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I was wrong about Bobby Pierce | Daily 6-2-2023
I have to be honest, I was wrong about Bobby Pierce. We'll talk about that today, plus Thursday results and big weekends ahead for Lucas, the Outlaws and more. Let's go!
It's Friday, June 2nd, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Way back in January of this year I had a show titled "Bobby Pierce says he's full time with the World of Outlaws, but we don't believe him." If you might remember, Pierce bagged $25,000 at the Wild West Shootout, then super trucked to Florida where he promptly declared his full time allegiance with the Outlaws amongst a tough and growing group. In an interview with the series on the day he declared, he said quote "I know it's a long year and a lot of traveling, but we do that all the time anyways, so we'll just see how it goes" unquote. Not exactly full of conviction from a driver who had only previously run one of the national tours a single time, in 2018 with Lucas. But here we are on the second day of June, and not only is the Smooth Operator still on tour, he's thriving. I mentioned on the show yesterday that this weekend swing through Illinois and Kentucky could be a good chance for Pierce to make ground on points leader Chris Madden, and that's exactly what happened last night. Pierce started third behind Madden and Nick Hoffman, was patient for much of the first half of the 40 lapper, and then when Hoffman was briefly held up in lap traffic, Pierce was there to make the move for the lead. He took over on lap 28 and led the rest of the way for his second series win of 2023. Hoffman and Kyle Bronson rounded out the podium, with Madden fading to seventh by the end. Headed to Tri-City tonight, another good track for Pierce, the gap to Madden in the standings is only 50 points. Pierce could easily cut into that the next two nights. If you look at Pierce's season, those opening two races at Volusia were not confidence inspiring, with finishes of 25th and 17th. But since then, his record is very good. If it wouldn't have been for a broken wheel and busted brake parts while leading at Talladega, he'd have 12 straight top ten finishes right now, and possibly three wins instead of two. His average finish over the past five races is third, and he's suddenly a very real championship contender. I was very skeptical of his plans for the year, but clearly he's proving me wrong at this point. And his speed isn't just with the Outlaws. He's already also got a Lucas win this season, and is second in the FloRacing Night of America standings coming off a second place run at Florence where just got nipped late by Ricky Thornton Jr. Outside of Summer Nationals competition, I'd argue we haven't really seen this version of Bobby Pierce before. He's contending for wins regularly, and when he isn't, he's still running up front. With the Longhorn Chassis switch, that group has really taken a step forward this year. I think a lot of us figured that this Outlaw season would be pretty competitive out front, I just don't know that we thought it would be Pierce and Nick Hoffman at this point challenging a guy like Chris Madden. This has been a really fun season to date with this series and I hope it continues. After tonight at Tri-City, the Outlaws head Saturday to Paducah.
A busy weekend at Tri-City continued last night with the Xtreme Outlaw Midgets in town. We had a strange situation late in the feature, where three cars inside the top seven all cut tires on the same lap, including the leader Ryan Timms, third running Jade Avedisian, and seventh running Taylor Reimer. All Keith Kunz cars, and all three would get back into the mix, with Jade the highest finisher of the three in ninth. With those cars out of the game, Jesse Love inherited the lead on the restart, and he drove away to his first career national midget win topping points leader Cannon McIntosh and Landon Brooks. Chase McDermand battled from 16th to fourth after flipping in his heat race earlier in the night. Love, who won the ARCA race at Charlotte just last week, and who will be in truck at Gateway this weekend, was driving a car for Chad Boat. Headed to Wayne County for two nights now, McIntosh has extended his points lead to 112 over McDermand, with Jade and Gavin Miller tied for third. After Saturday, things roll right into Indiana Midget week with things kicking off Sunday at Haubstadt. So no lack of midget racing coming up through June 11th.
