It’s been a decade since the world was introduced to an 18-year-old kid from Oakwood, IL by the name of Bobby Pierce.
These days, the dirt Late Model superstar is getting ready to chase back-to-back Prairie Dirt Classic wins as part of his quest for a second championship with the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series presented by DIRTVision. But a unique debut at Eldora Speedway on July 22, 2015, almost sent him down a different path.
Ten years ago, Pierce was fresh off his first DIRTcar Summer Nationals title and was one of the rising stars of Late Model racing, but he was largely unknown outside of the dirt community. That was until he secured a ride with Mittler Brothers Motorsports for the third-annual NASCAR Truck Series event at Eldora.
“My dad, he knew Mike Mittler, he bought lots of Mittler Brothers machinery tools from him over the years,” Pierce said. “We saw Mike every year at the PRI Show in Indy, we would be walking by, and every time we saw him, my dad would give him crap, saying ‘Hey, someday my kid’s going to drive your truck.”
Once the younger Pierce was old enough to begin the NASCAR licensing process, he went to work on fulfilling the prophecy.
“I wanted to do Eldora, and I wanted to do some other asphalt races too,” Pierce said. “You’ve kind of got to do it in stepping stones, you have to get asphalt experience from something else before you can race NASCAR in general. Even though Eldora was on dirt, I still had to go race asphalt and get some experience. I ran a Crate Late Model, my very first race was Memphis [Motorsports Park], that was at the end of 2013.
“Then in 2014 I think it was, I raced at New Smyrna [Speedway] in an asphalt Late Model. I raced Dale Jr.’s asphalt Late Model at Hickory Motor Speedway one time. Josh Berry, I raced against him that one weekend at Hickory, and I think he won the race and then got disqualified or something and I got second.”
With approval from NASCAR secured, Pierce turned his sights towards “The Big E.” A young driver making his Truck Series debut in the Mittler Brothers No. 63 would normally only be aiming to finish the race and gain experience – after all, the team’s most recent top 10 was with Carl Edwards in 2002. But Pierce wanted more than that.
“The Mittler Brothers team, they were one of the teams that was always known for being one of the lowest-budget teams out there,” Pierce said. “They didn’t really have trucks that could go and win an asphalt race, but since it was on dirt, it doesn’t really require all the motor, the technology that it would require on the asphalt track, so we actually had a fighting chance.”
At long last, race day arrived, and it was time for Pierce to climb in and make his first laps as a NASCAR driver. Once he got on track for practice, it didn’t take long for him to figure out that he was in for a challenge unlike anything else he had done before.
“That first practice, I’m pretty sure I spun it out,” Pierce said. “I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got to see where the limits are.’ One of the tricks we realized was the truck didn’t countersteer to the right very far, the steering wheel stopped. So, I couldn’t really turn right very far, so we adjusted that and went back out there and I was able to kind of drive it more like my Late Model.
“I kind of compared it to driving a Street Stock. Which I never drove a Street Stock, but I just imagine it would probably feel that way. Kind of like a school bus, it just floated around there. It wasn’t stuck to the surface like a dirt Late Model is. Obviously, the speeds were a lot slower, but when you throw in the handling of it wasn’t very good, it was still a challenge.”
Whatever learning curve Pierce went through early in the day, he had things figured out by the time Qualifying rolled around. His lap was more than half a second quicker than the next closest competitor in Johnny Sauter, and he followed that up with a Heat Race win to earn the pole for his NASCAR debut.
Pierce admitted that he already had butterflies in his stomach from the start, and those butterflies quickly turned into eagles once he became the center of attention prior to the main event.
“I was obviously a little nervous,” Pierce said. “There’s lots of eyes on that event. Lots of people didn’t know who I was. If you were a fan of Late Models, you kind of knew who I was at the time, but there’s a lot of people in the NASCAR world that only watch NASCAR, that’s all they pay attention to. They were like ‘who’s this guy?’
