Starting from the pole at Arrowhead (OK) Speedway, Bobby put on a masterclass through lapped traffic, dominating the World of Outlaws Sooner State Showdown for $20,000 on Saturday night. The triumph was his 11th WoO win of the season—his fourth in a row—and the 42nd of his career, tying him for fifth all-time. It also marked career win No. 350 across all divisions.
Bobby slipped to second on the opening circuit, then regrouped after a lap-3 caution. At the stripe on lap 4, he dove low, slid into turn one, and claimed the lead. From there, the ‘Smooth Operator’ went to work in traffic, catching the tail of the field by lap 11 and carving through backmarkers with precision.
He built a 2.0-second cushion by lap 20, and by lap 29 had three lapped cars separating him from second place. The margin ticked up—2.1 seconds on lap 30, 2.2 on lap 31—as Bobby methodically stretched the gap. He had lapped up to 11th by lap 41, surviving a major scare that same lap when a lapped car bobbled up the track and Bobby had to swerve right to avoid contact.
A lap-43 caution erased what had been a 2.4-second advantage, but the final restart went Bobby’s way. He managed the closing laps cleanly and won by 1.6 seconds at the checkers.
“This track is a lot like a track I grew up racing a lot of laps on, which is Tri-City,” Bobby said. “The old Tri-City, anyways—it would get just like that. How it had lots of stripey spots. And one lap, you kind of push. The next lap, you slide. And you just got to hit it right. And it gets up there to the wall. All weekend it hadn’t widened out that much. This is a very wide track. And it got really wide tonight. A lot of fun. Lots of room to maneuver around past the lap cars. And that was a lot of fun going through lap traffic. Felt like we were getting through there really good. Car was pretty maneuverable as long as I got it turned. An awesome weekend for us. I always wanted to come here for a long time. Finally, to be here in front of these Oklahoma fans—thank you, guys, for coming out. What an awesome week.”
With the points race on his mind, Bobby added: “We’re just trying to gain the point lead, grow it as much as we can. We had about this point lead and then we had a couple of rough nights. Now we’re back on track.”