Fairbury Speedway
Notes: Fairbury cushion fails Pierce in 100-lapper
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Bobby Pierce (32) battles winner Brandon Sheppard (1). (joshjamesartwork.com)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 25) — Thirty-four laps into Saturday’s Prairie Dirt Classic finale at Fairbury Speedway, it appeared that Bobby Pierce might be headed to victory in the event for the second time in three years. | RaceWire
That’s how long it took for the Oakwood, Ill., driver to advance from the 14th starting spot to second place behind leader Trey Mills of St. Augustine, Fla., in the World of Outlaws Late Model Series affair.
Pierce, 29, had even just taken second from eventual winner Brandon Sheppard, seemingly positioning him perfectly. But he never truly pressured the 18-year-old Mills before ceding second back to Sheppard on lap 61 and shortly thereafter slipped as far back as fifth.
While Pierce was pleased to rally for a third-place finish, he was frustrated by his performance that seemingly started so well even though he actually experienced problems before even rolling onto the track.
“I went to pull out the pits and every time I pushed my foot on the clutch it’d pop it out of low (gear), so all I had was high,” said Pierce, whose car needed a push-start onto the speedway.
Pierce said the oval’s surface “kind of went through some transitions, and every caution (there 13 of them), I feel like, kind of killed my momentum.” He also couldn’t run the cushion like he had hoped.
“When they prepped the track, they didn’t water the top,” Pierce said. “They watered the bottom, middle, and a lane below the top, so all we had to lean on was the cushion. There was no grip, so it was just slippery with the curb, and that’s really hard to run on and these cars don’t like to do that these days. You’re bouncing off it but not making speed.
“There at the end we got a little better. We were kind of able to run (the cushion) on corner exit, but we couldn’t get to it until then.”
While chasing Brandon Sheppard and second-place finisher Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., Pierce narrowly escaped a lap-96 scrape with Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C. Contact between the two sent Pierce completely sideways in turn one; a caution flag was thrown, apparently for Pierce’s exposed door, but he gathered his car and continued on without losing a position.
“Once Brandon was running his line, Hudson was running his line, which is kind of similar to Brandon's, there was … I don't know. I think maybe we were a little better on the bottom, but …
“I don’t know what happened,” Pierce said. “Maybe I chopped Hoffman a bit or maybe he just didn’t expect me to go to the bottom because I was running the top every corner before that, but luckily we were able to save it. I know Nick didn’t mean to get into me.
“I can’t really complain too much with a podium here at the Prairie Dirt Classic. All the best cars in the business were here, and I think the best car definitely won. They got it figured out,” he added, referring to Sheppard’s Rocket Chassis house car team.
Hoffman rises up
Starting 19th in the PDC put Nick Hoffman in a precarious position. He was well aware he had to save his tires for a possible stretch run, but a long, 28-lap green-flag stretch to start the race put him in danger of going a lap down.
“The (first) caution that came out, I’m like in turn three and the leader’s in turn two,” Hoffman said. “I’m like, ‘Oh s---, he’s not far from me.’”
Hoffman, 34, was still running 20th at the time of the caution that saved him, and then a flurry of 12 more over the remaining distance helped him steadily inch forward. He reached fourth for the first time on lap 81 and gained full control of the spot for good on lap 88, but he couldn’t climb higher.
“Knowing what our tire wear was last night and stuff, it was like, I didn’t want to press too hard and destroy my stuff where late in the race, if I did have an opportunity, I still had some edges left and stuff,” said Hoffman, whose fourth-place finish was his third straight top-five in the PDC (he second in 2024 and fourth in ’25). “So it worked out. I did have a shot at it at the end and just couldn’t get rolling fast enough.
“Just late in the race there I was trying to make as much speed as I could through the bottom or middle. Them guys (ahead) were just a little better. I was probably just a little too free on entry to carry enough speed.”
Hoffman also escaped unscathed from his lap-96 run-in with Bobby Pierce.
“I was battling pretty hard with Bobby and he chops my nose into one, I hit him in the left rear, and then the caution comes out right away,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman hailed the winning run of Brandon Sheppard and the Rocket1 team.
“I told everybody yesterday, nobody’s as good as that 1 car,” Hoffman said. “He could go anywhere on the racetrack yesterday (during the semifeatures) and make speed, so we were going to have our hands full either way with him.
