Farmer City Raceway
Persistent Pierce makes it to Farmer City finish
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Tyler Erb (1) spins in front of Bobby Pierce (32). (Josh James)
FARMER CITY, Ill. (April 10) — Holding the second spot for 30 laps of Friday's Illini 100 weekend opener at Farmer City Raceway, it appeared Bobby Pierce was well on his way to, at worst, his 11th top-five finish of the World of Outlaws Late Model Series season.
But in Friday's final 10 laps at the quarter-mile oval where twice Pierce has captured the Illini 100 finale, the Oakwood, Ill., driver found himself in the middle of messes that left him fortunate to finish at all. | RaceWire
“It seemed like if there was a wreck,” longtime crew member Jeff Leka said, “we were in it.”
While two scrambles indeed cost Pierce the WoO points lead to third-finishing Nick Hoffman, the two-time series champ knew things could’ve ended up much worse had his crew not helped him salvage a seventh-place finish in the $12,000-to-win race won in flag-to-flag fashion by fellow Illinoisan Brandon Sheppard.
“Of course I was thinking that was a DNF right there,” Pierce said of being collected in a lap-31 spin involving Brent Larson and Tyler Erb. “Glass half full, right?”
Afterwards in the pits, Pierce’s team huddled to review the postrace damage, disappointed for the outcome but relieved neither incident required Pierce’s No. 32 Longhorn Chassis to be towed away.
“That's frustrating,” Pierce said, “but we did come back to seventh, I guess.”
The first incident came as Pierce was drawing as close to Sheppard as he had all race long with less than a dozen laps remaining. Sheppard slipped under Larson and Erb and put a lap on both of them exiting turn two, and the next time around Larson clipped Erb’s car to send him spinning with Pierce’s machine banging nose-to-nose with Erb and coming to a stop in turn one.
“I thought it was fine at first, and I'm sitting there and I go to fire back up and I go to drive away and it wouldn't go anywhere. So the nose — I don't know if the nose was in the ground or the tire was like it was locked up,” Pierce said. “So I put it in reverse to get what I thought would get the nose off the ground. And then I put it back in first (gear) and rolled away. It was fine — not fine, the nose bar was in the tire — but I was luckily able to make it back to the pits. I'm like, 'OK, well, let's get it fixed and get back out there.'”
While WoO officials initially thought Pierce would require a tow, he limped to the infield hot pit where it was all hands on deck to bend the metal nosepiece support that hampered the right-front tire.
“We had to do something in the right front because if not it would have blown the tire out. He couldn't turn. It was rubbing,” Leka said. “The T-bar in the front was rubbing the right-front tire, so we had to get it up.”
Crew members frantically tried to pull at metal and bodywork while also lifting a jack onto the right-front tire, using the jackhandle to bend the T-bar.
After repairs were made, Pierce returned to the track at the end of the lead-lap cars — 14th — and found his car still good enough to advance. He was up to ninth four laps later when he ran into more trouble.
Frank Heckenast Jr.’s contact with other competitors damaged his car's bodywork, and his No. 99jr ended up spinning exiting turn four — right in front of Pierce.
“I don't know if his nose, his front end was messed up from it, he just seemed to loop it coming out of (turn) four,” Pierce said. “Once again, I had nowhere to go.”
While Heckenast ended up in a pileup that included Larson, Jason Feger and Logan Zarin, Pierce’s car took a glancing blow and he was able to maintain his position.
Pierce’s right-side “door slid right up his nose as he was facing around backwards and I kind of ran just ran up him … and it was kind of a hard slam back down. The motor stalled as I was up on him, and as I got down, I was like on the gas, and it fired back up.”
Pierce soldiered on the final laps, picking up two more spots to finish seventh. When he immediately climbed from the car in the pits, Pierce initially believed the damage was bad enough to require the hour’s trip back to his shop for repairs. But the team eventually decided to make repairs at the track before Saturday’s $25,000-to-win finale.
What frustrated Pierce most was the first incident when slower cars tangled in proximity to the leaders.
"I mean, you guys are having your bad night,” Pierce said, “Don’t take it out on us and wreck in front of the field.”
Ever the competitor, Pierce wished the infield repairs could've been done quickly enough to also replace his rear tires, which would’ve provided him a key advantage late in the race. He also wondered if the metal T-bar could’ve been hacked off instead of bent for a quicker repair.
“Looking back at it, it's like, ‘Ah, yeah,' we probably could have cut that body mount off, but you never know how long that's going to take either,” Pierce said. "I mean, really those two wrecks, we didn't have a lot of time because no one had like a flat tire and there was no courtesy laps.”
And no real time to change tires, Leka said.
“It would have been nice to, but yeah, we couldn't do everything at once,” he said.
