CONCORD, N.C. — The northern swing has reached the home stretch.
The World of Outlaws Late Model Series presented by DIRTVision has spent the past two weeks traveling across the upper Midwest, stopping at five different tracks across Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota. Two more “Gopher State” facilities remain, including the state’s biggest dirt-track event.
First up is Norman County Raceway on Tuesday, June 30, which will welcome the World of Outlaws for the third year in a row for a $20,000-to-win night. From there, it’s off to Deer Creek Speedway for a three-day celebration of America’s 250th birthday.
The NAPA Auto Parts Gopher 50 once again serves as the series’ Independence Day weekend tradition on Thursday-Saturday, July 2-4.
Drivers will be racing for $10,000 on Thursday and Friday and $40,000 on Saturday, while fans also have fireworks, concerts, autograph sessions and other off-track activities to look forward to.
BLAZING BOBBY
The word ‘dominant’ hardly does justice to Bobby Pierce’s run up north.
Ever since they unloaded at 141 Speedway to start the northern swing, the No. 32 team have been nothing short of perfect. It doesn’t matter if the series goes to a track Pierce has won at before, one he hasn’t been to in several years, or one he historically struggles at, he ends up in victory lane just the same.
Over the past five races, Pierce has collected five trophies, led 181 of the 218 completed laps and pocketed $79,000 for his efforts. But his reign of terror goes back further than that. Since his preliminary night at the Dirt Late Model Dream 25 days ago, Pierce has won nine times in 10 starts and made more than a quarter of a million dollars.
Pierce’s Nodak victory on Sunday was his 15th of the season with the World of Outlaws, pushing 2026 past his own personal record of 14 wins in 2023 with more than four months of racing left to add to his total.
The World of Outlaws record is 18 wins in a single season, a number achieved by Josh Richards in 2016 and Brandon Sheppard in 2017 and 2019. If Pierce can keep his hot streak going, he stands a chance of rewriting history with plenty of room to spare.
Norman County hasn’t been a good track for Pierce in the past – he finished 22nd there in 2024 and seventh in 2025 – but bad prior results haven’t meant much as of late. Deer Creek is a different story, as Pierce is a two-time Gopher 50 champion from 2023 and 2024 and has two other World of Outlaws wins at the track.
STORMIN’ NORMAN
Nick Hoffman has gotten sick of watching Pierce roll into victory lane night after night, and Norman County could be the place for him to trade places.
Hoffman won both of the track’s two previous World of Outlaws races, although they came under very different circumstances. In 2024, three different leaders all had problems out front, which opened the door for Hoffman to score the win. His destiny was in his own hands the whole way last year though, as he led all 50 laps to go back-to-back.
Deer Creek has also been good to Hoffman, as he won the Friday portion of the 2025 Gopher 50 and has finished sixth or better in his last five World of Outlaws starts there. With five top fives in five starts so far in the upper Midwest, Hoffman will be ready to capitalize on any slip-up out of Pierce to earn win number seven of the season.
T-MAC ON TRACK
If the next winner not named Pierce isn’t Hoffman, it could easily be the other No. 9 car in the field.
Tim McCreadie has taken his lumps in the first half of his second season with Briggs Transport Racing, but the team has been more consistent over the past three weeks than they have been all year.
The 2006 World of Outlaws champion is riding a seven-race top-10 streak dating back to the Friday program at West Virginia Motor Speedway, with three of those being podium runs.
Those results have McCreadie back to fourth in the points standings leaving North Dakota. This week’s agenda will have him looking to improve on a 10th-place finish last year at Norman County before traveling south to Deer Creek, where he won the Gopher 50 in 2010.
More recently, McCreadie finished fifth on Thursday night at the 2025 event and was running third on Friday until he was caught in a multi-car pileup on the frontstretch.
McCreadie will also be trying to build some momentum ahead of next week, which includes a rare chance to race in his home state of New York at Stateline Speedway, as well as two nights at Sharon Speedway, where he’s a past World of Outlaws winner.
REPEATING HISTORY
The story of Dennis Erb Jr.’s 2025 season was a slow start followed by a turnaround starting in mid-June. The first 34 races of 2026 have been a different verse of the same song.
The Carpentersville, Ill., native started the season with a pair of top fives during DIRTcar Sunshine Nationals, but what followed was a trying stretch of races when top 10s were few and far between.
A runner-up at West Virginia was the spark that Erb needed, and that night was the start of seven-race run that has included five top-six finishes.
Last season’s plot culminated with a return to victory lane in October at Humboldt Speedway, and Erb plans to ensure his 2026 campaign goes the same way. The statistics say it could happen this week, as Erb stood on the podium at both Norman County and Deer Creek one year ago.
HOME TRACK HERO
Dustin Sorensen’s favorite week of the year is here.
The Rochester, Minn., driver always has the Gopher 50 circled on his calendar as his chance to go World of Outlaws racing at the track he grew up at. Sorensen’s earliest memories in racing involve watching his dad, Mike, race from the grandstands before making his own rise through Deer Creek’s Modified ranks.
Prior to joining the World of Outlaws full-time, Deer Creek was the place where Sorensen introduced himself to the national Late Model scene with a third-place run in 2023.
Sorensen is on the shortlist of potential first-time winners, and he’s found more ways to lose a World of Outlaws race than he cares to admit.
Should his breakthrough moment come at home this weekend, the scene after the race would be one the Deer Creek fans will never forget.
