Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Perfect Dream car, perfect Pierce combo
Bobby Pierce stood to my left. His father and crew chief, Bob Pierce, was to my right. I had a dual interview going on.
“A Pierce mashup,” Bob said with a laugh.
This was nearly two hours after Bobby had taken the checkered flag to win Saturday’s 100-lap Dream XXXII finale at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. The crowd that had inundated the 29-year-old superstar from Oakwood, Ill., at his trailer in the facility’s upper pit area — fans formed a long line and waited patiently for their moment with him — had dissipated as the clock struck 1 a.m. and Bobby came over to join the conversation I was having with his father.
Bob had called Bobby over. Then I asked Bobby about his interaction with his father on the winner’s stage.
“What did you tell him when you got out of the car?” I queried to Bobby.
“Oh, I said the car was badass,” Bobby replied.
Bob, though, recalled a slightly different comment and corrected Bobby.
“You said the car was ‘perfect,’ ” Bob noted, repeating what he had told me moments earlier.
Bobby conceded that dear old dad was right. “Yeah, perfect,” Bobby said with a smile.
Bob looked at Bobby with a look of deep satisfaction.
“I think you might have said that one time a long ago,” Bob remarked.
“It was a long time ago,” Bobby quipped. “I’m pretty picky.”
There was plenty to remember about Bobby’s elusive first-ever Dream victory, but for the elder Pierce, hearing Bobby definitively put the word “perfect” on the 2-race-old Longhorn Chassis he had set up was perhaps the most memorable.
“I’m just happy that he said that the car was perfect,” Bob said, “because that’s something that just don’t happen.”
The car’s sublime performance was, however, a key to Bobby’s $100,000 triumph. It needed to be right on the mark for Bobby to win the way he did, which is to say without the high-side theatrics that his previous four crown jewel victories at Eldora — World 100 in 2016 and ’24 and Dirt Track World Championship in 2024-25 — had featured.
“I don’t think it was perfect, but it was perfect for where you had to go,” Bob said, directing his comment to Bobby. “You couldn’t run the top as good as normal because it wasn’t set right for the top. It was all in that right-rear, man. We talked about it. So that’s good. That’s good. Made you go to the middle.”
Indeed, Bobby ran a decidedly different path to Eldora glory this time. He’s known for his daring, hard-nosed driving around the high-banked track’s treacherous cushion and his penchant for throwing slider bombs. Running a smooth, steady line through the middle, or lower, portion of the speedway — like, for instance, multi-time Eldora winners Jonathan Davenport, Brandon Overton and the late Scott Bloomquist — has never been Pierce’s style.
Many critics have tried to deride Pierce by claiming he can’t win without a cushion to lean on, especially at Eldora. He doesn’t dispute that he prefers having a nice ledge to use and pounding that top is where he makes his most magic, but he’s become increasingly versatile as he’s matured. Saturday’s Dream made that evident as he marched forward from the 13th starting spot to take the lead for good from Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., on lap 59 without being bound exclusively to the outer reaches of the track.
Pierce acknowledged his more patient, subdued route around the Big E.
“I mean, I made a lot of gains on the top, especially in (turns) three and four,” Bobby said. “But I definitely won the race in the middle, like controlled the restarts well in the middle as well.
“Tonight, with the rain (that delayed the program’s start 90 minutes), of course, too, it did make the racetrack a little different. It just played out into our hand. I mean, when I was coming through the field there I knew I had a really good car. I was making passes on the bottom, making passes on top. I was getting up through there and really was able to manage my tires in the same sense too. I really only, like, gassed it hard probably like a handful of times. Like if I was struggling to pass someone, then I’d really turn it up a notch to get past them.
“So,” he concluded, “it was good to be able to kind of save a little bit for a change.”
Pierce didn’t have to flirt with the concrete wall lap after lap, scraping and smushing his car’s right-rear spoiler. Nor did he have to make his engine scream till it cried uncle. He mastered the middle, and I asked him if that made him feel like Bloomquist or Davenport, who own a combined 23 crown jewel wins at Eldora.
