CONCORD, N.C. — The post-Florida break is over, and the World of Outlaws Late Model Series presented by DIRTVision season is returning to action with three-straight weekends of racing.
It all begins this week with visits to two of east Tennessee’s signature tracks. First up is a return to the high banks of Volunteer Speedway for the first time in five years for the Rocky Top Rumble on Friday, March 13. A 40-lap, $12,000-to-win World of Outlaws Feature will wrap up the night, which will also include a full program for the Sportsman Late Models.
Once action concludes at “The Gap,” the series will make the 90-minute drive to the other side of Knoxville for the Saturday, March 14, stop at Smoky Mountain Speedway.
The Tennessee Tipoff will feature a 50-lap, $20,000-to-win main event, as well as racing in the Sportsman Late Model and Front Wheel Drive divisions.
TIGHT AT THE TOP
With eight races complete, only 10 points separate the top two contenders in the chase for a World of Outlaws championship.
After a dominant week at Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals, Nick Hoffman kept rolling at Hendry County Motorsports Park with finishes of fifth and first, extending his top-five streak to five entering this weekend’s festivities.
Friday brings the NOS Energy Drink No. 9 team into uncharted territory, as Hoffman has never raced at Volunteer before. But he knows his way around Smoky Mountain, where he started on the pole and finished third in last year’s World of Outlaws event and finished top 10 on both nights of the Mountain Moonshine Classic two years ago.
But as one would expect, two-time and defending champion Bobby Pierce isn’t going anywhere. The “Smooth Operator” earned a win and a runner-up at Hendry County and hasn’t finished off the podium in a World of Outlaws race since DIRTcar Sunshine Nationals in January.
With zero top 10s in four starts, Bulls Gap hasn’t historically been a great track for Pierce, but that’s a trend he plans on turning around on Friday. Such a turnaround won’t be necessary on Saturday, as Pierce won his Smoky Mountain debut in 2025.
SO FAR SO GOOD
After several seasons of running an independent schedule, no one knew exactly what to expect from the return of Tyler Erb to full-time national touring competition with the World of Outlaws. With the Florida portion of the season in the rearview, there’s reason for optimism for what lies ahead.
“Terbo” heads to Tennessee fourth in the standings, 39 points out of the lead. Leaving the Volunteer State in the top three is a realistic goal for the Best Performance Motorsports team, as Erb trails Tim McCreadie by only six markers.
The No. 1 has had the speed to win as of late, with his four-night stint last week at Golden Isles Speedway including a 14th-to-second charge on Friday, as well as a battle for the lead with Jonathan Davenport on Thursday that ended with Erb spun backwards in front of the field.
Erb’s results at this weekend’s tracks have been mixed – he struggled in his first few trips to Volunteer, but has shown promise lately with his first top five at the track in the 2023 Spring Thaw and a sixth-place run in 2024. Over at Smoky Mountain, seven of his 11 feature starts across numerous sanctions have resulted in top 10s.
He’ll likely need to build on those numbers to keep pace with McCreadie, who is a former winner at Volunteer and has finished top five in half of his 16 starts at Smoky Mountain.
MILLS MAFIA
Few drivers will ever be able to capture the attention of the entire dirt racing community quite like Trey Mills did last weekend.
The 17-year-old Floridian drove from seventh to the lead in the first 15 laps of the Golden Isles finale and stayed there for more than 20 laps.
With the likes of Hudson O’Neal, Brandon Overton, Ricky Thornton Jr. and Brandon Sheppard breathing down his neck, Mills held his own and was in prime position to pull off the upset and score the biggest win of his young career.
That was until he drove a bit too deep into Turn 1 and pounded the wall, which led to contact from behind that sent Mills airborne and barrel rolling over the wall. Mills emerged from the car unhurt and owned up to the mistake, and quickly received an outpouring of praise from fans and fellow competitors.
Late Model racing’s newest fan favorite will resume his chase for the MD3 Rookie of the Year Award this weekend in Tennessee. Friday’s race will be his first appearance in Bulls Gap, while he finished 10th and 11th in his two Smoky Mountain starts with the Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series.
BIG FROG, BIG SPEED
As the most experienced driver of this season’s five World of Outlaws rookies, Daulton Wilson entered 2026 as a popular pick to win top rookie honors. Through the first eight races, he’s already begun living up to those expectations.
After an up-and-down start at Volusia, the driver of the Big Frog/Viper Motorsports No. 58V earned his first World of Outlaws top 10 of the year in a big way with a podium run on Friday at Hendry County before coming home 11th on Saturday.
From there, the team continued their Speedweeks slate at their home track of Ocala Speedway and remained competitive, but didn’t have the luck to go with it. Wilson was forced to park the car while running fourth on Thursday due to an overheating engine, and then crashed out of his heat race on Saturday after qualifying third in his group.
The Tennessee red dirt has been good to Wilson in the past – he finished in the top 10 in three of his last four starts at Volunteer and recorded top fives at Smoky Mountain in 2023 and 2024.
HUDDY’S HEATER
There’s one driver that the entire Late Model world has been chasing in 2026, and that’s Hudson O’Neal.
The Martinsville, Ind., driver leads the nation with seven wins across four different tracks and two different teams in SSI Motorsports and K&L Rumley Enterprises. The season may only be two months old, but O’Neal is already almost halfway to matching his single-season high of 15 wins that he set with Rocket1 Racing in 2023.
There’s no reason to believe O’Neal can’t grab an eighth, or even ninth victory against the World of Outlaws this weekend. He’s never finished worse than eighth in seven starts at Volunteer, and he’s a two-time Smoky Mountain winner from 2019 and 2021.
