CONCORD, N.C. — It’s been a busy start to the season for the World of Outlaws Late Model Series, and the grind rolls on in Alabama and Georgia.
The last of three-straight March weekends in the south lies ahead, beginning with the highly anticipated return to East Alabama Motor Speedway on Friday, March 27. The track best known as the home of the National 100 hasn’t hosted the World of Outlaws since 2006, but the two-decade drought ends this week with a $12,000-to-win showdown.
From there, teams will make the 90-minute drive north to Senoia Raceway for the Billy Clanton Classic on Saturday, March 28. The $20,000-to-win event will be the fifth visit by the World of Outlaws to the “gray clay” oval, but the first in March after the last two were contested in the fall.
In addition to the World of Outlaws, the itinerary will also include Hobby Stocks and Road Warriors at East Alabama and 602 Late Models and 602 Chargers at Senoia.
TWO-HORSE RACE
The statistics make one thing clear with a dozen races in the books — there’s Bobby Pierce and Nick Hoffman, and then there’s everyone else.
The top two drivers are separated by 14 points leaving Magnolia Motor Speedway last weekend, while third-place Tim McCreadie is already 100 points behind Hoffman. In terms of average finish, Pierce and Hoffman are neck-and-neck at 3.58 and 3.75, respectively, but no one else is in the single digits.
However, both drivers have gotten to those positions in vastly different ways. Pierce has struggled early in the night on several occasions, which has resulted in a 10.75 average starting spot that’s more than five spots worse than Hoffman’s 5.67. Not to worry though, as Pierce’s 86 positions gained in features is the best in the series.
While Pierce has been slicing his way through the field night after night, Hoffman has been enjoying his time up front, leading more than twice as many laps as Pierce at 140 to 61.
Friday’s race at East Alabama could be anyone’s game – Hoffman has never been to Phenix City, while Pierce’s only appearance there was eight years ago during his brief stint driving for Dunn-Benson Motorsports.
There’s much more recent data to look at for Senoia though, as Pierce has finished outside the top 10 only once in his five starts there over the past two years, while Hoffman only has one top 10 in three Senoia starts in the same time frame.
NEVER GAVE UP
Dennis Erb Jr. and crew chief Heather Lyne already had a reputation of being one of the most hardworking tandems in the pits, and they lived up to it last week.
Their weekend in Tennessee was nothing short of a nightmare. Erb was an innocent bystander in the heat race incident at Volunteer Speedway between Kyle Strickler and Ethan Dotson that left the right-front corner of his car badly damaged. The next night at Smoky Mountain Speedway, Erb got turned around on the backstretch and was T-boned at full speed by race leader Brandon Overton. Erb was uninjured, but had to load up his second wrecked car in as many nights.
That amount of destruction occurring with only six days to prepare for the next stop on tour would have marked the end of a full-time World of Outlaws bid for many teams, but not Erb’s. They spent the week assembling new cars at the Rocket Chassis shop in Shinnston, W. Va., and didn’t hit the road for Magnolia until 9 p.m. Thursday. Twelve hours of driving later, the No. 28 hauler rolled into the pit area at about 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon.
Erb’s Friday results weren’t anything to write home about, but Saturday brought a big turnaround with a heat race win and a Feature that saw him run as high as third before finishing seventh.
Both of this weekend’s venues could bring chances for him to build on that showing. Erb has attended the National 100 at East Alabama almost every year since 2002 and has a 2016 win and 11 top fives under his belt in the event. Up at Senoia, he’s recorded a top five and six top 10s in 10 appearances since 2021.
PHENIX CITY
However, the other Erb has emerged as the true master of East Alabama in recent years.
Tyler Erb made his first National 100 start in 2019, and the track instantly fit him like a glove. He finished runner-up in his East Alabama debut before returning in 2022 and doing it again. “Terbo” has since won the last two editions of the race in 2024 and 2025, while his only “down year” was a fifth-place run in 2023.
Erb’s Senoia statistics aren’t quite at that level, but are noteworthy nonetheless. He finished runner-up to Brandon Sheppard in the track’s first World of Outlaws race in 2017, one of Erb’s seven second-place finishes before finally winning his first series race at Atomic Speedway one year later.
Erb’s only Senoia win came with the Southern Nationals Series in 2018, and he finished fourth last time he was there for the Peach State Classic last November.
HOME GAME
For Todd Morrow, Friday will be as close as he gets to racing at home during his MD3 Rookie of the Year campaign with the World of Outlaws.
Phenix City is only an hour from his home in Penton, Ala., and he turned plenty of laps there during his time as a regional racer. Most of them have come under Southern All Stars sanctioning, with his best results being a pair of top fives in 2015 and 2022. Senoia is also a special place for Morrow, as it was the site of his first World of Outlaws Feature start last year.
Morrow has kept his expectations modest ever since announcing his full-time World of Outlaws plans, but he’s already began showing signs of progress. He finished in a career-best 13th at Volunteer and could have reset that mark on Saturday at Magnolia until he was caught up in an early-race crash after starting 12th.
WINGER’S PLACE
You would be hard-pressed to name a driver who defends their home track better than Ashton Winger at Senoia.
The Hampton, Ga., driver took down the Outlaws in their last two appearances at Senoia in 2021 and 2025. Those wins are merely the tip of the iceberg, as his 11 super late model wins at Senoia also include six with the Southern All Stars, two with the Southern Nationals and one on the former Fall Nationals tour.
Despite skipping the entirety of Speedweeks and not starting his season until a Southern All Stars show at Penton Raceway on March 6, Winger has already began heating up in 2026. He finished fourth at Penton before heading to Magnolia for his first national starts of the year and ran fourth again on Friday.
Saturday was shaping up to be even better, as he went toe-to-toe with Jonathan Davenport early and led for a moment before dropping to sixth at the finish.
