Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Pierce Wins Wild XR Series Event at Dubuque

 The XR Super Series for Late Models made a stop at the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway on Monday night, July 10th and Bobby Pierce won one of the wilder Late Model races on the season to date with a late race pass on Devin Moran to secure the win. 

There would be four different leaders in this fifty lap main which would have more than its share of wild and unpredictable moments that would include two different leaders having to forfeit their running spots when flat tires would befall them. A couple even had to deal with multiple flats and unbelievably, both would still finish in the top five in the final running order.

Drama would be the name of the game on this Monday night in extreme northeastern Iowa with more twists and turns in this race during during a cheap soap opera on tv. It made for great theatre and the crowd was entertained highly by this wild event. 

A star packed field of forty Late Model drivers, featuring the best from multiple sanctioning bodies, would sign in for this event and very hot and windy Monday night. The track had entertained a regular show of racing in multiple classes on their normal Sunday night on the eve of this race and had a number of uncharacteristic difficulties, including a very dusty and rough race track. This led to concern among the fans that were returning for the Monday night show that more would be in the cards on Monday, especially given the difficult weather circumstances when it came to trying to get moisture into the racing surface. 

However, that proved to not be the case at all. The track prep crew was somehow able to get the track nice and wet and actually led to some extra needed track packing to make it raceable early. Over the course of the night, the track held up nicely and provided multi lane racing as well as a nice healthy berm for the rim runners to bank off of which led to much exciting passing and side by side racing. Any concerns about the track itself were quickly squashed and the big field of Late Models would have plenty of track to race on. 

Interestingly, the program would be a one class only program with no support classes at all. I imagine that I must have seen this at some point along the way although I don't remember running into this recently anywhere. It made for some positive points but also there were times when at least one other class would have been nice to have on the grounds. The Late Models, I'm sure, would have been more than thrilled to relinquish their track packing to some other division and later one during the evening, when some thunderstorms started to loom on the horizon and the show was moved into warp speed to beat any possible weather, the turn around time for some of the cars was brutally short, putting the pit crews under the gun. 

Also, the Late Models pitted up on the hill to the East of the main grandstand and parking lot for this show, a strategy used a few times in recent years. It is a bless for the race teams to pit on blacktop and also provides much easier access for the fans to visit the pits both before the show and after its conclusion. However, on the down side, it takes away a considerable amount of valuable spectator parking and with the crowd on hand, many found themselves a considerable distance away from the main gates with a long walk ahead of them. Much of the Fair packing to the West was available but without the gates on that end of the grounds open, it made for a long walk indeed and it would have been nice with some pre planning to have provided some shuttle transportation to the main entrance for the fans. 

The extra "juice" in the track made for a fast one and Ricky Thornton Jr set a new track record in qualifying with a time of 14.191 seconds. and while often a blinding fast track is not a racy one, this track came in nicely and provided some excellent racing, particularly by feature time. 

The program would include four heats, a pair of B Features and a fifty lap main event. Twenty two cars would qualify for the main with Brian Shirley the series provisional and Luke Merfeld winning the blind draw to become the final entrant. The heat races, while all were won from the front row, provided some hard racing and heart break for both Frankie Heckenast and Bone Larson saw late race drama in the B Features rob them of feature starting spots. 

There would be four different leaders in the Feature race, seven yellows and plenty of drama in between. Thornton Jr would start on the pole and he seemed fast to the point that perhaps no one was going to catch him. Moran, Brandon Sheppard and Hudson O'Neal would chase him in the early going with three yellows in the first eleven laps. The first big change occurred when Sheppard got a flat while battling with Pierce for third, triggering a yellow and sending Brandon in for a tire change. 

Thornton's reign up front would last only four more laps when he also got a flat, this time while still leading the pack and he also triggered a yellow as he made a tire change. This would give O'Neal the lead with Moran, Pierce and Mike Marlar chasing him. 

But it happened once again as on lap eighteen after Tyler Erb and Merfeld had a grinding crash in turn one, O'Neal had a tire go down while he was leading and he too headed to the infield pit for new rubber. 

Moran would now be the leader with Pierce all over him, trying several times with slide jobs to take over the lead but each time Moran would cross him back over and continue as the front runner. Near the halfway point of the race, both O'Neal and Thornton Jr would pit a second time with another flat for each but the rapidly diminishing field would still allow them to work their way back into contention late in the contest. 

A wild battle for position would see both Brian Shirley and Marlar disabled within the last ten laps of the race, setting up two quick sprints to the finish. The final one, with just five laps to go would give Pierce one last shot at Moran. And with just three laps to go, Pierce would hammer the cushion in turn one, get a great run down the back chute and slide under Moran for the lead with Devin just not quick enough to return the favor. Pierce would then step away just far enough that Devin couldn't get back to him and would then drive on for another twenty grand for the win. Moran would finish second and Sheppard, despite a tire change early, would work his way back into a close third and challenging at the end. Both Thornton Jr and O'Neal would overcome double flat tires to round out the top five with only half the field finishing the race. 

Most of the finishers looked like they had been in a war as the track raced fast and hard and while providing much entertainment for the fans, would prove to be a telling one for many of the teams. One can only guess that a lot of man hours will be spent putting things back together with a lot of the teams having a very quick turnaround time until the next important race as it is now that time of the year when something big is happening multiple times for most of these racers. 

For the fans, it was a highly entertaining race that was put on and it was nice to see enough "juice" put into the track that it would hold up for fifty laps and provide the same quality of racing from start to finish. Dubuque has a history of providing some excellent racing and that would hold up on this Monday. 

The crowd was gigantic for this event with long lines of fans waiting to buy their tickets as staff was close to being overwhelmed several times by all the fans wanting to get in and lines I hadn't seen too often for quite some time. I was surprised to see Summer Nationals announcer make yet another side trip in between his duties with that series as he functioned as Race Director on this night. He certainly is putting some serious miles on his new camper for sure.

Special thanks to Operations Manager Bucky Doran for his help on this night as he was enjoying a relatively short trip to carry out his functions on this occasion and getting to see many of the fellow Hawkeye state folks that he worked with for years in his variety of functions within racing. 

Next up for the XR Series is a two day show on July 24th and 25th at the Off Road Raceway in Norfolk Nebraska with a huge one hundred thousand dollar top prize awaiting the winner on July 25th.  

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