ROSSBURG, Ohio — In effect, Bobby Pierce called his shot. One month ago, after winning his first Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals, he asserted that the 44th annual General Tire Dirt Track World Championship presented by ARP was next on his hit list — and Saturday at Eldora Speedway, he checked that box.

Not surprisingly, just like he did at Knoxville, the 27-year-old superstar from Oakwood, Ill., stood in his trailer and immediately shifted his focus from the joy of adding the DTWC to his ever-growing list of accomplishments to thinking about another target.

“What’s next? Charlotte?” Pierce said, considering Nov. 6-9’s World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series-sanctioned World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C., where he’ll seek to claim his second straight WoO championship. “I haven’t won that. It’s not a hundred-grand to win, but it’s still a big deal.

“The Dream’s the next really big one I want to win,” he continued, referring to Eldora’s June event that is now the lone major he’s yet to win at the famed half-mile oval. “I’m putting that into existence now — I want to try and win the Dream next year. I was second this year.”

Who wouldn’t install Pierce as the 2025 Dream’s favorite now that he’s seemingly deciphered Eldora — his $100,000 DTWC victory came six weeks after he earned $57,000 for ending his eight-year checkered flag drought in the World 100 — and is closing out a truly historic season of Dirt Late Model racing? He’s a driver who is reaching the height of his powers, a driver who is displaying the skill and indomitable confidence of an all-time great.

Pierce was spectacular in 2023, tallying 34 wins, three national championships (WoO, Castrol FloRacing Night in America, XR Super Series) and $1.25 million in total earnings. He’s been even more remarkable this season with Saturday’s success putting him at 35 victories and vaulting him past the million-dollar mark for the second straight year (he’s just shy of $1.1 million).

“I didn’t reach a million (dollars) last year if you take out the points fund money,” said Pierce, whose three titles in 2024 were worth a combined $300,000. “This year just with purses I reached a million already. That’s pretty incredible. I thought it would be hard to top last year, but this year has definitely topped it by a lot.”

It’s been an otherworldly campaign for Pierce, who has had a stranglehold on the No. 1 spot in DirtonDirt.com’s Top 25 power rankings since early July. That’s when he began his amazing run in events paying $50,000-or-more to win; he’s made 10 of his 11 starts this season in such high-paying races since then and owns eight victories, two runner-up finishes and one third-place result.

Those eight triumph include six crown jewels: the Prairie Dirt Classic (his first), USA Nationals (second), North-South 100 (third), World 100 (second), Knoxville Nationals (first) and Saturday’s DTWC, which he called “awesome” to finally win.

Before the weekend, he was reading the names of previous DTWC winners.

“It was in my mind like, OK, you’ve won lots of races this year, and you’ve won the World, we’re good at Eldora … this is a race I definitely want to win,” he said.

HIGHLIGHTS: 2024 Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway

The DTWC hasn’t exactly been kind to Pierce, however, over the course of his career. He noted that “there’s actually been a few years I skipped it” during its run at Portsmouth (Ohio) Raceway Park, where his failed to qualify three times (2012, ’14, ’16) and logged pedestrian finishes in his three feature starts of 22nd (’15), 12th (’18) and sixth (’19). He recorded another sixth-place finish in last year’s event debut at Eldora, but that was a survival-of-the-fittest affair on a rain-softened track and he actually ran out of fuel with a few laps remaining while running third.

Pierce also has never started better than 10th in a DTWC headliner, a trend that continued Saturday when he took the green flag from the 14th starting spot. But the midpack position didn’t hamper Pierce, who steadily climbed forward with his Longhorn Chassis that became quicker as the race wore on.

The possibility of a victory really hit Pierce when a caution flag flew on lap 64 for nine-time Eldora crown jewel winner Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., whose motor expired in a puff of smoke entering turn one just after he had passed Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., for the lead. 

“Tonight, if J.D. didn’t blow his motor, who knows?” Pierce said. “Maybe we still could’ve won, maybe not. It sucks to see that for him.”

But Pierce felt he was firmly in contention “because I had actually saw T-Mac in second right before the caution came out,” he said. “I was getting a little better, and then the restart came and I passed (Josh) Rice for third. I was running that bottom line down there in turn three, and those guys (leaders McCreadie and Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz.) were there and I was like right there on ‘em, and I felt better, so I was like, ‘OK, this is our opportunity to get it.’ ”

The normally unflappable Pierce had to overcome some jitters, though, as he looked to close the deal.

“Any time you try to win a race for your first time, a race like this I’ve never won, you’re always a little, I’d say, more nervous,” Pierce said. “Maybe not nervous, but more anxious, because, like, I knew I had the car to win at that moment, so I had to keep hitting my marks and get through lapped traffic.”

After overtaking Thornton for second on lap 75, Pierce ran down McCreadie and threw a slide job through turns one and two to gain command for good on lap 84. He used a different path than he did in his World 100 triumph, when “a thin cushion against the wall” had him running a razor’s edge.

