Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Pierce's WoO title pursuit not waning
Bobby Pierce’s sparkling 2026 statistics on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series — specifically his single-season tour record of 20 victories — would seem to indicate that he ran away with the points title.
So then why was the superstar driver from Oakwood, Ill., and his team on “pins and needles,” as his father and crew chief Bob said, for the first two days of last weekend’s season-ending Dave Smith Motors World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C.? Shouldn’t the blockbuster annual event have simply been a coronation, a no-pressure waltz to Pierce’s second straight and third overall WoO points crown in his four years as a regular?
Not this year. As spectacular as the 29-year-old Pierce’s performance was, he just couldn’t quite shake Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C., the ever-improving 33-year-old who proved to be a formidable challenger to Pierce’s WoO throne.
“Just one of them nerve-racking years,” Bob Pierce said of his son’s latest march to a title.
Every season is different. Every championship run for a racer of Pierce’s stature is different. This year was indeed unique for Pierce, who dominated the WoO circuit’s win column at an otherworldly level but experienced multiple obstacles and bumps in the road — including Hoffman’s strength, ill-timed problems and his father’s midseason health scare — that added a degree of difficulty to his title pursuit.
Pierce clinched the championship last Friday in the next-to-last race of the season, finishing a quiet 10th in the 35-lap feature won by Hoffman. He let out a sigh of relief afterward, thankful that he didn’t have to worry about a final-night showdown in which anything could happen.
“It’s been a long year,” said Pierce, who entered the World Finals with a 76-point edge over Hoffman and ended it with a final championship margin of 72 points on his rival. “Nick was tough all year, and whenever it seemed like we might be able to get away from him we’d have a problem.
“Shelby County (Aug. 29 at the Iowa track), when Daulton (Wilson) spun out (leading) on the last lap when we were running second, that cost me a lot of points. And then Modoc (Oct. 24 at the South Carolina oval), the oil pump broke (as Pierce ran in the top three) and that really sucked because we would have damn near had (the title) wrapped up after that for the most part and I think I would have won that race, too.”
The missed opportunities left Pierce uneasy heading to Charlotte.
“It made for kind of a stressful weekend for us just because last year here didn’t go well,” Pierce said. “Every time I’ve won the championship (previously), I’ve come into Charlotte in much better shape. The first year (2023) I had it completely locked up. Last year, I just had to finish like top-15 on night one or something.
“Two years ago (’24) was the only year it’s been like really close, and I was trailing from the …. bulls---,” he continued, recalling the season in which the loss of points from a race at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., because a failed tire test ultimately proved too much for him to overcome as he finished second in the standings to Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill. “It still pisses us off. It should be four (titles) in a row as far as we’re concerned.”
Four consecutive championships would have been unprecedented in WoO history, but three in a four-year span in impressive. The only other drivers to pull that off are Billy Moyer of Batesville, Ark. (1988-89, then 2005 after the series was dormant from 1990-2003) and Sheppard, who won four in five years from 2017-21, including a record three straight from 2019-21. Pierce also is the fifth driver with at least three titles, joining Sheppard (five), Josh Richards of Shinnston, W.Va. (four), Darrell Lanigan of Union, Ky. (three) and Moyer (three).
Pierce admitted that he hit the 4/10-mile Charlotte oval for last Wednesday’s qualifying program with his mind racing a bit from the championship scenarios still in play. He was well aware that during last year’s World Finals Hoffman made up 68 points on him, though Pierce’s cushion entering the event was more than enough to absorb that and win by 56 points.
“Knowing we wasn’t going to clinch it coming into this thing, that was a little worrisome,” Bob Pierce said. “I can’t say we're bad here, but we’re just not good here, you know?”
Wednesday’s two rounds of time trials didn’t help Pierce’s nerves. He had a spark-plug issue that hampered his results, “so we were definitely stressing after qualifying night because we were just like, man, we gotta make some passes (in the heats). You think of it, how the points may lay out, we have to make passes.”
