Central Arizona Raceway
In finale, Pierce finally meets track's demands
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Bobby Pierce riding high at Central Arizona. (Terry Page)
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (Jan. 18) — Bobby Pierce won’t hide it. This year’s Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout tested him and his team on every front, as much as any week since his run of three-straight 30-win seasons began in 2023. | Complete WWS coverage
“This track is so fast, things happen in a blink of an eye. We’re just flying around here. It’s tough to hit your marks lap after lap. It’s a very demanding racetrack,” the 29-year-old Pierce said. “Very demanding on motors, on the race car, ourselves. ... The crew had to stay on top of everything, night in and night out. They did a heckuva job all week. My dad, he did a heckuva job.”
It took him six features and two practice nights over the span of 10 days, but the Oakwood, Ill., superstar put it all together for Sunday’s miniseries finale, recapturing the excellence that’s made him impervious to late-race pressure and a behemoth to subdue in recent seasons. His 48 laps led yielded a welcome $51,500 payday when factoring in the $25,000 winner’s share and $26,500 in bonus money.
“Finally, finally we got a win,” Pierce said. “It took all week to do it. And it was a dogfight to do it. Sometimes, it’s best when you have to kinda wait for it to happen. Tonight, if I was gonna win one, this is what I would choose. On the final night, the lap money, it just kinda leaves on a good note heading to Volusia.”
Vocal about how misses previous miniseries track Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park, the 3/8-mile momentum-based oval that Pierce reeled off 10 victories over the last 14 miniseries races, Pierce came away with an appreciation for Central Arizona Raceway because the dynamic track pushed him and his team to think way outside their usual box.
For instance, Pierce and his father, Bob, the crew chief, mismatched their shock packages, simultaneously employing Ohlins and Bilsteins on Sunday. Pierce fully intends on making the full transition to Ohlins Shocks this year, but in the meantime made do with an unconventional package that his father envisioned fitting him best.
“I'm still learning, so I couldn’t have them all on,” the elder Pierce said of Ohlins. “I hate that because we're gonna stick with those guys and it’s what we had to do to get through this night, you know? But we worked on some right-front stuff that really was important to get through the holes and gas some stuff up, and, you know, drove his butt off and didn’t have a flat.”
While Pierce’s runs of third, second, second and fourth were encouraging after his 13th-place finish in last Saturday’s opener, something still lacked. The elder Pierce surmised the winning difference lied in shock packages because of Central Arizona’s choppy, high-speed and tire-eating nature.
“It helped,” the elder Pierce said of dialing in Bobby’s shock packages. “I mean, he had to run hard, so, you know, it worked on him hard. So they’re probably all blowed out. But, oh well, we got ‘er done. I guess that's all you say, right? I was surprised (his tires) weren’t gone with how hard he drove it.”
Pierce and his father, Bob, believe their team are better for Central Arizona forcing them back to the drawing board. The Pierces simply feel more prepared for Thursday's World of Outlaws Late Model Series season-opening Sunshine Nationals at Barberville, Fla.’s half-mile Volusia Speedway Park.
“Honestly, it’s about the same speeds as Volusia,” the younger Pierce said of Central Arizona. “I feel like the car has more load going into the corner here even than it does at Volusia because it has banking and it’s a little choppy up top. There’s some things we can take here and even apply there — to Volusia. We were thinking throughout the week, do we try some things? Maybe when we’d get to Volusia, we’re better.”
Pierce endured some testy moments along the way Sunday, too, none more tense than his lead-battle tangle with Hudson O’Neal on lap 30. Jockeying off turn two, Pierce tried clearing O’Neal on a slider attempt, but as they rounded the backstretch, they collided, triggering O’Neal’s Rumley Engineering car to spin 360 degrees.
Pierce slowed but kept his car righted and restarted out front with O’Neal, who suffered minor left-front body damage, holding second by virtue of the blend rule.
“That was a dogfight. We started throwing sliders, me and Huddy. He got under me down the backstretch going into three kind early, slid me into three. I had a run off four and dived bombed into one and came off two … I hadn’t seen the (replay), but just hard racing right there,” Pierce said of the lap-30 incident. “We just made contact, and it was one of those weird deals, like the left-front gets hooked under the car and they go spinning. Luckily none of us fell out of the race.”
Pierce emphasized that he and O’Neal’s second run-in of the week battling for the win wasn’t incidental, just like Wednesday’s scrap that opened the door for Ethan Dotson to pass them both for the victory.
“You kinda have to go in there, and that guy has to either commit to turning around you or turning under you," Pierce said. “He chose to go around and I think that time, I was already committed to getting to the backstretch wall. It’s just hard racing. Both of us want to win so bad that neither of us want to necessarily give an inch. But we race either clean. It’s not like we’re trying to take each other out. We’re racing hard.
“If we could replay it, me knowing he was trying to center on around, I might’ve wooed up last second to give him more of a lane. And I bet if he could replay it, he would’ve turned under and go under me. It’s just a hard racing deal on a track that has blistering speeds. I was saying down there (in victory lane), ‘If you think it’s easy, you guys try and do it.’ ”
The deciding factor was quite simple: “Just being on the gas,” Pierce said when asked what the difference was for him Sunday as opposed to the previous five nights.
“It was a heckuva race, a crazy race,” he added.
Now Pierce and the team are headed back across the county to Volusia, a place they’ll also be spending quite a bit of time at between Jan. 22-24’s Sunshine Nationals and Feb. 9-14’s DIRTcar Nationals. Last year, Pierce went winless in eight starts at Volusia, posting an average finish of ninth over that span with two runner-up finishes.
A Wednesday night practice session awaits Pierce and Co., where they’ll make a scheduled engine swap and continue to plug ahead in the quest to defend their World of Outlaws title.
“We’re leaving right now,” Pierce said. “We don’t have time to celebrate. We just gotta get on the road.”
