Ethan, man, he was on the gas. I don’t know, you can’t count their chickens before they’re hatched. You got to be on it on restarts.”
Moments before the contact, O’Neal thought he had more momentum than Pierce exiting turn four and rounding the frontstretch. That’s why he attempted to safeguard the bottom groove and snatch back the bottom lane so aggressively heading into turn one.
“I was trying to protect a little bit, not trying to let him get a run back on me and slide me getting into one,” O’Neal said. “I really wanted the bottom getting into one as well. Just good racing, man. … I felt I was a little bit better than him through traffic. I put myself in a bad spot sometimes and get stuck behind … but it felt pretty good, just lapped traffic was really playing a part in that race.”
The fifth-starting O’Neal had caught Pierce early in the running Wednesday, closing within a few lengths by lap 11. Briefly held up behind the lapped Chase Junghans, O’Neal fell by 1.6 seconds, but he overcame the deficit within five laps. He and Pierce battled hard for the next six laps, trading sliders and sizing up moves for the finish all before the race-altering scrape on lap 23.
O’Neal defended his move because “I’m not really thinking about flat tires or wrecking, I’m just thinking about winning the race.”
“Whenever I slid him getting three, I knew he short slid, too, a little bit trying to run into there with me because I heard him, so I was like, ‘OK, well, this probably killed my momentum,’ ” O’Neal said. “I thought I had time to get down before he gets down there and goes back by me. Just a little bit of misjudgment. All in all, just is what it is. I’m happy it didn’t affect his race or anything. We’ll be back Friday and hopefully we can win two or three of the next ones.”
O’Neal rallied to salvage a 10th-place finish, which keeps him atop the miniseries standings by nine points over Dotson and Ryan Gustin. O’Neal expects the Arizona oval to continue to deliver the remainder of the event.
“This place is awesome. There’s no complaints there,” he said. “It’s putting on a heckuva show. Really felt like we had one there. … Happy to see the restart and sneak by them. It is what it is, man. We’re here to race hard and it sucks that’s the way it ended. All in all, just good, hard racing.”
For Pierce, the winningest driver in miniseries history, that’s 31 laps led without a victory after three of six races. He’s fourth in miniseries standings, 18 points behind O’Neal.
“Late restarts there kinda got us, but the third night on the track, trying to figure it out, I feel like our car is better,” Pierce said. “Now it’s trying to figure out what to do when the tires go away. That was a 30-lap race and 30 laps into the race, the tires were pretty shot. I don’t know, really, what we’re gonna do in a 50-lapper race (on Sunday).
“Probably gong to have to ride through a pretty long duration of the event, then go at the end. It’s really hard to do. It’s such a hard racetrack. You have to be on the gas, but you have to save your tires at the same time. We have three more nights to figure it out.”
