ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 7) — There wasn’t much of a cushion ringing Eldora Speedway during Saturday night’s 54th World 100. So naturally, running the top around the half-mile oval’s corners didn't seem like the hot ticket for a driver seeking victory in Dirt Late Model racing’s most prestigious event.

Yet there was Bobby Pierce, the indomitable 27-year-old superstar from Oakwood, Ill., ripping around that outside for most of the century grind. When first Garrett Alberson of Las Cruces, N.M., then Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., and later Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., passed him for the lead riding lower on the track, he only churned up the high line harder in pursuit of the $57,000 winner’s prize.

After Pierce made his deciding move to snatch the lead from McDowell on lap 96 and went on to capture his second career World 100, his never-say-die, concrete-scraping performance understandably added another flourish to his ever-growing legend. Even his father and crew chief, Bob Pierce, could only shake his head over his kid’s uncanny ability to commit to the outside barely 10 laps into the race and make it work against all reasonable odds.

“I didn’t want him to go up that early,” Bob Pierce said when asked about his son burning down the house like no one else throughout the distance. “If I was signaling (event rules forbid crew members from using sticks or their hands to keep drivers informed), I would’ve never moved him up that early. I was like, ‘Why are you trying to burn your right-rear off so early? Just chill out for a while and follow these guys.’”

Bobby couldn’t resist the call of the razor thin cushion, though. He knew negotiating it was “tough,” but he found it a risk worth taking.

“Like, lap 10, 15, I jumped up there when I was in third,” said Bobby, who started in that same spot inside Davenport. “Dale (McDowell) was running second, and I got rolling. I found the (outside) line down there in three and four, and me and Garrett (Alberson), we had a great battle going on (for the lead).”

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Pierce swapped the lead with Alberson a couple times — Pierce paced laps 23-24, Alberson went ahead on lap 25 and Pierce regained control on lap 26. He thought he might be able to set sail, but then along came the 40-year-old Davenport, already a winner twice over the previous three nights (Wednesday’s Castrol FloRacing Night in America event and a Friday semifeature) and intent on a record-tying sixth World 100 triumph.

“I eventually got the lead on him and was going fine, and then eventually here comes J.D. in the middle, and I tried it, and I was, like, ‘Nah, that’s not working for me,’ so I just kind of rode,” said Bobby, who ceded the top spot to Davenport on lap 35. “I backed way off and just let him go. I was still on the top the whole time, but at that time I wasn’t driving hard. I was like, ‘A caution’s gonna come out,’ but a caution never came out until I actually caught him and passed him.”

Pierce’s outside line brought him back to Davenport, who was powerless to stop the charging Pierce from moving past him off the top of turn two to recapture the lead on lap 63.

“I knew I was in trouble,” Davenport said. “I didn’t know where to go, because I caught all that pack in front of me, them lapped cars, then we all kind of just got running one speed right around the bottom and I kept getting slower and slower. They actually pulled away from me so I knew something was about to happen but I just didn’t know what.

“Then Bobby come by me, so I knew the top was just way faster.”

The ensuing circuits saw Davenport migrate to Pierce’s groove. The Eldora master prefers to stay away from that treacherous wall, but running the cushion certainly remains a tool in his arsenal and he took up the chase of Pierce by trying to fly high.

“Davenport started blowing the top back here (in turns one and two) and doing exactly what Bobby was doing,” said Bob, who watched the race standing atop the team’s trailer on the inside of turns one and two. “It’s funny, they had the exact same throttle deal. Like, Bobby would get in, mash it, let off, mash it, let off, mash and let off, and then nothing … da-da-da-da-da. And Davenport was doing the same thing, so they both knew where the traction was, and give it all 900 horse they had for a second, lay off for a second, and then they squirted, and squirted.

“I couldn’t hear ‘em down there (in turns three and four), but they looked kind of the same. Then Davenport started pulling down a little bit …”

“I tried to run that (outside) line, and I felt like I could keep up with him OK, and I was just kind of pacing there until we’d get towards the end,” Davenport said. “I kept trying to pull down off of two, and I could get a little run here and there, and I actually judged how close I could get to sliding him down here one time just to see.

“That was OK, and then I hit the wall getting by a lapped car down the back straightaway. I don’t know if that happened before or after the caution, and it got the quarter-panel and knocked the front end out a little bit.”