Circumstances certainly broke Pierce’s way. A third-place finish in Thursday’s 35-lap feature — one spot better than Hoffman — positioned him to secure the title Friday by finishing at least 14th, which he did with a 10th-place finish that had no typical Bobby Pierce flash.
“The hard part was (Thursday),” Pierce said after Friday’s feature. “Having the run that we had then, I was pretty relaxed today knowing that a 14th would get it done. You got to figure that Nick’s gonna win his heat race win (starting from the pole in a Friday heat) and the feature, right? He did. So having to finish 14th to lock it up, every restart I was counting my position, seeing where I was.
“My whole crew was like, ‘Oh, you were wanting to get up there and run the cushion, weren’t you?’ And I was like, ‘Honestly, no.’ Like, I don’t think we had it. (The speed) wasn’t there. The track was way different. All in all, we did what we had to do.”
Pierce even caught some major breaks in his heat races on Thursday and Friday.
“We got lucky,” Pierce said. “Like both days … (Thursday) I should have started fifth, but I started a whole row farther ahead because (Jordan) Koehler scratched and then there was the jump start (called on Kyle Strickler). And then, (Dale) McDowell scratches (Friday), and then the (Kale Green) spins out on the first lap, so that puts me into the second row again.
“Then I really capitalized on the start, made some aggressive moves there (to settle into second) and then just rode it out.”
That was essentially further evidence of Pierce’s championship pedigree. No matter the situation he finds himself in, he’s most likely going to find a way to extricate himself from it. It should be pointed out that despite his prodigious WoO win total this season that included a record-tying six straight triumphs at midseason, his qualifying results were off this year so he had to work harder than ever to make up for it. His average starting position over 52 features this season was just over 9 and he had a mind-numbing net gain of 275 spots in those A-mains to tally 39 top-five and 49 top-10 finishes and achieve an average finishing position of 3.90. In Pierce’s previous WoO title seasons, his net position gains in features was a much more modest 44 in 2023 and 17 in ’25.
Perhaps Pierce’s biggest challenge this season, however, came in the middle of the summer when, the morning of July 15, his father suffered a serious stroke while sleeping in his camper parked at Adams County Speedway in Corning, Iowa, where Pierce won a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event the previous night. Pierce was flown to a hospital in Omaha, Neb., to undergo emergency treatment that, fortunately, was successful in preventing any major long-term effects.
During those uncertain moments when his 74-year-old father was in the intensive care unit, Pierce would admit that “we didn’t know if our whole life was gonna change at that moment.” Would the man who has been by Bobby’s side for his entire racing career, the man whom Bobby calls “the toughest guy I know,” no longer be able to guide his son along the motorsports road?
Bob responded to the treatment and was released from the hospital within a week. Less than two weeks later he was in victory lane with his son at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis., celebrating a $100,000 USA Nationals victory that was his biggest of ’26 under WoO sanction.
“A lot of our prayers came true,” Pierce said of his father’s recovery during Sunday’s WoO awards banquet.
The elder Pierce hasn’t rebounded yet to his full physical powers. He’s begrudgingly backed off some from his relentless pace — and Bobby had tried to take on more technical responsibility — but he’s remained alongside his son at the track and in the shop throughout the stretch run of the 2026 season.
“It didn't stop me from what I was doing,” Bob said of the stroke. “It just slowed me down because of energy level, it’s what this thing does to you. I feel more and more energy every day. It’s just the deal where I give my guys a little more stuff to do than I used to do, which, you know, I needed to do that anyway. Even letting those guys do a little more work, I still start running out of energy. I’m like, this ain’t me. I’m usually the guy that goes all night.
“But it’s coming back good, and I feel a lot better. And they got me off half the medicine that I was on, which is good, too, because it was just like a little (mental) fog all the time. I went to my doctor about three weeks ago and she said, ‘Well, what are you on?’ So I showed her a list, and she goes, ‘Well, you don’t need this, this, or this. So she took three of the five out and I feel better already.
“I never took medicine in my life, you know?” he added. “Maybe cold pills, that’s it. But that’s what old people do. Here I am, one of ‘em.”
