ROSSBURG, Ohio — Bobby Pierce has spent more than a decade trying to become a Dirt Late Model Dream champion. Thursday night at Eldora Speedway, he took a big step in the right direction.
Pierce topped the first of two preliminary nights after wrestling the lead away from Devin Moran in an entertaining battle through traffic.
The win marked Pierce’s first prelim win at the Dream in his 14th start in the event. It also earned him $30,000 for a 50-lap run.
It puts Pierce in prime position for heat race competition on Saturday as he looks to finally add a Dream victory to his Eldora résumé that already includes two World 100 wins and two more in the Dirt Track World Championship.
“Eldora was awesome tonight, had a bottom, middle, top,” Pierce said. “Got really skatey in the middle, so the sliders were a lot of fun. We worked hard last night getting the motor changed. Wasn’t really what I wanted for early in the night, but for that racetrack, it was perfect.”
Pierce didn’t have an easy road to the front from the seventh starting spot, but with 50 laps to get there and a healthy cushion to utilize, no one was ruling the No. 32 out.
By Lap 12, he was in a podium position, and a Turn 3 slider on Josh Rice seven laps later moved him into second behind Moran. Rice then repaid the favor when Pierce got stuck behind a lap car, and the back-and-forth allowed Tyler Erb to make it a three-way battle for second on the bottom.
After several more laps of position swapping, Pierce finally cleared Rice for second and held onto the spot for good. Moments later, Moran tagged the wall in Turn 2 to lose some momentum, which meant that Pierce was just close enough to sail it off into Turn 3 and slide up in front of the No. 99.
A caution for a cut right-rear tire on Kyle Bronson’s car reset the field, but no one could challenge Pierce for the top spot on the restart. Instead, Erb got by Moran to emerge as Pierce’s biggest threat late in the race, but he never found a way around Pierce and had to settle fro second.
Behind him, Hudson O’Neal crossed the line third ahead of Moran in fourth, while Ricky Thornton Jr. charged up from 20th to finish fifth.
The other half of the Dirt Late Model Dream field will battle in preliminary action on Friday, June 5, which culminates with another 50-lap, $30,000-to-win feature.
The finish:
Feature (50 Laps): 1. 32-Bobby Pierce[7]; 2. 51-Tyler Erb[12]; 3. 71-Hudson O’Neal[9]; 4. 99-Devin Moran[1]; 5. 20RT-Ricky Thornton Jr[20]; 6. 74X-Ethan Dotson[11]; 7. 11-Josh Rice[5]; 8. 22F-Chris Ferguson[4]; 9. 40B-Kyle Bronson[15]; 10. 58-Garrett Alberson[2]; 11. 388-Jackson Hise[17]; 12. 16-Sam Seawright[3]; 13. 44D-Dalton Cook[21]; 14. 28-Dennis Erb Jr[14]; 15. 60-Dan Ebert[26]; 16. 0-Jake O’Neil[13]; 17. 13D-Dallon Murty[6]; 18. 09-Michael Leach[8]; 19. 9M-Tim McCreadie[10]; 20. 25-Shane Clanton[19]; 21. 13-KC Burdette[23]; 22. 8-Dillon McCowan[22]; 23. 5-Mark Whitener[16]; 24. S21-Seth Daniels[25]; 25. 15-Justin Duty[24]; 26. 55E-Eli Johnson[18]