“We actually had a pretty good battle there,” Pierce said of McCreadie, who finished second after leading a race-high 79 laps. “It took me a while to catch him. He started changing his line down in one and two, dropping down, and he had run some of the bottom in three, but I feel like I was really the only car running the bottom like I was running it in three. That was my money corner. It was kind of weird — a lot of times here I feel like one and two is my money corner, where I gain on cars.

“One and two, I thought the cushion was gonna go all the way to the wall and it didn’t because it actually formed a curb, so it made it super hard to run the top. Thornton jumped the cushion bad, Hudson (O’Neal) jumped it when he slid (Mike) Marlar and parked it and I had to miss him. It was treacherous up there. Every lap around one and two, you would feel like it was Fairbury, hitting the curb, but we’re going way faster.

“I never hit it bad,” he added. “Under caution I looked at it and noticed it was a hard curb, like it wasn’t going anywhere, and I had known if I was gonna do a slider or something, be careful. You could get past it on the exit of turn two — that’s the only spot there wasn’t a curb.”

Turns three and four were different from the World 100 as well.

“The reason it went to the bottom tonight (in three and four) where the World still had a top, was because — and I told Bob (his father and crew chief) this before the race and he didn’t believe me — but I knew what the track was like that night and three and four tonight had way less of a top,” Pierce said. “Even at the start of the race, if you wanted to run the cushion in three and four, there was no cushion. It was just kind of loose dirt. There wasn’t actually something to lean on. 

“So every time I ran the top in three and four I lost two car lengths on the guy in front of me. I knew my corner down there was gonna have to be something different, and I was actually pretty good running the middle. I could go in there, come down … I had a good car. I definitely knew I had a top-three car, and at the very end I had a first-place car.”

One factor in Pierce’s march to victory remained the same from the World 100: he had no one signaling him.

“We can’t see much here,” Pierce said, referring to crew members in the infield. “So yesterday (during the heats) we could signal with sticks along the fence line. Tonight they said, ‘All right, everybody’s gotta stay in turn three (to signal).’ And I told (his crew), ‘I can’t see down here, so screw it. I’ll just run my race.’ It’s kind of what we did at the World too — I just kind of ran my race and it worked out.

“But I did tell them, if I take the lead, someone run down there (to turn three) with the sticks and I’ll try to see ‘em. But I never saw anybody. 

“You see what you can on the Jumbotron (outside turn two) when they show you, but a lot of times I feel like when you take the lead they’re almost trying to not show too much even if there is a battle, so you’re kind of worrying, thinking,” he continued. “But when I passed T-Mac for the lead, the next lap I looked and they were showing me (on the screen), and there was, like, nobody behind me, so I was like, ‘Well, we must be pretty good.’ ”

Pierce ran away and hid over the final 16 laps, beating McCreadie by a commanding margin of 8.717 seconds — nearly a half-track margin. He became the fifth youngest winner of the DTWC — surpassed in youth only by Garrett Smith (19 when he won in 2022), Brandon Sheppard (20 in ’13), Marshall Green (23 in ’97) and Donnie Moran (26 in ’88) — and the first driver not named Jonathan Davenport or Brandon Overton to capture consecutive majors at Eldora since Billy Moyer swept the Dream and World 100 in 2010.

There was a difference in the postrace atmosphere following Pierce’s World 100 and DTWC victories. He noticed it when he emerged from his car on the winner’s stage and also later in the pit area when the procession of fans visiting his pit area wasn’t as lengthy as it was last month.

“Someone said, ‘How was the boos?’ ” said Pierce, who typically receives one of the loudest mixed reactions from Eldora’s fans. “And I was like, ‘Well, there was like a quarter of the people up there, so I don’t know.’ It was mostly cheers I guess. I looked up at the crowd and it wasn’t dead-packed (like at the World 100). There were less people, and I think a lot of people were leaving (soon after the checkered flag) from the cold.”

The race’s reduced attendance — plus the fact that Pierce shared the postrace spotlight with Thornton, who was crowned the 2024 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion — certainly didn’t hinder Pierce’s enjoyment of his latest conquest. He’s become addicted to winning and he fulfilled those desires inside him, happily noting that his team has “shined this year when the lights are on and cameras are on, in the big race, the big moments.”

“It’s great,” he said of adding another flourish to his sublime season. “People talk about goals and stuff, so you gotta envision it. A few years back I had won a lot of races in the Pierce car … I’ve always been super, super competitive. Like, I don’t like to finish second, and I feel like Bob’s kind of instilled that in me. Like, times we’ve run second, he’s not happy.

“But I’ve always been competitive. I’ve always been a sore loser — I definitely get that from my mom. So it’s like, we strive to be first. If we would’ve finished second tonight, that would’ve been great, but you always want first.

“One thing about it is, I’m always looking to the next race,” he continued. “It’s great, I’m very humbled. Next year could be not even half as good as this — we all know how it’s really a roller-coaster sport so you take it when you can get it. But I want … like, my goals are to be the Scott Bloomquist (level) domination, you know, just dominate, but it’s tough. You go to the next race and get your ass kicked and you’re like, ‘We suck,’ and you’re down. That’s just how that thing goes.”