The Dome at America's Center
Pierce's persistence pays off with Dome perfection
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Bobby Pierce blasts the cushion en route to victory. (Todd Boyd)
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (Dec. 6) — Competing in the Kubota Gateway Dirt Nationals is hard. Winning the big-money finale of the blockbuster weekend inside The Dome at America’s Center is even harder.
Bobby Pierce understands the unique challenge presented by the event’s tight, fifth-mile dirt oval as well as anyone. After the 29-year-old superstar from Oakwood, Ill., became the race’s first three-time winner with an impeccable flag-to-flag run to victory in Saturday’s 40-lap feature, he acknowledged that the seven-year stretch since his last triumph had raised some questions in his mind if continuing to pursue glory at the Dome was worth all the work and frustration. | RaceWire
“There was one time where, I think it was the year (2023) I did the Pierce Express — the Polar Express — car, and I just had a bad weekend,” Pierce said while standing near his car in the pit area and basking in the glow of his event-record $70,000 first-place payday. “I was behind, like, from the beginning, my frame got like snapped, like the main frame rail just snapped (in a heat-race accident), so I kind of junked the car (and didn’t qualify for the first time since Gateway’s launch in 2016).
“It was just a bad weekend, and it was like, ‘Man, just screw all this,’ because that’s kind of when it started transitioning to being more of a rough track.”
The relentless racer in Pierce, however, ultimately prevailed — as it almost always does. The thoughts of giving up because the race is too difficult or stressful or expensive or time-consuming were overcome by his desire to conquer it.
Pierce said the type of feeling he experienced after his forgettable ’23 Gateway outing “lasts for just like an hour, and then you leave and you’re like, ‘All right, what do I got to do to get better next year?’ You know I mean? You start thinking.”
Pausing for a moment, Pierce considered his response to the only Gateway finale DNQ he’s ever absorbed.
“You know, if you’re a true competitor …” Pierce said, his voice briefly trailing off. “Really, that’s it. If you’re a true competitor, you don’t really give up. You just kind of think, OK, next year is going to be our year, right?”
So rather than viewing Gateway as an annoyance, a race to just tolerate because the huge crowd it draws produces enormous merchandise sales for him, Pierce buckled down and went at the event with more of a vengeance.
“You think of that, and it has been a while since I have won the big show,” Pierce said. “Last year I think we really kind of more so focused on this race and it showed. We almost won it last year (finishing a fast-closing second to Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., after starting 12th), went with the same car this year.”
In fact, Pierce debuted a new Longhorn Chassis at last year’s Gateway Dirt Nationals, a 2023 model that he obtained early in ’24 but didn’t race until taking it to the Dome in December. He then kept it tucked away in his shop all this year, reserving it exclusively for indoor duty in St. Louis.
“Like, you don’t really want to take a car here that you care about,” Pierce said. “I’m not saying it was a bad car. It’s still a good car, but I was like, ‘I need to make one car my Dome car.’
“Nothing’s really special about it. Like, of course, we’ll change a couple things here and there, like, I don’t run my big, typical motor, because you don’t really need much here. But the car, you know, it’s just a regular Longhorn. I said, ‘I’m not going to sell this car. I’m going to make one car my Dome car,’ because I just know how it gets beat up here.
“Now, we did change some parts from last year,” he continued. “Like we changed out a couple parts, just maintenance-wise, just to be fresh for this year — 70-grand to win (up from the previous $30,000), we gotta, you know, have everything right.”
The approach has vaulted Pierce back into the Dome’s ample spotlight. After finishing fourth in promoter Cody Sommer’s inaugural Dome event in 2016 and then becoming the first back-to-back winner in 2017-18, he went three straight years finishing no better than 10th and didn’t qualify in ’23. He rebounded with a near-win last year and was virtually flawless in this year’s edition.
How well did Pierce’s weekend go? It could scarcely have been any better as he set fast time in his Thursday qualifying group, won his heat and led all of the 25-lap preliminary feature for a $10,000 check, and drew the pole position for Saturday’s finale and paced every circuit without facing a truly serious challenge.
“That’s Gateway — starting position is key, and we did everything right this weekend,” Pierce said. “Went quick time, the crew guys did a great job, Austin (Hemmen) and Justin (Steuhl), in that tire (change) challenge there (before Thursday’s feature) to set us on the pole and we won that.
“Sometimes you have those weekends that, like, just everything goes your way … just sometimes it’s your weekend. There was really no drama that followed me this weekend, which is pretty crazy for a change.”
