Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Tidbits about Pierce's Dreamy night
In a new feature appearing regularly on DirtonDirt, senior writer Kevin Kovac will offer readers five things worth mentioning from around the Dirt Late Model landscape (index to previous Take Fives):
No. 1: Bobby Pierce’s parents Bob and Angie are unabashedly superstitious. So when I saw Angie at Bobby’s trailer after the 29-year-old star’s first-ever Dream victory Saturday at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, I asked her if she had found another four-leaf clover during the weekend like she told me she did two weeks ago at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., prior to Bobby’s second straight Show-Me 100 triumph. Angie happily recounted that she had indeed come across a lucky charm at Eldora. Recalling the 2024 World 100 when she spied sunlight glistening on a heads-up penny while attending the afternoon memorial service for Scott Bloomquist — she picked the coin up that day and Bobby went on to win his second World — Angie said it happened again. She was working Bobby’s T-shirt trailer when she noticed the sun hitting a heads-up penny sitting on the ground, so of course she had to put it in her pocket. Was it the secret sauce to Bobby’s victory? Angie certainly thought it must have brought him some luck.
No. 2: During Friday’s preliminary Dream program, Bobby Pierce had the night off — he won his prelim the previous evening — but he still turned some laps. He climbed into Eldora’s two-seat Dirt Late Model to serve as the driver for a special passenger: his wife Abby, who serves as a Miss Eldora. She donned one of Bobby’s uniforms and helmets for her “bucket list” experience. I asked Bobby before he headed out if he was planning to scrape the outside wall to give Abby a taste of his high-side exploits and he said, “I might do it on purpose … or not.” I didn’t notice a bent spoiler on the two-seater afterward, but Abby called her ride “awesome.”
No. 3: Engine builder Vic Hill posted a neat Bobby Pierce-related video Monday that provided a glimpse of the repairs he did to Pierce’s engine that was knocked out of action by a shredded oil pump belt during last Wednesday’s FloRacing Night in America B-main at Eldora. Hill showed how the coating of the bearings had been wiped off by the pump failure while noting “if they’d have gone back out with this guy, it’d have blown the rods completely out of it.” Pierce pulled the engine to run his backup the rest of the weekend, allowing Hill to spend a modest hour putting new bearings in it to get it ready to go again.
No. 4: Pierce became the ninth driver to win both the World 100 and Dream. He joins an all-star list that includes Scott Bloomquist, Shane Clanton Jonathan Davenport, Dale McDowell, Donnie Moran, Billy Moyer, Brandon Overton and Jimmy Owens.
No. 5: There are 11 events (12 including the infrequent Eldora Million) that today are typically ranked as Dirt Late Model crown jewels: the Dream, World 100, Dirt Track World Championship, North-South 100, Firecracker 100, Knoxville Nationals, Prairie Dirt Classic, Show-Me 100, Silver Dollar Nationals, Topless 100 and USA Nationals. After adding the Dream on Saturday, Pierce has now won nine of them for a combined 17 victories. The only missing events are the Topless 100 at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark., and Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa., two races that might be the most difficult for Pierce to capture because he doesn’t know when he’ll ever run them. He’s never entered the Firecracker 100 (and this year it conflicts with World of Outlaws Late Model Series events). His lone start in the Topless 100 was a 20th-place finish in 2017 and, while he doesn’t have any WoO shows against this year’s Topless, he doesn’t plan to enter the event.
