Bobby Pierce thought he had it all figured out. But actually, he didn’t at all.

The 27-year-old superstar from Oakwood, Ill., was quite certain that a fourth-place finish in Friday night’s fourth heat race at Knoxville Raceway was exactly what he needed to set himself up for a starting spot near the front of the field in the 25-lap feature capping the second preliminary program of the 20th Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals. He had painstakingly done the math. | RaceWire

So when Pierce’s attempt to slip from third to fourth in the qualifier’s finishing order on the last lap ended up dropping him instead to fifth because Garrett Smith of Eatonton, Ga., shot by both him and Brenden Smith of Dade City, Fla., at the finish line, his carefully crafted plan seemed to have blown up in his face.

Or did it? When Pierce rode his motorbike over to the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series operations trailer to double-check how the feature lineup — and its accompanying inversion — was being determined, he soon learned all the machinations he had done weren’t even necessary.

As often happens for a driver on the type of otherworldly roll that Pierce is enjoying in 2024, everything worked out swimmingly for him. He merely needed to finish the heat in a top-five transfer spot to hit the invert perfectly and start from the feature’s outside pole, a position that helped carry him to a $7,000 victory which pushed his win total for the season to an astounding 33.

“I guess I did way too many calculations,” Pierce said with a laugh afterward, shaking his head over the stress he placed on himself to finish the heat in just the right spot. “Just one of them nights I guess where we’re kind of too much in our own mind. We should just go out there and do it.”

Pierce had in fact mistakenly believed that heat points played a role in setting up the A-main’s starting grid, and, having already virtually assured himself a front-row starting position in Saturday’s $50,000-to-win finale through event points with a nearly-perfect Thursday preliminary night (fast time, heat win, runner-up feature finish), he could afford to sandbag in an effort to gain the best possible spot to chase Friday’s feature win. The reality was that all the heat transfers were simply aligned using their qualifying times — a scenario that meant the top four timers from each qualifying group that locked in through a heat were inverted for the feature with Group A drivers on the inside row and Group B on the outside.

“Well, if the science of how I thought they would line us up was right, we would’ve started 10th (with a fifth-place heat finish), and that would’ve screwed me,” said Pierce, whose fourth-fastest lap in the second qualifying group put him right where he needed to be for a front-row start in the feature with the three drivers ahead of him all transferring in their heats. “I know it’s definitely tough starting back in the pack here. If you get that clean air, it’s huge.”

Pierce seized that open track for his Longhorn Chassis by the second lap of the feature when he overtook polesitter Daulton Wilson of Fayetteville, N.C., for the lead. But he was far from home free in the caution-free race as near the midway point seventh-starter Max Blair of Centerville, Pa., and ninth-starter Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., rapidly closed in on him.

With Pierce largely running the top lane around the half-mile oval, he didn’t yet realize that the track surface was taking rubber right around the bottom. Blair and Sheppard were right in that quickening line and it had them primed to glide easily past Pierce if he didn’t move down in time.

And Pierce didn’t, which allowed Blair to drive underneath him through turns three and four to assume command on lap 16. Blair, however, immediately slipped out of the rubber rounding turns one and two, allowing Pierce to charge right back into the lead down the backstretch and Sheppard to inch past as well off turn four to grab second as lap 17 was scored.

Pierce felt fortunate to regain command on a latched-up track. He hadn’t gotten the memo that he needed to migrate to the inside.

“So it was a screwy night with the signaling,” Pierce said. “All the signal guys are over there in turn one (inside the track), and they’re all kind of grouped together. I wasn’t sure if what I thought was my signal guy, my dad (Bob), he was showing me the top.

“Lo and behold, I asked him (after the feature), and he said he was showing me the top. So I was like, ‘Well, why were you showing me the top?’ I’m pretty sure the 111 (Blair) and the 5 (Sheppard) were coming on the bottom, and when I went back up to the top, that’s when I got passed by Max.

“When I went back up to the top, I couldn’t get around the lapped car because the bottom was rubbered up by then and my car was really unbalanced up there at the time. So Max shot under me, and I was like, ‘Well, great.’

“Luckily, Max missed the turn two exit and I got under him, but even after that, I was still being shown the top, so I don’t know,” he added. “We’ll have to regroup and come up with a better plan for tomorrow.”

Bob Pierce noted afterward that from his vantage point he feared the outside was still viable for someone to make a banzai bid on the final lap and Sheppard, who ultimately finished 0.390 of a second behind Bobby in second place, would likely try the move. Sheppard remained tucked behind Bobby, however, and happily settled for runner-up money, which he said “we’ll take” after a frustrating Thursday outing during which he “couldn’t even get around the track” in his Longhorn Factory Team entry.

Bobby Pierce wasn’t thrilled with the feel of his car, but his positioning led to another victory.

“I was too tight,” said Pierce, whose only previous Knoxville triumph came in a 2022 preliminary feature. “I don’t know if something happened to the car, but I felt like I started leaning over on the right-rear a little before halfway in the race.

“Normally I’ve been pretty balanced, and there was a point when it started getting there and then it got worse and worse. It was so bad that I thought the right-rear tire was gonna go flat, so I felt more comfortable on the bottom (because) the top’s super flat and it almost feels like it’s got opposite banking.”

Blair’s misstep moments after taking the lead was a godsend to Pierce as well.  The 34-year-old Lucas Oil Series regular acknowledged that he effectively let the race slip through his fingers.

“I passed him in the rubber, and literally, down the frontstretch, I’m like, ‘All I gotta do is not miss the rubber and I just won this race. I won a Lucas race at Knoxville and I passed Bobby Pierce to do it,’” said Blair, who finished third. “And I think I got too conservative, and I just got in there (turn one) a little bit too straight and, like, my right-front missed the rubber in the center of the corner and as soon as it did it just shot out across the racetrack.

“This place is just so weird. Like, if you miss your line by an inch, you go half a second slow, and I just missed it by an inch and it cost me the race. When Brandon got back by me too, I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ But my fault. I gave that one away.”

With Blair already circling the bottom in his march forward, he was right where he needed to be to take advantage of the surface rubbering.

“I’d been running there, and I knew it was latching up and I knew Bobby was getting impatient with that lapped car, which I was charging real hard trying to get to him because I thought he might peak out and try the outside,” Blair said. “As soon as he did it, I knew that was my opportunity.

“And it was all there. I should’ve won the race and I ran third. I just messed up. Those opportunities don’t come every day, so that one sucks.”

Blair consoled himself by looking on the bright side of his performance, which secured him the sixth starting spot for Saturday’s 75-lap finale as he seeks to better his 19th-place finish last year in his only previous Knoxville Nationals appearance.

“If anyone would’ve told me five years ago that I’d run third at Knoxville and I’d be pissed off when the race was over,” Blair said, “I probably wouldn’t have believed them.”

Pierce, meanwhile, will lead Saturday’s feature field to the green flag from the pole position. A victory would not only be his first-ever in the Knoxville Nationals but also his seventh win worth at least $50,000 this season and tie his 2023 checkered flag total of 34.

“That’s the goal,” said Pierce, whose best finish in five career Knoxville Nationals finale starts is third in 2016 (he started from the pole in his last attempt in 2022 and led laps 9-10 before mechanical woes forced him out for a 26th-place finish). “That’s what we’re here to do. We’re not here to run second. It’s a good payoff ($25,000) for second, but kind of like the World (100 that he captured two weeks ago at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway), I just wanna win it.”