HARTFORD, Ohio — Bobby Pierce has found his stride and nothing is slowing him down.
After a hiccup that had Pierce work from a setback, the Oakwood, Ill., native won his seventh World of Outlaws CASE Construction Equipment Late Models feature of the season Friday at Sharon Speedway.
Pierce began the 40-lap feature from the pole but immediately dropped back to fourth after missing his mark into turn one, opening the door for Ryan Gustin to take the lead.
The labor was laid out for Pierce to carve his way back toward the lead by overtaking Cade Dillard for third, then took over second place Nick Hoffman.
Pierce kept the train chugging towards the lead as Gustin got caught behind lapped traffic in his racing line, evaporating the three-second lead the No.19r once held.
Using a slide job through turns three and four, Pierce took his No.32 machine to the top of the scoring pylon with the crossed signals from the flagstand marking the halfway point of the Feature.
Pierce never relinquished the lead once he took full command of the Feature by slicing through the traffic to expand his lead by over one and a half seconds over the field as the “Smooth Operator” locked up his third consecutive Series win in July.
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“The start was sketchy and had me a little nervous,” Pierce said. “I was like ‘—-, we screwed ourselves,’ it was slimy when we took the green and the hard tire did not like that. But, we finally got going and started digging and I saw Gustin was about half a straightaway ahead of us. We were reeling him in, so once I slid him and got clear off of Turn 4, I got that clean air and then it felt bad in the last 10 laps.
“This place gets really slick and super icy, and most tracks aren’t like that so it was tricky. The car was great. Fortunately, we didn’t lose too many positions, but it worked out and I can’t wait to see what the place is like for a 50-lap race tomorrow.”
Dillard worked his way up toward a second-place finish as Hoffman slipped and lost multiple positions late in the running.
“We were fortunate with where we started,” Dillard said. “We had a really good car. Obviously, Bobby has been lights out so to run second to him is good for us. We needed a good run with all the bad luck lately. Hopefully, we can do better tomorrow night but I’ll take a podium finish all night long.”
Gustin finished third after losing momentum from Pierce taking the lead from him.
“We missed it a little bit on the setup,” Gustin said. “It is what it is. It’s what these two-day shows are like. If you don’t win the first night, you learn from it and go on to the next one.”
Kyle Bronson finished fourth to score his seventh top-five finish of the season and was fifth.
The finish:
Feature (40 Laps): 1. 32-Bobby Pierce[1]; 2. 97-Cade Dillard[5]; 3. 19R-Ryan Gustin[3]; 4. 40B-Kyle Bronson[9]; 5. 9-Nick Hoffman[2]; 6. B5-Brandon Sheppard[8]; 7. 02-Michael Norris[6]; 8. 19-Dustin Sorensen[11]; 9. 3S-Brian Shirley[4]; 10. 28-Dennis Erb Jr[7]; 11. 22*-Max McLaughlin[13]; 12. 44-Dave Hess Jr[17]; 13. 22-Gregg Satterlee[20]; 14. 97JR-Cody Overton[10]; 15. B1-Brent Larson[14]; 16. 20TC-Tristan Chamberlain[15]; 17. 16-Tyler Bruening[12]; 18. 57T-Matt Tifft[16]; 19. 14W-Dustin Walker[23]; 20. 12-Doug Drown[24]; 21. 1Z-Logan Zarin[19]; 22. 9S-Breyton Santee[21]; 23. 1C-Alex Ferree[18]; 24. 217-Eric Wilson[22]