In Thursday night sprint car action, Kyle Reinhardt was a 410 winner at BAPS, topping Jeff Halligan and Freddie Rahmer. And across the state at Pittsburgh's PA Motor Speedway, AJ Flick topped Dave Blaney and Ryan Smith for night two of Western PA Speedweek. Speedweek continues tonight at Lernerville, with Sharon and Tri-City Raceway Park coming Saturday and Sunday.
Alright, let's run through the other big stuff coming up this weekend. The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series is headed for West Virginia Motor Speedway for the Historic 100 and $50,000 to win on Saturday. Tonight is a full program ending with a $10,000 to win, 30 lap feature. Ricky Thornton Jr. is the current Lucas points leader over Hudson O'Neal and Brandon Overton. Drivers will be starting to work towards staying in the top 12 for the next championship chase cutoff, with Garrett Alberson, Tyler Bruening, and Ross Robinson outside looking in currently. Jonathan Davenport won the big show at West Virginia a year ago, with Devin Moran topping the prelim night feature. I'll be curious to see what the car count is for this show, as the big 5/8 track can be tough on equipment. Other late model shows to check out this weekend include the Hunt the Front series at Cochran for $10,000 to win, plus the Southern All Stars, Comp Cams, Iron Man, and ULMS all in action as well.
Things remain tight atop the World of Outlaws Sprint Car standings headed to River Cities and Ogilvie this weekend with Brad Sweet and Carson Macedo tied for the lead, and David Gravel only eight points back. Sweet has won two of the last three at River Cities, although a resurgent Donny Schatz could be tough to beat in his home state. The 3/8 Ogilvie track has never appeared on the Outlaw schedule before, and rarely hosts winged sprint car shows, so nobody will have any sort of a notebook headed there on Saturday. A year ago, Sweet led the series in average finish on 3/8 mile tracks, while Sheldon Haudenschild had the most 3/8 wins with four. Macedo is the hottest series driver right now, with five straight top four finishes, and Gravel has the longest current top ten streak at nine straight races.
The All Stars are headed north to Wisconsin for races at Dodge County and Plymouth. That Saturday show at Plymouth is the Rayce Rudeen Foundation race, and pays $26,000 to win. That should draw plenty of cars. As I said after Port Royal, the points did close up, with the Rudeen 26 trailing the Clauson Marshall 7BC by only 22 points. Everyone else has fallen to nearly triple digits back or more. Bill Balog has won the two previous All Star shows at Plymouth, and will be in attendance this weekend. The All Stars have not previously raced at Dodge County. This weekend is a co-sanction with the IRA, so all of those teams will be racing as well, with Jordan Goldesberry the current IRA points leader on the strength of three wins in eight races.
Before Indiana Midget week gets rolling on Sunday, the USAC crowd is headed to Knoxville tonight and tomorrow for the Corn Belt Clash with the national sprint cars. Kyle Cummins has been rolling and is the current points leader over Brady Bacon and CJ Leary. Good money is on the line the next two nights, with $11,000 and $12,000 to win features. The USAC sprint cars haven't been to Knoxville since 2020, when Brady Bacon and Tyler Courtney picked up victories. Bacon has the most career wins at Knoxville with four. 360 winged sprint cars are also on the card tonight, with winged 410s joining the non-wing crowd on Saturday.
Other winged sprint car stuff to check out this weekend includes the ASCS National Tour for the Mickey Walker Classic, split between Outlaw Motor Speedway and Caney Valley. Seth Bergman is the series points leader over Jason Martin right now, and those two have really separated themselves from the rest of the field. And out in California, the NARC 410 series is at Placerville on Saturday for the Dave Bradway Memorial. It's been very much Dominic Scelzi vs. Corey Day so far this season with NARC. Each has three wins, and Day leads the standings by just seven points over Scelzi. Day is the defending race winner as well. Justin Sanders hasn't won yet, but he's only 26 back of Day and still very much within striking distance.
That's it for the show for the week. I really appreciate you guys tuning in and supporting what I'm doing here by subscribing, commenting, and sharing these shows.
Hope you guys enjoy the dirt racing out there, we'll see you back here on Monday.