Bob considers himself fortunate to have escaped what could have been debilitating to him. Maybe his stamina isn’t quite what it was, but he’s still experiencing his son’s success first-hand.
“That’s my thrill right there,” Bob said. “That’s all I need.”
And make no mistake — Bob continues to marvel at his son’s ability behind the wheel of a Dirt Late Model. Bobby was already a rare talent before he became a national touring full-timer with his own team on the WoO circuit in 2023. Now, as he’s come to dominate the WoO action, he’s proved himself as a generational talent as well.
“The first (WoO championship), that our first year with Longhorn, and it was like, ‘Oh, s---, I didn’t think we could do this,’” Bob said. “Then after that, it was like, ‘We can do this.’ So he’s had more confidence in himself since then.”
Confidence, of course, is something Pierce does not lack. It oozes from his pores, and winning championships and crown jewel events (he’s up to 18 after capturing three more this year) just pushes it higher and drives him to keep going. There’s no complacency in him.
“He stays so focused. He really does,” Bob said. “I don’t know what could jar him from that. He don’t let s--- bother him. He really don’t.
“It kind of makes me worry sometimes. Some people hold stuff in and then explode someday. But he’s really good with it all — the media, the pressure.”
Pierce is riding an incredible stretch of success, one that has seen his career reach new heights since he took his team to the national scene on a full-time basis in ’23. He’s actually become a bigger winner as national touring regular, ripping off overall victory totals of 34, 38, 32 and 29 (with four starts remaining on his ’26 schedule). That’s 133 triumphs since 2023, including 58 of his 62 career WoO wins.
An illustration of Pierce’s success: his 29 victories this season have come at 26 tracks in 15 states. The only tracks he’s won at multiple times in ’26 are Adams County, Magnolia Motor Speedway in Columbus, Miss., and Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.
And how about the amount of money he’s collected this year? Pierce has topped $1 million in race purse earnings alone over 90 starts, buoyed by $100,000 scores in the USA Nationals and Dream plus $75,000 for the Show-Me 100 and $51,500 for the Wild West Shootout finale. He owns 20 victories worth at least $20,000. The WoO title brings him $225,000, and, with this weekend’s FloRacing Night in America season finale at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway ($50,000 in first-place prizes posted and he’s contention for the $75,000 championship) plus Dec. 3-5’s Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, ($80,000 possible in winner’s purses), he could push his total ’26 earnings to nearly $1.5 million.
That’s yet another incredible season for Pierce, who even left some major money on the table with late-season DNQs for the World 100, Eldora’s Clash on the Wabash finale and the Dirt Track World Championship. And with Pierce turning 30 on Nov. 24, he has so many more years ahead of him.
“I always said, you get in your 30s, that’s your prime,” Bob said. “But I think he hit his prime about 10 years ago, so I don’t know what he’s going to do now. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Bob thinks his son’s longevity in the sport will hinge on several factors, including “what his income is, how his personal life goes.” Bobby married the former Abby Foster earlier this, and Bob said “they might have a kid someday … they say no, but they might.”
Could Bobby race through his 40s and into his 50s, putting up all-time numbers? Bob thinks it’s possible, but he also knows his son’s lucrative seasons could build him a nest egg that allow him to retire from racing earlier than drivers from previous eras and perhaps go into other realms.
“He’s just such a smart kid,” Bob said. “He don’t need to be doing this to make a living. He can do anything. He’s like seriously smart, book smart, all the way around. He’s got a head on the shoulder. He could run a business.
“I don’t know how long he’ll want to do this, but I look for him, as long as he’s having fun, he'll go as long as he wants to go. When you win, it’s always fun. He didn’t like racing until he got his first checkered flag. Then he loved it.”
Listen to Bobby speak, and he doesn’t sound like his desire is waning the slightest bit as he nears the big 3-0. In fact, during a chat with WoO announcer Ruben Mireles on stage during Sunday’s WoO awards banquet, he spoke like a driver who is far from satisfied with his accomplishments.
“You turn into like a shark,” Pierce said when asked about chasing the WoO tour. “You get that blood in the water and you just want more, and it becomes a drug, you just want to keep winning these championships. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”
