Bobby Pierce’s summer hot streak was already rolling along. And then the 26-year-old Oakwood, Ill., driver got to August.

With his dazzling three-race sweep at Florence Speedway’s Sunoco North-South 100 extending his August success, Pierce suddenly is on a run of seven victories in his last eight starts — all national touring competition — and has piled up a whopping $176,000 in winning purses through the first 12 days of the month.

“The run we’re on,” Pierce said Saturday after his $75,000 North-South 100 triumph, “it’s super crazy.”

Putting it in perspective is difficult, but Pierce’s neighbor in the Florence pits — a Hall of Famer who knows a thing or two about hot streaks — reminded Pierce what a special run he’s on.

“Dale McDowell, he stopped me earlier in the weekend,” Pierce said. “He’s like, ‘People don’t understand the variables that happen to let you win a race — just one night, let alone back-to-back-to-back. A lot of things gotta fall your way.’ ”

And things fell Pierce’s way at Florence, where he notched $5,000 semifeature victories on Thursday and Friday but found himself facing a four-car inversion in Saturday night’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series heat race.

“And I was super doubtful because of it,” said Pierce, who has finished worse than third in a feature a single time since July 7. “I know how that can go. You saw (Lucas Oil Series points leader) Ricky (Thornton Jr.) had to run a B-main because of it … starting 13th (in the feature), I knew we had a shot, but I don’t know.”

VIDEO: Watch highlights from Saturday's North/South 100 at Florence.

Pierce ran midpack early in the race, but broke into the top five on lap 37 and chased Hudson O’Neal most of the second half of the race before going ahead on lap 81. A poor restart allowed the deep-rallying Thornton to edge ahead and lead laps 88-89, but Pierce’s shoot-for-the-moon slide job exiting turn four put him back out front the final 11 laps to cap his three-night sweep against most of Dirt Late Model racing’s best drivers.

The realization of his stunning streak and attempted sweep hit Pierce even while he was behind the wheel in the 100-lapper.

Hudson O’Neal “made that one bobble out of turn four, and I happened to have a really good run there and slid him,” Pierce said. “I was definitely, I was like, ‘Man, I’m in the lead right.’ How everything’s went, it’s not like I doubt myself. We’re on such a run, it’s gotta end sometime, and then I take the lead and it’s my race to lose, then, it’s like, man, the pressure’s on then. Like I want to stay in first.”

Indeed he ended up first, sending him into at least a brief break before he tries to extend an August streak to remember.

“I need some rest, that’s for sure. So luckily I don’t have a race tomorrow,” Pierce said. “But we’ll be ready to go for the next one.”

Jimmy Owens' Crewman Recovering

Koehler Motorsports operated during Saturday’s action one man down with Mark Eller recovering from injuries suffered after Friday’s race when his pit bike struck the car of Hudson O’Neal at a pit-road intersection as both were heading back to their pit stalls.

The 19-year-old from Oxford, N.C., was “doped up,” driver Jimmy Owens told Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series director Rick Schwallie, with Eller resting in the team’s living quarters on the third of three nights of North-South 100 action.

“He’s down for the count in there,” said Owens, who witnessed the accident. “He got up and roamed around a little bit today and we told him, ‘Just take it easy because you’re probably going to be hating life tomorrow.’ ”

Eller was treated and released at the St. Elizabeth Florence Hospital emergency room, receiving staples to patch up the laceration atop his head.

“He’s real good. Just a little beat-up, bruised up from last night,” Owens said. “He just had a cut, a big cut on his head. It took about seven staples. So it got him pretty good, but he didn’t have no concussion. He’s good. Tough kid.”

Overall, his injuries weren’t “as bad as everybody thought” initially, said Owens, who even considered at one point driving him to the hospital in a passenger vehicle instead of taking an ambulance.

Owens, who was driving into the pits behind O’Neal, said the collision was happenstance with everyone heading back to their pit stalls.

