BRANDON, S.D. (July 18) — Thursday's box score shows that Bobby Pierce breezed to yet another national touring victory on opening night of the Silver Dollar Nationals at Huset’s Speedway.

Commanding all 40 laps from the front row, the Oakwood, Ill., superstar reaped his fifth triumph in a row, the sixth over his last seven races, and his 22nd overall victory of the year, well ahead of his last year's pace (15 win) en route to a 34-victory season.

Thursday’s $10,000 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series victory was anything but breezy for Pierce, though, as the high-banked, third-mile oval demanded more from the 27-year-old than any other racetrack can recently recall.

“That’s the most I fought the steering wheel in a long time, really since me and (Brandon Sheppard) last year,” Pierce said. “We both said down there (in victory lane), we remember how tough it was on us last year. It was up on the wheel nonstop last year for 80 laps. I expect kind of the same thing.”

Similar sentiments are shared from virtually every driver about Huset’s Speedway, the state-of-the-art facility that has all the characteristics of a purpose-built sprint car track: Progressive banking, narrow straightaways and a berm encircling the innermost part of the racing surface.

Those three characteristics provide challenging hurdles for even the nation’s best Dirt Late Model racers at this week’s Silver Dollar Nationals.

“I kind of look at this place how you look at an All-Tech (Raceway in Ellisville, Fla.) or East Bay (Raceway Park in Gibsonton, Fla.),” Ricky Thornton Jr. said. “Like, it’s so technical and it’s easy to screw up because you can hit the inside berm, bounce up the track, or hit the wall coming off the corner and screw up your night.”

Third-finishing Daulton Wilson said that “you’re definitely on that verge of totaling a race car almost every lap” at Huset’s — “It’s hard to get that thought of your mind,” he added — but “you definitely can’t race around here scared to do it.”

Thursday’s runner-up Brandon Sheppard simply calls Huset’s “a tough racetrack” because “there’s no time to breathe” and “no time to settle.” But that’s not foreign to Sheppard and Pierce.

“I feel like it’s a lot of what me and Bobby grew up on" with Illinois bullrings, Sheppard said.

That makes sense because they’ve finished 1-2 at Huset’s twice in a row going back to last year. Sheppard won year’s Silver Dollar Nationals finale over Pierce, who hasn’t finished worse than second in three Huset’s features.

“Bobby said something tonight having a little bit of an arm pump after the race,” Sheppard said. “I remember feeling that last year to a certain extent. It’s elbows up the entire race. … I feel, if all the cards fall our way, we’ll be battling for the lead Saturday night.”

But even Sheppard’s highest regards don’t make he and Pierce immune to Huset’s challenges. Pierce goes as far to call Huset’s “a top-five” most challenging racetrack.

“When it’s like that, top-five,” Pierce said of Huset’s. “Eldora (Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio) is No. 1 when you’re running the wall. I’ve been to 168 dirt tracks now? And it’s hard to make a top five, but I feel like this definitely makes that list."

Pierce's quick list: Huset's, Eldora, Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Mo., Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn., and Tazewell (Tenn.) Speedway.

Huset’s, more or less, combines the demands of all the tracks on Pierce's list: Running the wall at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway, the narrowness of Missouri’s Auto Parts I-55 Raceway, and the steep banking of Tennessee’s Volunteer Speedway and Tazewell Speedway.

While Pierce and Sheppard don’t mind the on-edge nature of Huset’s, Southeastern-raised drivers like Jonathan Davenport and Wilson are more out of their comfort zones. Davenport, who finished eighth Thursday, sees Huset’s as “the Daytona or Talladega” of the Lucas Oil Series, a race “you’re just trying to get through in one piece.”

Davenport narrowly avoided disaster Thursday when Drake Troutman ran out of room merging off the bottom and onto one of the narrow straightaways of the third-mile oval. Gunning it around the top, Davenport’s front end clipped Troutman’s right side, leaving the Double L Motorsports No. 49 entry with left-front damage.

The Blairsville, Ga., driver says Thursday was “kind of like rubber racing, but not” because “we’re basically a train around the cushion.”

“You’re wide open around the fence. If you move down, it’s for like 3 feet. There’s no room to race here,” Davenport said. “The guy on the bottom has to be so careful not to run up the straightaway to hit the guy on the outside. It’s just too narrow. I think it’d be a really good place if it’d slow down and widen out. I mean, it’s small. It’s a small place. We race at places this small. But those places are wider.”

Though Pierce believes that “one slip-up here” could cost a driver “a second on your lap,” Davenport “it could, but it couldn’t” because Thursday he “messed up a couple times on the cushion, but there wasn’t anywhere for anybody to go.”

“I don’t mean to badmouth the place. This place is beautiful. I’m sure it works great for sprint cars, but it’s just a little too narrow,” Davenport said. “If they take that berm and push it all the way to the infield and let us race, and then put it back out there when we leave, it’d be great.”

Another curveball of Huset’s is that “when there’s traction, you go as hard as you want,” Thornton said, but “when it gets slick, it’s ice slick.”

Wilson didn't hear Thornton's response, but agreed almost verbatim.

“Where it’s black and shiny, there’s no grip. But when there’s grip, it’s really grippy,” Wilson said. “It’s very lane-sensitive. It’s hard to get out of a lane. And the racetrack is narrow for how fast that it is. … I hit the wall like five times tonight not really meaning to. That’s just the way this place is. You have to get all you can get and try not to wreck.”

Pierce feels the same.

“The slick spots are super slick. When you get going down the straightaways and you spin the hell out of the tires or you hit a slick spot in the corners in not the right spot, you just sit there,” Pierce said. “So it’s very challenging. Both mentally challenging and physically challenging. Those two mixed together, it’s a lot. It felt like the whole time there’s no spot you get to relax.”

But putting the assessments into proper perspective, though sprint-car-built Huset’s poses plenty of curveballs Dirt Late Model drivers aren’t used to, these challenges are what the sport’s best should embrace. Winning a big Dirt Late Model event shouldn’t be easy. The Lucas Oil competitors will battle in another $10,000-to-win prelim Friday before preliminary results set the table for Saturday's $53,000-to-win Silver Dollar Nationals finale.

“The mental side of it, you have to know that once you get here,” Thornton said. “You can really wear yourself out during a race, like ‘I screwed up this. I screwed up that.’ But it almost makes it fun at the same time. This is not one of those places that’s super-easy to get around. I feel like when a guy does figure it out, they’re really hard to beat here.”

The thought of Saturday’s 80-lap finale — doubled from Thursday’s 40-lap prelim that left Pierce mentally and physically exhausted — is weighty.

“Sheesh … I wish it’d be 50,” Pierce said through a laugh.