For Pierce, any time he gets a chance to come and race at Eldora is a special one, considering it is a venue that’s not often visited by dirt late models, his primary discipline.

“It’s the NASCAR scene … that’s the best way I can describe it,” Pierce said. “That’s what makes doing this truly special, because it’s not what I’m used to but it’s a big, big deal. I mean, you can already say we’ve come that close to winning a NASCAR race. If we could pull that off for Mike … who has been with the Truck Series almost since the beginning … he’s given me a lot of chances and I’d really like to repay him with a trophy. It’d be a piece of history.”

“To have all of Mike’s guys working on this truck — which is something else I’m not used to; I’m used to one or two crew guys — that’s really special to me as well and I can’t thank them enough for giving me this opportunity.”

The 20-year-old stopped short when asked if he would ever consider a switch to NASCAR racing full-time.

Pierce has driven in a total of seven Truck races for Mittler, with his biggest pavement starts coming at Kansas Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway last spring, but circled sponsorship as being a key hang-up for his advancement down that road.

“Full-time’s pretty hard. You’ve got to have some sponsorship. If a big sponsor came on board and wanted to do it right, then I probably would make the jump … because that’s the elite in racing, right there. But it’s really hard to find a partner like that, so as of right now, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and see what shakes out.”

Coming off his third-straight ‘Hell Tour’ UMP late model championship, tying him with Dennis Erb Jr. (2007-09) for most consecutive titles, Pierce reflected on his most recent run of success and the road on which he won the title.

“This year’s title was all about consistency,” he said. “There’s a lot of tough competition on the Summernationals tour and it’s always difficult to get wins, let alone championships like we have. The last two nights we had 59 cars show up to try and qualify for the mains, so it’s a deep, deep field. It made me that much more proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish the last three years.”

“We’re on three right now, but hopefully next year we can go for four. I want to keep winning them as long as I can, man. That’d be a record next year if we could go four-in-a-row … no one’s ever done that and it would be cool to be the first.”

Would it be as cool as winning the Truck race Wednesday night?

“Not quite that cool,” Pierce laughed. “Winning the Truck race … would be probably the highlight of my career.”

About the Writer

Jacob Seelman is the Managing Editor of Race Chaser Online and creator of the Motorsports Madness radio show, airing at 7 p.m. Eastern every Monday on the Performance Motorsports Network.

Seelman grew up in the sport, watching his grandparents co-own the RaDiUs Motorsports NASCAR Cup Series team in the 1990s.

The 23-year-old is currently studying Broadcast Journalism at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., and is also serving as the full-time tour announcer for the Must See Racing Sprint Car Series.

Email Jacob at: editor@racechaseronline.com

Follow on Twitter: @Speed77Radio or @JacobSeelman77

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