“Before I went out to qualify, I remember Devin Moran was there watching. I was legit just about to go out on the track for Qualifying, and I was like, ‘Hey, come here.’ I was like ‘I’m a bit nervous,’ I remember telling him that. He just said, ‘You got it.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll drive it like a Late Model and I guess we’ll see what happens.’ And I went out there and set Quick Time, that was pretty cool.”
With hundreds of thousands of eyes on the “Smooth Operator” for the first time, Pierce settled into the zone once the Feature rolled onto the track. If he was still feeling the jitters once the green flag dropped, he didn’t show it, as Pierce battled side-by-side with John Hunter Nemechek on the start before slotting into the lead.
The battle was on from there, as Pierce, Nemecheck, Austin Dillon and Christopher Bell spent the opening stages of the race swapping the top spot. Pierce had no trouble going toe-to-toe with the future Cup Series stars around him on raw driving ability, but some of the other aspects of running a NASCAR race served as a reminder that he was still a teenager with barely any stock car experience.
“I do remember that the restarts were not my friend,” Pierce said. “I was still learning how to shift that thing and do it good. We had to be in second gear coming to green and then shift into third and fourth. I don’t know if it was just because the Mittler’s truck, maybe the transmission wasn’t the best in it, but it was having a hard time shifting. I really hated the restarts. And also, being a NASCAR race, I wasn’t entirely sure on their restart procedure as far as them calling jump starts, so I didn’t want to ruin it by jumping the start.”
Pierce got plenty of practice that night, as 13 caution flags plagued the 150-lapper. He was running second when the final one came out with three laps to go, setting up a green-white-checkered run to the finish between Pierce and Bell with both of them chasing their first NASCAR victory.
Like he had on previous occasions, Pierce struggled to get going on the restart and watched Bell take command. He spent the next two laps abusing the right-rear quarter panel against the wall in an effort to run down the No. 54 and tried a last-corner slide job, but he wasn’t close enough.
It would have been easy for Pierce to kick himself after getting so close to a NASCAR victory only to come up short, but the scene around the truck after the race was nothing but celebratory. His performance showcased the talent level in dirt Late Model racing for the world to see and established him as one of the faces of the sport, a status he’s maintained ever since.
“I think I made some fans,” Pierce said of his rise in notoriety upon returning to his usual Late Model schedule. “A lot of people weren’t necessarily my fans, but then they were because I kind of went out there and represented Late Model drivers as a whole. All the Late Model people were probably cheering me on at those races because it was a way to represent us.”
However, a bump in merchandise and sponsorship sales were far from the only things Pierce gained from his night in the spotlight. Following Eldora, Pierce made six more Truck Series appearances on pavement for the Mittler Brothers in late 2015 and early 2016, scoring a best finish of 16th at Phoenix Raceway. Those starts marked the end of Pierce’s stock car career, but the lessons learned became invaluable on his rise to the top of dirt Late Model racing.
“I was two laps down in a race at Kansas [Speedway] in the last 20 laps of the race,” Pierce said. “I kind of knew it was my last race, at least for that year in NASCAR. I realized I wasn’t really going to go down that path. But knowing it was my last race, I was on the gas. I was two laps down, and I was setting lap times that were just as fast as the leaders. So that was pretty cool, and especially to do that in a Mittler Brothers truck.
“So, after that race at Kansas, I think it was the next day, I ran a race at Fairbury [Speedway]. And I feel like it made me better in the Late Model, because racing NASCAR, definitely on asphalt, it got me way out of my comfort zone. So, then when I got back in my comfort zone racing on dirt, it made me better. It kind of slowed things down in a sense, because in that truck, I was going pretty darn fast. Probably 160-some miles an hour at Kansas I would imagine, definitely the fastest I’ve ever been.”
With a World of Outlaws championship, hundreds of Feature wins and a growing collection of crown-jewel trophies to his name, Pierce’s decision to put all his eggs in the dirt basket has clearly paid off.
While he won’t have a Truck race at Kansas to warm up with this time, Pierce will head to Fairbury Speedway once again for the resumption of the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series presented by DIRTVision season in the Prairie Dirt Classic, Friday-Saturday, July 25-26. Click here for more event information.
If you can’t make it to the track, stream every lap live on DIRTVision.