Amid a weekend that saw seemingly every car in the infield sustain some sort of significant body damage from the physical bullring racing (and the treacherous catch fence), Pierce made it through almost completely unscathed. His car’s body, which sported a wrap themed to the Fall Out video game, was only slightly dented on its right-rear corner and he said his “bumper’s got a scratch on it,” but nothing else was noticeable.
The racing surface for Saturday’s feature had some choppiness to it, but Pierce handled that as well. When he found it necessary to push his car through the rough spots for bursts of extra speed, the preparation of his machine allowed him to withstand the punishment.
"The restarts were interesting,” said Pierce, who dealt with seven caution flags en route to beating Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., by 2.15 seconds. “I had to kind of change my line. I was coming down the (turn-four) hill on the restarts, and then I changed it to following on around. You just got to stay on top of that stuff, and when you get to turn one, the last thing you want is to leave the door open, so a couple of times I sent it on through the ruts and just was hoping everything stayed together.
“Shout out to the (crew) guys, because everything on the car stayed together. All my equipment, all my awesome products that we put on this car … everything was good this year.”
So was Pierce, who has come to possess the correct mindset for the frenetic, hardscrabble Dome action. He’s learned when to force the issue and when to hold back, when to offer payback for a questionable move from a rival and when to turn the other cheek.
“The Dome is like …it’s (racing in) a dome, you’re going to tear some stuff up. People are going to get into you,” Pierce said, offering his take on the racing. “I think a lot of people, and I would say me too, you know, it’s kind of an eye-for-an-eye. Like, if someone kind of messes you up and gets into you harder than you think — OK, that was a little aggressive — it’s fair game to give it back to them.
“But you can’t go overboard. I mean, you saw a few times this weekend, like, some people, hey, if they didn’t really have much to lose, screw it, right?”
While Pierce is well known as a hard-charging racer who’s been in his share of controversial and emotional scrapes over the course of his spectacular career, he’s perhaps surprisingly not really been in the middle of many altercations at the Dome. There have been plenty of memorable on- and off-track encounters between drivers during the Gateway Dirt Nationals, but no particularly notable ones involving Pierce stick out.
“I had the one when my motor stalled (and he spun) with the Polar Express car,” Pierce said, recalling his miserable 2023. “The motor stalled, and of course, one of the guys running almost dead-last comes in and hits me … of course, they had nowhere to go, but I was mad that the car got beat up and I kind of yelled at the guy a little bit. Then right afterwards, you're cool.
“But no, I haven’t had anything really bad.”
Pierce just tries to let himself enjoy a weekend that he’s watched grow into a juggernaut of the dirt-racing industry.
“This thing is just incredible,” Pierce said. “You hear everyone say there’s nothing like it, but if you haven’t been here to experience it, it is definitely something to experience.
“And to just be here from the beginning … I don’t think a lot of people know it, I’ve actually been to every single one of Cody’s (indoor) races, even the midget race he had at Banker’s Life Field House in Indy (in 2015), which wasn’t much of a race. Cody would probably tell you that.
“I’ve seen (Gateway) go through a lot. I’ve seen the crowd be from not a whole lot on Thursday night, to damn, it’s like packed on this Thursday night. And so then Saturday came around tonight, and we saw what it was with a huge crowd. I said down there (in victory lane), I don’t really see it stopping, the hype of this event and everything about it.
“It’s not really your regular race. It’s a race that doesn’t really matter, like, the big races, which is why it’s so special. Like, you can have fun. You can have Christmas trees strapped to the roof of your car (like Tanner English on Friday for hot laps), you can have a car that’s from the 1990s (Garrett Alberson’s throwback style), so there’s a lot of fun things.
“But at the end of the day, you saw these drivers that are running up front, some of the best drivers come here and race it,” he added. “It’s just awesome, man. What a fun event we get to come and race, and thanks to Cody for sticking it out and building it to what it is now. (And) thank you to all of them for making this race pay like a crown jewel, because let’s be honest, this is like a crown jewel. It really is.”
The $80,000 that Pierce took home from the Dome put a wonderful cap on his 2025 season, which didn’t quite reach his 38-victory total of 2024 but, with Gateway’s bigger financial windfall, gave him a career-high in earnings. He ends ’25 having earned just over $1.4 million, topping his ’24 total of $1,389,300.
And by the way, Saturday marked his 32nd overall victory of 2025.
“Thirty-two wins,” the driver of the No. 32 machine said with a smile. “I guess it was meant to be.”