“It felt like it tonight for sure,” Bobby said.
So was the Dream Pierce’s most satisfying major win at Eldora because it dispelled the talk that he needs the cushion to succeed?
“Probably in a way, but, I mean, not really,” Bobby said. “Car-wise, yeah, the car was really good. But like the World (in 2024) with (Dale) McDowell, when I passed him back at the end (with five laps remaining), it’s kind of hard to top that one.”
“But this one was really nice because it was like, you know, with 21 laps to go (after second-running Sheppard hit the wall after blowing a right-front tire and collected third-place Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind.), I was thinking to myself, like, typically I’d been good on the restarts. Because I noticed it when I got to fourth and that caution came out, we were really slumping aside before that, and then the caution came out, Sheppard, (Tyler Erb), they were on the gas, like it was a hammered-down track again. And so every time a caution would come out, it’d kind of do a little bit of that.
“But we went on a long green-flag run, and when that caution came out with 21 to go, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if my tires are still good to be able to do that.’ Then we took the green, I went in the middle, and it was like, ‘OK, still really good.’ And lap after lap, I’m like, ‘Any lap now I’m going to start getting looser,’ and it really wasn’t until five to go that I really felt that and that’s when I finally started to catch the back end of the lapped traffic and I had a lead” on runner-up Max Blair
Bob realized that Bobby calling the race car “perfect” meant the middle of the track had finally been unlocked for him.
“He’s always willing to run the middle like McDowell and Davenport and Bloomquist, and (Nick) Hoffman started doing it now, but he just never thought he could do that,” Bob said. “I understand what he means. It’s a driver thing, it’s a different way to drive. But the car’s got to be right to do that.
“Everybody goes, ‘Well, you’re a setup guy.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I am, but you know, there’s times that I just take a chance on this stuff and leave the rest up to him. I always say, if I get him close, and there’s something besides a one-dimensional racetrack, like all in the bottom, you know, and nobody could pass, he’ll make something happen. At least he'll try at it.
“What happened tonight was, I changed right-side springs on the car at the last minute, and I was actually more worried about the right-front just getting over and turning good. I kind of didn’t think the right-rear was gonna make a difference, but it did. He couldn’t run the top as good as he would normally because of what I did over there, so that made him go to the middle.”
Bob noticed early in the race that Bobby had something for the middle of the track.
“(Kentucky racer) Robby Hensley had his phone with his time on it, and he said, ‘Hey, he just picked up like three-tenths just going through one in the middle,’ ” said Bob, who watched and signaled Bobby from inside turn one. “And I had him still (running the) top in three and four, so I said, ‘I’m gonna put him in the middle for a couple laps and see what happens,’ and boom, boom, he picked up another tenth.
“So I’m thinking, it’s either cleaning up, locking up, or something, because some guys could just run that middle better and their car’s set up for the middle. So I’m like, well, ‘I’m just going to keep him there.’ I think that’s when he was running third, and he stalemated. So I’m saying, ‘OK, I’m going to send it back up top in three and four,’ and then he got a helluva run off of four and he almost put a slide job on (Erb for second) but he couldn't get there fast enough, and he went to the middle and stayed with him.
“I couldn’t see him through all the haulers and it just happened they had him on the Jumbotron, he’s on their ass, and he goes to the outside and I said, ‘Just slide him, go for it.’ I think Sheppard got the lead right before that, and he slid Erb, and then he goes chasing (Sheppard). He almost caught him in three and four but then Shepp got away from him in one and two again, so I’m like, ‘OK, let’s put him in the middle and we’re in second. We got second before. That’s a very good weekend.
“And the next thing you know, he got all over him. I’m like, ‘You gotta go for it,’ and he went right by him. I was like, ‘Oh, wow.’ But then Shepp come back on him. At the time he wasn’t low enough, and I was like, ‘Uh-oh, we’re gonna be in trouble.’ It was gonna be interesting, but then Shepp blew that tire.”