“It is wild how much better their car is. I felt like they were getting on a stride right before Eldora, but I felt like they had the best car at Eldora and then, since then, it's like they’re pretty much lights out.”
Terbo’s frustration
No one experienced a more difficult fate at Fairbury than Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, whose Best Performance Motorsports Rocket Chassis was clearly one of the fastest machines in the field — when it was going in the proper direction
Erb, 29, was spun out of serious contention in both Wednesday’s 50-lap FloRacing Night in America feature (from contact with Josh Rice while running second) and Saturday’s PDC finale (a scrape with Brandon Sheppard while battling for third). He refrained from any angry displays on the track on each occasion, but he wasn’t pleased with the incidents that led to finishes of 23rd on Wednesday and eighth on Saturday.
The tangle with Sheppard came following a lap-45 restart. Up to fourth from the 10th starting spot, Erb saw an opportunity when Sheppard went high through turns one and two in an attempt to overtake Bobby Pierce. He pulled inside Sheppard off turn two, but then, as the pair raced side-by-side down the backstretch, slight contact between them sent Erb spinning into turn three, where he absorbed a couple hits from passing cars but was able to to continue after a pit stop.
Erb later told DirtonDirt “it’s the same old story — Rice and Shepp wrecked me, but it’s just racing. If I do it I’m the anti-Christ. I have come to terms I will be the anti-Christ, but I won’t be getting spun around every night from here on out. I’ll be the bat not the ball.”
Lamenting over typical postincident comments like “it’s just hard racing” or “it’s a racing deal,” Erb said all drivers know if they’ve gone too far. “I just am not gonna leave it to chance anymore.”
Sheppard said that he was surprised by Erb’s appearance underneath him.
“I didn’t even see him, honestly,” Sheppard said. “I was up against the wall and he got a good run off the bottom, and he must have swung all the way out to me and my quarterpanel grabbed his quarterpanel and just turned him around. My left rear quarterpanel was tore up because there his right-rear got to my left-rear and our quarterpanels hooked, and when that happens there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Odds and ends
Prior to finishing second on Saturday, Hudson O’Neal’s only PDC run better than 13th in four previous feature starts was a fifth in 2023. He’s also failed to qualify for the finale in 2018 and ’25. … Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., reported that “changes we made” after missing the feature cut for Wednesday’s FloRacing Night in American feature “definitely paid off” in his run from 23rd (he used a WoO provisional) to a fifth-place finish. It marked his second consecutive fifth-place result in the event and marked the eighth time in as many PDC feature starts that the 2014 race winner has completed the entire 100-lap distance. … Jason Feger of Bloomington, Ill., said he was a bit off with his Longhorn Chassis — he was “a little too tight and went with harder tires” — but his sixth-place finish was his best PDC performance since a fourth in 2017. … Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, felt he had a shot to push his Spire Motorsports No. 77 higher in the running order after climbing from 20th to eighth, but he pounded the cushion on a lap-85 restart and filled the car’s right-rear wheel with mud, causing him to fade to a 12th-place finish. He’ll be back in his Double Down Motorsports No. 99 for this weekend’s USA Nationals but said he had a “fun weekend” running the car normally piloted by NASCAR Cup regular Carson Hocevar and might run the car again. … Kaede Loudy of Rogersville, Tenn., made his first-ever crown jewel feature start after advancing from deep in a semifeature field to grab a transfer spot. He was quiet-but-steady in the 100-lapper to score a respectable 13th-place finish in a MasterSbilt Race Car he recently debuted. … Loudy was one of six first-time starters in the PDC finale, joining Trey Mills (finished 11th), Justin Duty (15th), Dallon Murty (16th), Sam Seawright (17th) and Zack Mitchell (28th). … Brian Shirley of Chatham, Ill., became the first defending PDC champion to not appear in the feature since the event became a mid-summer, WoO-sanctioned event in 2013. He never recovered from a poor qualifying lap Friday and his third-place finish in the Prairie Dirt Shootout non-qualifiers’ race left him two spots short of making the PDC (if he would have opted for the starting position rather than taking the $3,500 first-place prize). … After last year’s PDC finale was checkered in the wee hours following a long rain delay, Saturday’s feature ended at 11:14 p.m.
