Bobby continued his torrid pace Friday night, winning the $15,000 World of Outlaws Late Model Series feature at River Cities (ND) Speedway to earn his fourth consecutive series victory and eighth win in his last nine starts.
Starting third, Bobby wasted little time moving toward the front. He grabbed second down the backstretch on the opening lap and pulled alongside the race leader one circuit later as the pair battled for the top spot.
By lap eight, Bobby was glued to the leader’s rear bumper as the frontrunners encountered lapped traffic.
The decisive moment came three laps later.
Diving to the bottom entering turn one on lap 11, Bobby completed the winning pass as the leader became bottled up behind a slower car and nearly spun, allowing Bobby to race away with the lead.
A caution one lap later erased his early advantage, but it proved to be little more than a temporary interruption.
Once racing resumed, Bobby steadily built his lead, stretching the margin to 2.7 seconds by lap 22.
Lapped traffic again tightened the race during the closing stages. With eight laps remaining, Bobby’s advantage had shrunk to just over one second as he worked through slower cars, but he maintained his composure and held off the late charge to claim the victory by 0.5 seconds.
“I definitely doubted myself coming into it,” Bobby said. “But we got a little bit of good luck on our side in the heat race, and that got us a good starting spot in the feature. The car stuck on the bottom for the first couple laps and got me to second, and then I realized it was time to get up.”
As darkness settled over the speedway, Bobby faced another challenge behind the wheel.
“I couldn’t see my signal guy at all. It was so dark on the backstretch,” he said. “I didn’t really know where second place was at all, and every time I’d come off the corner the board never showed me. I was pretty blind out there, and I ran out of tear-offs about halfway through the race.”
The closing laps proved especially difficult as visibility continued to worsen.
“The last couple laps I was really struggling,” Bobby added. “I was trying my best to wipe my shield, but the mud was just sticking to it. The last lap got pretty interesting. I thought I might have gave it up. I kind of got hung out in the middle.”
Bobby credited the team’s preparation for helping put him in Victory Lane for the first time at River Cities.
“It’s awesome to finally win here and just have a good car,” he said. “We thought long and hard about it yesterday. We studied lots of film and just thought about what to do to the race car. The attributes of this racetrack, how it kind of bleeds back as the night goes on, we kind of have to do different stuff than what we normally do.”
The victory marked Bobby’s 14th World of Outlaws triumph of the season.