VADO, N.M. (Jan. 7) — It’s one thing when Bobby Pierce is on kill mode, his car running so well the competition doesn’t seem to stand much of a chance. It’s another when the Oakwood, Ill., superstar doesn’t have an advantage by machine alone yet somehow wills himself to victory.

Of course, those cause-and-effect scenarios apply for any racer. But regarding Pierce, it’s especially glaring. If last year’s 34-win season wasn’t telling enough, let Sunday’s second-round bout of the Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout presented by O’Reilly Auto Parts at Vado Speedway Park be a reminder that Pierce’s willpower moves the needle like few other forces in the sport.

Chasing Mike Marlar and Kyle Larson for most of the 40-lap feature, Pierce didn’t have the car to keep up. But on the race’s final restart with five laps to go? Manhandle the thing and let sheer willpower win the day.

“Yeah, a lot of willpower,” Pierce said. “I thought I was going to knock the deck out of it five frigging times going into turn one. I was just sending it, right on the edge. Sometimes you have just enough. Tonight was one of those nights where we just barely squeezed by (Marlar). It was awesome.”

Two races into the new year and Pierce is ahead of his pace last season: One win in the bag, the other finish on Saturday a runner-up in which his harder tire choice didn’t pay off. Last year Pierce won his first race on the fourth night of the Wild West Shootout and proceeded to win another before the end of the week.

What’s striking this time around is that Pierce has been far from his sharpest, yet his scorecard doesn’t reflect that. Part of that is he’s pushing himself to raise his standards. How do you top a 34-win, three-title, million-dollar campaign? Go achieve more.

“I was joking around earlier and said we’re going to get 50 wins this year,” Pierce said. “That’s how we talk.”

Pierce did finish either second or third an additional 25 times last year, running his podium count to 59, so if he’s in the conversation for that many wins, why not try and capitalize? That was Pierce’s mentality on Sunday.

He rarely goes two straight races starting from the pole without at least a win (it’s only occurred twice the last three seasons combined), and that’s something Pierce refused to slip back into. Before the timely caution — untimely, however, for Marlar — with five laps to go, Pierce dueled fiercely with Kyle Larson. And it was in that exchange, with less than 10 laps remaining, Pierce’s race came to life.

“There were a couple times I was going to go in for a slider and had to back out,” Pierce said. “Larson’s the kind of driver, he’s experienced enough that he sees when I back out of the slider I was coming up close to him, and he motored around me. So, like, all of us race each other very, very aggressively. But very clean, too. That was the most aggressive we could be, but no one piled into anybody. Yeah, it was pretty fun.”

The race-winning pass on Marlar is one of Pierce’s signature maneuvers: Blast his car along the very top of one corner and unleash a slider that’s tricky for his opponent to counter in the following corner. Pierce’s slider left Marlar enough room to stay in the gas, but Marlar couldn’t keep the car pointed straight and therefore smacked the turn-four wall.

Some spectators greeted Pierce in victory lane with boos, which he’s not at all concerned with.

“I had that hole open and had to take it,” Pierce said. “Marlar didn’t seem to have an issue with it.”

Sunday’s exciting finish didn’t seem plausible earlier in the evening, a day marked by brutal conditions that saw winds gusts in excess of 40 mph that resulted in a dust storm sweeping over the Vado region. It’s another notch in Vado’s proverbial belt, a racetrack that finds ways to impress.

“From rubbered-up heat races, single-file, to that,” Pierce said after the Chad Bauman-led track crew reworked the surface before the features. “It goes to show, if you give it an effort … there are tracks out there, that no matter what they do sometimes, you won’t get that, but if you at least give it an effort, the racers will love you for it. And they truly did. The fans love it for them, too.

“The craziest thing about this racetrack is that it’ll change from night to night. They’ll give us different racing lines, whether it’s top or bottom. Three and four was pretty top dominant the first night and tonight we could run up there but couldn’t get way up by the wall because there wasn’t enough cushion. It was more dust.

“I knew if I was going to pass (Marlar) I was going to have to get a good run in one and two and kind of get under him there in turn three. Like I said, no top in three and four. I was hoping, as long as he stayed down in turn one — and he did — that’d give me a chance to get that run. I think if he would’ve moved up he probably would’ve gotten me there. That’s just how it goes sometimes. That’s the great thing about this racetrack. It’s a racy track.”

The only variables that make Pierce feel like he’s entering a quote-unquote new season is the turning of the calendar page and the breaking in of a new race car. It was only three weeks ago the 2023 season ended at the Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals, an event that ended prematurely when he crashed out of his qualifier.

“That makes it feel like the start of a new season just because you never know if there’s gremlins you have to work out,” Pierce said. “So far, it’s been perfect with that car. It’s fast out of the gate. We’ve been going hard in the shop; about used up every single day and any day we could, if it wasn’t a holiday.

“It’s tough, but it’s also good to keep going at it. You take a month off and you kind of feel rusty.”

Pierce won all of his races last year with only two cars. The purple-coated chassis that he crashed at the Gateway Dirt Nationals won 24 of those features, but it likely won’t be back in Pierce’s stable this year because the car needs repaired with a second front clip. Once Pierce gets the car back from Longhorn’s headquarters in China Grove, N.C., he’ll post it for sale.

“It’s still going to be a good car, but it’s good to get another one built,” said Pierce, whose second car from last year is his backup car this week.

That so-called backup car has had its moment of fame, too, accounting for Pierce’s Gopher 50 and USA Nationals wins in 2023. And for the road ahead, it took all but one week into the new year for Pierce to reach victory lane. He’s far from where he’d like to be and that’s OK because that’s not abnormal at this juncture in the year.

“I don’t know if we were the best car. We missed on some things. We’re trying to figure it out,” Pierce said. “This racetrack is just a difficult track in itself. The car, for how this track is, it’s difficult to figure this place out. To go and win the second night out in this new car, we’re pretty happy with it. We feel like we can, once again, continue to build on that.”