The caution Davenport referenced came on lap 68, the second and final slowdown of the fast-paced race. It was a moment that put a serious charge of fear in the younger Pierce.

“That’s what I was worried about, because J.D.’s good on restarts, he’s really good,” Bobby said. “I think, honestly, I kind of caught him sleeping a little bit because I fired real early in turn three. I feel like he was getting ready to, like, lay back and go.”

Davenport still entered turn one outside of Pierce. He appeared to have an opening, but, in the middle of the corners, Pierce slid across the track right in front of Davenport, who had to jam the binders to avoid disaster and watched Pierce drive away.

“I was coming up no matter what,” Pierce said of the moment. “I was getting to the top no matter what. I knew I had to get to the top on exit.”

Davenport, after settling for a third-place finish, later replayed that restart in his mind, but he had no problem with Pierce’s aggressive tactics.

“The only thing I could’ve done different — and I don’t know if it would’ve changed the outcome of the race — is, I thought I was far enough ahead of him to beat him to the cushion,” Davenport said. “But he just turned a little bit more under me and beat me there. I probably should’ve just went to the cushion first and run around it and then got a run down the back straightaway and beat him into three.

“Oh, I hit the wall and him at the same time (when Pierce slid up). We hit the cushion, which is the wall anyway. We was both all over it.”

But as Davenport noted, “We was racing for the win in the World. He had the lead anyway and I was trying to take it. If it was the opposite, if I had the lead and he come in there and done that, it might’ve been different, but it’s all good.”

Davenport lost touch with Pierce after the restart. He then also lost second on lap 81 to McDowell, the 58-year-old veteran who started from the pole position and led laps 1-4 before slipping back a few spots. Seeking not only his first World 100 win since 2005 (when he inherited the victory because Shannon Babb weighed in light) but also a storybook triumph following Hall of Famer Scott Bloomquist’s death on Aug. 16 — McDowell runs a Bloomquist-designed Team Zero Chassis that his brother and car owner, Shane, houses in a shop on Bloomquist’s family farm in Mooresburg, Tenn. — he found more speed and closed in on Pierce.

Bob Pierce grew concerned as McDowell drew a bead on Bobby’s Longhorn machine with the laps winding down.

“Down there (in turns three and four), I didn’t know it was rubbered, but I saw McDowell get really good through the center one time on the (video) screen and I’m going, ‘God, I wish I could move (Bobby) down in the middle because he’s wasting so much time out of four,’” Bob said. “It ain’t a bad deal I guess (to have signaling not allowed), but it’s just nerve-racking when you’ve got a big lead and then all of a sudden he’s definitely in the wrong spot and somebody finds a spot, and you can’t move him to that spot. Then you’re gonna lose the race, like, ‘Crap!’”

McDowell surprised Pierce as he suddenly caught up and blasted underneath to take the lead on lap 91.

“I saw a car on my inside and I thought it was (Josh) Rice catching back up to me (after being lapped), so I thought, OK, (the track) must be taking rubber, so I’m gonna go back to the bottom and settle in maybe,” said Bobby, who has started the World 100 finale in all 11 of his attempts since his event debut in 2014 as a 16-year-old. “Then I realized it was McDowell, and it’s like the same feeling when J.D. passed me — it’s over.

“And when I followed him for that one lap, I could definitely tell it’s starting to take some rubber there (in turns three and four), but it wasn’t taking rubber here (in one and two) yet, so I was like, ‘OK, I got one corner that I can work on,’ and I zinged it around there. That’s when it was like … my crew guys said they could tell I was driving, like, three times as hard then as I had the whole race.

“Then it was like a Saturday night at Fairbury,” he added. “Just let it hang out, knock the wall down, it is what it is, we’re going for the World.”

Bob knew his son wasn’t going down without a fight.

“He pulled his belts tighter and went on,” Bob said. “I thought it was over, but he got super up on the wheel. I hear his throttle pick up more there (in turn one) … that’s when he started beating the quarter-panel in, so I’m thinking, Well, he’s gonna win it or wreck. It’s a checker-or-wrecker thing, but I figured, ‘Hell, why not, bud? You ain’t won in eight years (2016 when he was 19 years old), give it a shot. It’s the World 100 so go for it,’ and he did.”