Bobby was primed for an all-Illinois showdown for the Dream trophy with Sheppard, the Rocket1 driver who won the Dream in 2019. He didn’t know how it would have turned out.
“It was like the Show-Me (100) where I picked it up a little notch for the last 10 laps,” Bobby said, recalling the crown jewel he won over Sheppard two weeks earlier at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo. “But how the track was tonight was a lot like how it was on (Friday’s) prelim race with Davenport and Overton and them guys, like you saw (Jason) Feger turning the top some and then it just slowed down, so it’s like the middle really was the fastest spot on the track I think. So if Shepard would have got there and got under me, it would have been hard to, like, do anything.
“I would have gave it all I had to get back by him if he did pass me, but it was getting interesting there. So I’m not like glad it happened, because it was bad for him and bad for Hudson and he tore up his car and everything, but, like, I needed a caution. I didn’t need it to be him, but I needed a caution.”
Pierce held on, adding yet another flourish to ever-bulging resume. It was his 17th career crown jewel victory overall (and second already this year), leaving him behind only the late Scott Bloomquist (40), Davenport (24), Billy Moyer (23) and Jimmy Owens (20). Of that elite group, only Bloomquist (three) and Moyer (one) had crown jewel wins before turning 30. Pierce doesn’t celebrate his 30th birthday until Nov. 24.
Those lofty statistics had Bob Pierce feeling introspective after Saturday’s race.
“I was just telling our sponsors Low Voltage and Churchill Trucking last night, I said, ‘You know, I got to be the luckiest guy in the whole world. This guy up there must love me to death, because the way my life went from start to now, this should never have happened,’” Bob said, shaking his head over being the father of a son who’s turning into an all-time Dirt Late Model great. “I mean, the racing part, yeah, I was always going to race. But to have a son at 45 years old, not thinking I was gonna have any kids — and my daughter’s 32, so I was 42 when we had her — and then to turn him into a good racer, that just don’t happen all the time.
“Me and Scott (Bloomquist) used to talk about that. This was before we had kids, he goes, ‘Yeah, I’ll have a kid, and they’ll probably want to be a lawyer or a doctor or whatever.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, someday I might have one and it’ll be the same thing.’
“But here we go with Bobby,” he added. “It’s just nuts.”
Bobby understands the pride his success gives to his father. He’s glad he’s been able to bring his father, a standout racer himself during his days behind the wheel, so much joy. He’s also feels fortunate he’s been able to do all it — ever since his Dirt Late Model debut as a 13-year-old — with his father right there by his side.
“I mean, a lot of dads that got their kids in racing, a lot of them were, like, still racing,” Bobby said. “But when (Bob) got out of racing, I was starting, so it worked out good there. We didn’t intersect at all, so he got me started off really on the right foot really at an early age.
“I’m very blessed for that. You look at like Devin (Moran), right? Donnie was still racing when Devin started. And the same thing with like Billy (Moyer) and Billy Jr., and a lot of other drivers do the same thing … Don and Hudson O’Neal, too.
“Everything Bob learns, like, I learn. And we’ve done it together so much that, like, we just know what to do. He was a really good racer as well, so it’s like, a lot of things he knows still applies to today. I’m not even talking like setup stuff. I’m just talking race stuff. Not really what to do either, but what not to do.”
Bob heard that comment and laughed.
“Yeah, when he first started, that’s a lot of what it was — what not to do,” Bob said.
That’s not the case as much anymore. Bobby has grown up to become a scourge of the Dirt Late Model circuit, piling up wins and money — he’s already passed $500,000 in earnings this season — in a manner that blows his father’s mind.
And now Pierce is beginning to dominate Eldora, the most famous of all Dirt Late Model tracks. Bobby said he doesn’t feel like a Bloomquist or a Davenport quite yet when he drives through Eldora’s pit gate, but he acknowledged that “some people are probably at us like that.” He’s now won four of the last six crown jewel races at the track, after all.
“I guess when you think of it that way,” Bobby said with a grin, “yeah, we’re doing pretty good.”