“It was just a bad deal. You’ve walked around a corner and met somebody and bumped into ’em? That’s what happened there,” Owens said. “Huddy came around through there (and) we were all coming back to the pits, everybody was just heading the same way and they just met at a corner. I was behind Huddy, and I seen a guy go flying. I was like ‘Holy crap!’ Then I looked up there and seen it was my bike and I was like, ‘Holy crap!’

“Then you’re on a hill, so I couldn’t jump out of my car, because it would take off. So I (drove) my car to the pits and then run back up there to him. He was sitting at Earl’s (Pearson Jr.) trailer and, like I said, he was bleeding pretty good from the head injury.”

The Koehler Motorsports team recently was awarded a Honda pit bike from Vidalia Powersports as part of their winnings for the Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals, but Eller was driving the team’s older pit bike.

“It needs a front set of forks and a front fender and a tire and wheel,” Owens said.

Chris Ferguson Climbs Back

With the top six runners all on the same straightaway after 36 laps, 10th-starting Chris Ferguson of Mount Holly, N.C., was in the thick of things, running in the fifth spot with eventual race winner Bobby Pierce hot on his heels.

With Pierce on the outside of Ferguson heading down the frontstretch on lap 36, Pierce’s nose clipped Ferguson’s right-rear quarterpanel and sent him spinning into turn one, ending Fergy’s hopes of improving on his career-best North-South 100 finish of fourth in 2020.

That Pierce apologized in victory lane for the contact didn’t make Ferguson’s climb back to a sixth-place finish any easier, and Ferguson was disappointed in the turn of events.

Aware that Pierce was trying to make a pass, “I kind of went out wide down the (front) straightaway — I knew he was coming but I knew he wasn’t beside me going into (turn) three — so I’m like, he probably messed up and (fell) back,” Ferguson said. “Then all of a sudden, I was turned going into (turn) one. Dad said that Bobby hooked my right-rear. It’s so early in the race, it’s like, ‘Dude.’ I mean, I understand he’s one of the best on the top, but a little patience on lap 30 would have been nice.

“I’m not going to say I could’ve won the race, but I definitely had to work a lot harder than everybody else to get back up there.”

Ferguson restarted in 18th and, for 22 laps, didn’t make up any ground. But a mental reset helped him get going again and he rallied up to the sixth spot over the last dozen laps.

“I was a little frustrated,” Ferguson said. “The first probably 20 laps after I went to the tail, I couldn’t pass nobody. And then I kind of got my marbles under me and I was like, ‘All right, we still have the faster car than 90 percent of the field,’ so we were able to pass a lot of good cars. I mean, it wasn’t easy.

“It just stinks. It’s just another crown jewel, you know, right there, and I think that’s my second-best finish here. But maybe one year it’ll be get to the end and then race it out. That’s how it goes.”

Trevor Landrum And Tyler Erb Clash

Saturday’s set of six heat races ended with a bang in a controversial battle for the third and final transfer spot before the halfway point in the 10-lapper.

In a race where Cory Hedgecock outran Stormy Scott for the victory, the mid-race battle for third among pole-starting Tyler Erb, fifth-starting Trevor Landrum and third-starting Tim McCreadie got feisty.

Landrum, the Erlanger, Ky., driver who captured Florence’s Late Model championship from 2019-21, ran fifth the first three laps but got rolling in the inside groove, taking fourth from McCreadie and then getting under Erb to edge into the third spot exiting turn two.

But when Landrum tried to complete the pass down the backstretch, he came together with the high-running Erb, who veered to the left to send Landrum spinning with McCreadie getting caught up in the mess.

Erb’s left-front suspension was all but destroyed, and when he tried to restart and got out of shape in turn three, Landrum finished him off by sending him around. Erb pulled to the pits while Landrum continued and finished sixth in the heat.

The drivers had widely differing views on what happened.

“I knew I had him pretty well cleared if I just rolled out” of turn two, Landrum said while his crew members made repairs. “I’d say we’re probably a quarter of the way down the back straightaway, is what I felt like, and I kept just slowing rolling up. I didn’t know where he was at, but I felt if I just slowly rolled up there, he’d get on the brake, turn under me, do something, slide me in the next corner. But he just drove in the right side of us. I had the car straightened back out and he just turned dead left. I guess he just didn’t want to get past or I guess I’m not supposed to be racing that caliber of guy. But that’s just Terbo.

