Muskingum County Speedway
Notes: Moran scraps planned WVMS trip
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Devin Moran at Muskingum County Speedway. (BW Media)
ZANESVILLE, Ohio (June 10) — Wednesday's engine failure in the inaugural Shale Crescent Dirt Cup left Devin Moran with more than a disappointing end to a promising night.
It’s also forced the Dresden, Ohio, driver to shelve his plans for this weekend's World of Outlaws Late Model Series stop at West Virginia Motor Speedway, delaying his first laps around the reconfigured 3/8-mile oval that hosts October's Dirt Track World Championship.
Moran had planned to make the 90-minute trip east for the two-day event, using it as valuable preparation for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series season finale on Oct. 16-17. Instead, a powerplant gone sour following his heat race victory Wednesday at Muskingum County Speedway sent his team back to the drawing board.
"We were planning on it, but with the motor problem, we're calling it quits (for the weekend), so we're gonna go home, get washed up, work all weekend, and then hit the Smoky Mountain” Speedway in Maryville, Tenn., on June 19-20 with the Lucas Oil Series, Moran said.
The decision was particularly frustrating because everything had unfolded exactly as Moran hoped before mechanical trouble struck. Moran topped time trials, won his heat race and earned the pole position for the 50-lap, $20,000-to-win feature.
Forced to start on the tail after switching cars, Moran had a comeback brewing but never had enough opportunities to completely overcome the setback. He didn't crack the top 10 until lap 22, and was ninth when the race's second caution flew on lap 38. He climbed as high as seventh on the ensuing restart before ultimately settling for an eighth-place finish.
"Just unfortunate events. I felt like we had a perfect night going, and it just came crashing down very quick," Moran said. "So, really sucks, but my guys did a great job for us, gave me a great race car. ... From 24th to eighth, it's not horrible with only a couple cautions. So, yeah, just very, very upset. ... I think I would've had something for Bobby. We would have had a heck of a race."
Despite the setback, Moran believed his car was capable of navigating tricky lapped traffic because multiple lanes remained viable throughout the feature. The lack of cautions, however, denied him the restarts he needed to capitalize.
"Track was really dirty, but it was really racy, you know, so I could kind of go where they weren't," Moran said of the track long owned and operated by his family. "If they were up, I could go down. If they were down, I could go up. So, we could make moves and make passes, but when you got 24 best guys in the country here, when you start behind them all, it just takes a long time to get up there, though.”
Who's counting?
Wednesday’s Dirt Cup victory at Muskingum County Speedway pushed Bobby Pierce to 14 victories on the season, moving him ahead of Hudson O’Neal as the nation’s winningest Dirt Late Model driver. It’s a total Pierce, who usually tracks his wins in an iPhone note, didn’t even know he’d reached.
“This is the first year … I don’t know how many wins I have,” the 29-year-old Oakwood, Ill., superstar said.
Pierce's 14 victories are still behind the blistering pace he set a year ago — he had 17 triumphs at this point last season — but the reigning World of Outlaws Late Model Series champion has won five of his last eight features, racking up $279,000 over that span, and appears to be finding another level as summer begins.
He isn't ready to start counting again just yet, but he certainly knows what’s on the line.
“I’ll definitely start keeping track of it once I get into the 20s,” Pierce said. “Of course, I’d love to have another 30-plus-win season. We’ve done that the last three years. Been very fortunate to do that. I just have to thank my crew and all my sponsors and fans. It’s really cool.”
Pierce didn’t necessarily expect Muskingum to be a place where he’d thrive. In two previous starts at the Zanesville, Ohio, oval, he finished eighth in 2018 with Dunn-Benson Motorsports and second to Devin Moran in 2024’s XR Super Series visit. When he slipped from second to fourth on a lap-nine restart Wednesday, it looked as if Muskingum might elude him again.
Instead, Pierce found the same rhythm that’s charged his recent surge, taking the lead on lap 28 and driving away from runner-up Josh Rice, who made contact with a slower car while leading, to win by more than four seconds.