Tossing his No. 32 through the corners on a razor’s edge of disaster, sending sparks flying as he scraped the wall with his right-rear quarter-panel, Pierce turned up the wick to a level that only an elite driver is capable and drove back around McDowell for the lead on lap 96.

“Really, I got faster,” Bobby said. “That’s always the thing, when you drive that hard when the track’s like that, sometimes you don’t get faster. Sometimes you make mistakes because you just can’t do it, but I actually got faster.

“I caught up to (McDowell) when he kind of bobbled (behind a lapped car), and then I sent it around three and four like it was qualifying. It was rubbered there and I sent it around the top anyway, I was on the gas, and then here (in one and two), too.

“I don’t remember where I passed him,” he continued, “but when I passed him and I dipped down into that rubber in three and four, it was, like, the best feeling because it was like, ‘Man, I got that.’”

Pierce wasn’t quite home free, though.

“I was still a little nervous, because when one corner starts taking rubber the other corner usually follows it pretty quickly, so I was trying to watch the lappers and see how fast they were getting compared to me … and I was still sailing around the top good,” Bobby said. “Then with two to go I hit the wall hard with the rear coming into one, like, really hard. I think that’s what really knocked in the quarter-panel, so it made the last lap-and-a-half very scary. I was extremely loose.”

The right-rear spoiler of Pierce’s car was collapsed inward and various metal braces were flopping crazily under the bodywork. That was a problem because a bracket that bolts to the frame and holds the sides out broke and began rubbing the right-rear tire, tearing at the tread so much that lines were apparent on the tire, which went flat during the victory lane ceremonies.

“I missed the corner in turn three on the last lap,” Bobby conceded. “If McDowell was closer, he probably would’ve passed me.

“I think that happened (with the right-rear tire) at the very end, so my tread was gone, and my spoiler was gone, and (the slower Brandon) Sheppard was terrible off of two, so when we went into three I was really close to him and he, like, missed (the rubber) a little bit, so then I missed it worse and got hung up there. It was the air, and just because I followed him, and the tread was gone too. We got lucky there.”

But Pierce’s talent was ultimately the critical factor in the outcome.

“It’s one of them deals, I got better when the worry went away,” related Bobby, who tallied his 32nd overall victory of the season and drew closer to his second straight million-dollar campaign. “Like, when you’re leading you don’t want to be the guy that just stuffs it in the fence, and you don’t want to knock the spoiler off when you don’t have to. So when the worry went away of, like, that, and it was just let it hang out and see what happens, I got better.

“And most of the time, when you have to get to that next level of driving balls out, most of the time it doesn’t work. The car just doesn’t do it, the racetrack doesn’t allow it, you hit the wall the wrong way, you jump the cushion and lose all the ground you worked for. But it worked out where I hit the marks good and it went around there good.”

Pierce left everyone in awe, including his fellow competitors.

“Bobby did what great drivers do — he did something different to win the race,” said 2018 World 100 champion Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., who finished fourth in the Rocket Chassis house car. “Speed-wise, he probably wasn’t the best car because obviously he lost the lead, so that’s part of running that outside the whole time, is that you fade, and you burn your stuff up. But he got it done up there.”

“I’ve seen nobody run a top better than Bobby Pierce,” offered McDowell, whose second-place finish marked his 11th consecutive top-10 run in the World 100 (a race, coincidentally, that Pierce also won the last time McDowell started on the pole in 2016). “And now he can run across, and bottom, and do other stuff. He’s matured past that (cushion-running).”

Rocket Chassis house car owner Mark Richards gave Pierce the highest praise.

“He’s the No. 1 driver in the country. He’s really alert on what’s going on,” Richards said. “Some people think he might be hard on equipment, but he’s not hard on equipment. He’s not hard on the tires, none of that, because he’s always going straight. He’s not sideways.

“I mean, he knocks the quarterpanel off, but nobody cares about that stuff. Any race team would be happy to have the quarterpanel knocked off if you win the race. Nobody’s gonna be mad over that. We don’t have show cars.

“His car is balanced for him, the way he drives,” he added. “I think there’s not a lot of drivers that drive that way, and I don’t know that Bobby is really stuck hard where he can just run through the middle. He runs wherever he needs to go to. He keeps his momentum up. He’s come into his own. He’s gonna be around for a while.”

Davenport provided a final summation of Pierce’s epic performance on the sport’s biggest stage: “Bobby just did what Bobby does. He steps up and gets another gear.”

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