FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 23) — If Bobby Pierce wasn’t already the betting favorite to win Saturday’s Prairie Dirt Classic, he certified his status with a $20,000 victory in Wednesday’s 50-lap FloRacing Night in America presented by Kubota-sanctioned One for the Road at Fairbury Speedway.

But are the lofty expectations wearing on him? Are they pressing down on his shoulders and making him dread the weekend?

Not at all. Not after last year. It’s Serenity Now for the 28-year-old superstar from Oakwood, Ill., who, after winning the PDC for the first time one year ago, is finally free of the burden that strangled him after a seemingly never-ending string of heartbreaking near-misses in the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series event.

“Heading into this weekend there’s not as much pressure, of course, because I got that PDC,” Pierce said with a satisfied smile while sitting in air-conditioned comfort at the table in his toterhome following a scorching-hot Wednesday program.

Pierce looked like a loose, carefree driver in his march to the midweek checkered flag, one who’s anxious to chase a second straight PDC triumph rather than obsessing over all the bad things that could steal his glory as he did in past years. He needed a mere 13 laps to charge forward from the sixth starting spot and overtake Ryan Unzicker of El Paso, Texas, for the lead, then turned back a late-race challenge from Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., to win going away by 3.266 seconds over Fairbury’s 2024 FloRacing Night victor.

It was a run that wiped away any lingering uncertainty Pierce had about his chances this weekend.

“We weren't very good at the Lucas (Oil Late Model Dirt Series) race here (on May 10),” Pierce said. “I mean, I got third, but I was having to drive my d--- off to get third. Like, the car wasn’t good. We weren’t very good that night. 

“And so I hot-lap tonight, and I was like, ‘Man, I just don’t feel that great.’ However, we realize I had chokes in the engine still from last weekend (at Huset’s Speedway’s Silver Dollar Nationals), so luckily one of (the crew members) caught that before I qualified. So then qualifying was better.”

Pierce went on to win his heat, and then the moves he pulled off behind the wheel of his Longhorn Chassis to reach the front of the field in the feature came to him like they were second nature. On lap 11, for instance, he spotted an opening between Tanner English of Benton, Ky., and Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill., and shot through it entering turn one to grab second. One circuit later Pierce dove underneath Unzicker in turn three when he saw an opportunity and, after some contact exiting turn four, swept into the lead.

“Once it came in, like, the car came in fast,” Pierce said. “I think I kind of changed my line. I was kind of following Tanner, and once I followed him, I was fast, and then I split him and I think it was Erb going into turn one. And it seemed like once I got to second, then like the next lap I was in the lead. I don't know. It seemed like it happened quick.”

Pierce was still far from home free after snatching the top spot. He soon had Thornton bearing down on him, and, after a lap-28 restart, RTJ turned up the wick.

Thornton kept nosing underneath Pierce through the corners. Pierce responded by shifting his line lower on lap 36, but he wasn’t sure if that was the correct strategy. His father and crew chief, Bob, said afterward that he “didn’t know where to tell him to go” during the particularly frenetic stretch.

“That bottom had some good moisture,” Pierce said. “I knew it, and every time I was on the top I could see (Thornton) down there. And I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know what to do. Do I kind of like middle-line, top, bottom? I don’t know. I wasn’t very good on the bottom, so …”

Pierce determined that his best course of action was to prepare for a bomb from Thornton and be positioned correctly to fend it off.

“Well, looking back at it now, you know, Ricky had a 2 (compound tire) on the left-rear,” said Pierce, who had a harder 3-compound tire on his car’s left-rear corner. “I thought I knew that, but in the midst of the time, I didn’t really think about it. I was like, ‘Man, he’s right there, he’s right there.’ And I was like, ‘Eventually, I’m going to have to do a crossover. I know he’s going to slide me.’

“And he eventually did in turn one (on lap 38), and I got the good crossover (in return) and I was like, ‘Oh, I watched him and J.D. (eventual third-place finisher Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga.) in that heat race and they were going at it (for the lead).’ I was like, ‘Man, I just got to get away from him, you know?’

“And then we caught the lapped cars right around that same time, and that’s what kind of … once (Thornton) had to maneuver off the bottom, he said it, he got stuck behind like (Tyler) Bruening or whatever, and then I think his left-rear (tire) kind of wore out.”

Pierce glided away over the final 12 laps, leaving Thornton a straightaway behind on the quarter-mile bullring. Pierce rang up his 22nd overall feature win of 2025, which leaves him close to the pace he set on his way to 38 wins last year (the PDC was his 24th victory of ’24) and ready to defend his triumph in a $50,000-to-win race that before last year left him with conflicted feelings.

“Always in the past, like, honestly, I never really looked forward much to this race, because, yeah, like, it did kind of haunt me,” said Pierce, whose triumph last year came in his 12th career attempt at the PDC dating back to 2011 when he was just 14. “It was like, ‘Man, what's gonna happen? What do I have to do to win this race? Like, what are we doing wrong?’

“Also, like, in the same sense, the race was getting bigger and it was growing. Especially like (three) years ago, when they added the lap money (of $500-per-led lap), I was like, you know, this race is getting bigger, it’s getting more attention, more eyeballs are on this race. And it’s like, this is a race that I want to win, like, so bad.

“And when it happened, of course, the way it happened, like, I’ve told everyone, it’s going to be super hard for a race to top that.”

The extreme competitive streak in Pierce, however, makes him strive to somehow, someway, win in even more memorable fashion that last year when he started 24th in the 100-lapper, spun on lap 60 while running fourth, and rallied from the rear to pass Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C., for the victory on the final lap. He feels no anxiety about the PDC like in the past, but he still is challenging himself to repeat.

“I was like on a podcast or something this week and I told them, I was like, you know, you win a race and really, like, the pressure’s still kind of there because you want to win it again,” Pierce said. “You’re like, ‘OK, I won it last year. How can I beat last year?’

“I can’t beat it. You can only match it. So, like, the pressure’s kind of on to match it, right? You don’t want to take it a step back.”

Pierce is really just happy that he can stand in the Fairbury pit area now and not have everyone asking him, “Is this the year you’re finally going to win the PDC?”

“That’s a very good point,” Pierce said. “It’s kind of like the World 100 (at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway) in a sense of, like, I won the World in 2016, and then just year after year I didn’t win it (until last year), and so it was like, you know, are you going to get that second World? For sure that was annoying.”

Pierce has eliminated that line of questioning thanks to his ’24 dramatics. He acknowledged, though, that he will have to deal with another popular one for at least a while longer.

“This is the only race where, like, people can say, ‘Hey, your dad won five of these. You got a long ways to go to catch them.’ And I guess they can still say that,” Pierce said with a smile.