“There’s some tracks I go to and I expect myself to be better at than other tracks. Here, I definitely didn’t expect to win tonight,” Pierce said. “Every night, this sport is so humbling. There’s a bunch of guys that can win on any given night.
“Not just win, but you can very easily find yourself three tenths, four tenths off, in qualifying. It’s not hard to find yourself off in qualifying. If you do, you have to hope they give you a good racetrack and that you have a good car to get up through the field to salvage your night.”
Despite the hot streak, the Pierce team adjusts to being shorthanded after crewman Dawson Cook’s departure Monday, leaving the operation with two full-time mechanics outside of Pierce’s father, Bob. The team is looking to fill that void soon, but for now, Pierce hopes the good times remain.
“Right now, I feel like we’re definitely hitting on a little something,” Pierce said. “Hopefully we can ride this wave into West Virginia this weekend and keep it going into the following weeks.”
Perspective shift
Josh Rice would have gladly taken a top-10 finish in the Dirt Cup before the night began. By the time it was over, second place following a back-and-forth midrace battle vs. red-hot Bobby Pierce felt almost disappointing.
“I didn’t think I’d come here and be upset to run second, but that’s part of it,” Rice said.
That alone said plenty about how far the Crittenden, Ky., driver has come as a national touring rookie. On Wednesday, he flashed more of his upside in charging from seventh to the lead by lap 15 while driving past some of the fastest drivers in the country — Pierce, Hudson O’Neal, Nick Hoffman and Ricky Thornton Jr. among them.
From laps 15-27, Rice paced the 50-lapper and looked fully capable of capping off another victory not long after he triumphed May 22 during Lucas Oil Speedway’s Show-Me 100 weekend.
Even after Pierce caught him, Rice didn’t back down. The two traded sliders in a spirited exchange before Pierce finally cleared him for good on lap 28.
“That was a helluva race with Bobby,” Rice said. “Bobby’s really good right now, I mean, you can’t take anything away from him,” Rice said. “I broke a return spring on my carburetor, and the throttle was getting hung wide open. That wasn’t helping anything. I still think we would’ve ran second.”
A midrace run-in with a lapped car caused the mechanical slip-up, which didn’t help his cause.
“I probably still would’ve run second regardless,” said Rice, whose JRR Motorsports team struggled early in 2026. “I just hate lapped cars feeling like they have to race with us. To show up here and be as bad as we were early, and then about win the thing, I’m pretty pumped about that. … We’ve come a long way.”
Odds and ends
Rocket Chassis co-owner Mark Richards still hasn't recovered his wallet he misplaced during Dream weekend at Eldora Speedway, and he's beginning to accept that it may be gone for good. The wallet — which is more of a slim card holder carrying roughly two dozen personal items, including credit cards, identification and health insurance cards — was last seen resting on the decklid of the Rocket1 race car before it rolled to staging for Friday's 50-lap preliminary feature. Richards has since deactivated every card and spent hours on the phone this week beginning the tedious process of replacing them, a hassle he says is still far from complete. He even collaborated with Eldora Speedway's social media accounts to offer a $2,000 reward for its return, but those efforts have come up empty. At this point, Richards figures the wallet is either "buried in the dirt at Eldora" or was accidentally swept into the trash can beside the team's infield pit stall. The one positive, though, is that no one ever attempted to use any of the missing credit cards, reinforcing his belief that the wallet was lost rather than stolen. … Kaede Loudy of Rogersville, Tenn., has been serving as a crew member for Daulton Wilson's Big Frog-Viper Motorsports team since the World of Outlaws Late Model Series stop at Georgetown (Del.) Speedway on May 13. This weekend's two-day World of Outlaws event at West Virginia Motor Speedway in Mineral Wells, W.Va., will be his last with the team for the time being as he shifts his focus back to driving his own No. 26 MasterSbilt Race Car. Despite operating a modest one-car, one-engine program, Loudy still plans to defend his Schaeffer's Southern Nationals championship when Ray Cook's miniseries opens July 12 at Wythe Raceway in Rural Retreat, Va., before concluding July 25 at Tazewell (Tenn.) Speedway.