“I left him a lane long enough that he either could took the lane and went drove by me or he could have turned under me. So I mean, the lane was closing, but he had opportunity to do whatever he wanted.”

Landrum added that it was “really stupid of him to turn me down the back straightaway like that, running that fast. I mean, really bad things can happen. That was just dumb on his part.”

In Erb’s pit area far deeper in Florence’s lower pits, a fire drill ensued with fellow competitors Kyle Bronson, Daulton Wilson, Ryan Gustin and Spencer Hughes among those pitching in along with crew members from various teams.

In expletive-laced interview modified for a family website, Erb called Landrum a “stroker” and “always has been. He races Florence weekly. He can’t beat Josh Rice. He’s terrible.”

Erb was incredulous when told of Landrum’s explanation.

“I ran the top (groove) for three laps, obviously I wasn’t going to run the bottom,” Erb said. “And he crashed me. It is what it is. He’s an idiot. It’s not like I did something crazy that lap. I entered in the top wide open and he hit me and I hit the wall. I was hoping he’d flip. He might flip before the night’s over.”

Landrum finished sixth in the consolation race and failed to make the 100-lap feature while Erb took an emergency provisional starting spot in the main event, finishing a lap down in 19th.

Stirring Consi Finish

Of the six drivers who made the North-South 100 lineup for the first time, none did it more dramatically than Donald McIntosh of Dawsonville, Ga.

In the first consolation race, McIntosh was starting mid-pack in ninth behind standout drivers like Lucas Oil Series points leader Ricky Thornton Jr., Friday semifeature winner Mike Marlar and WoO regular Brian Shirley. While the pole-starting Shirley led from the outset, McIntosh quickly picked his way toward the front in his Billy Hicks-owned Double Nickel Race Car, landing in the third spot after just five laps. But third wasn’t good enough — that was one spot short of transferring as Shirley and Thornton held the top two spots.

In the waning moments of the 12-lapper, McIntosh saw his chance with his preferred low groove suddenly opened.

“When (Thornton) finally moved up, I’m like, ‘All right, this is my time.’ And I moved down and I saw (Thornton) was gonna try to slide (Shirley), I’m like, ’I just gotta get in here and catch the brown and I think I got ‘em.’ Hell, I got in the gas and we was going to rub, but I wasn’t going to lift,” McIntosh said. “I just wanted to make the show, but then when I saw we were all coming out (of turn four), I was like, ‘I gotta go for it.’ ”

He wedged his No. 79 under both drivers, going under Thornton and nipping Shirley at the checkers. Thornton was forced to take a provisional for the main event.

Billy Hicks loved his driver’s moxie.

“We were in the show in second, but they always want to win,” he said. “And that’s what I like about Donald — he always wants to win. I loved it.”

While McIntosh was forced to retire early in the 100-lapper with a broken left-rear wheel after 40 laps, he was glad to make at least a little noise at Florence.

“We’ve been fighting and fighting and fighting it and we’ve just never gave up,” he said. “We’ve just been trying, trying everything and throwing caution to the wind in trying to find something. I mean, I think we’ve caught on something enough for that B-main.”

Odds and Ends

Besides Donald McIntosh, the other first-time North-South 100 starters were Max Blair of Centerville, Pa. (ninth); Dustin Nobbe of Batesville, Ind. (16th); Adam Stricker of Batavia, Ohio (21st); Garrett Smith of Eatonton, Ga. (22nd); and Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa (23rd) … The top preliminary points driver who failed to make the feature was Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn., who finished sixth in his heat race and fourth in his consolation to end his weekend with a thud. The Thursday preliminary feature winner has misgivings about the four-car inversion in Saturday’s heats ahead of time, and indeed he failed to overcome it. “It’s their game,” Marlar said of the inversion system. “I’m just playing it.” … Rain sprinkles threatened the 100-lapper briefly after the 30-lap mark, and while one caution period had a few extra pace laps while the rain fell, once it stopped about 10 minutes later the threat was over.