Tyler Carpenter gladly prefers Friday’s bumpy track conditions at the Gateway Dirt Nationals over Thursday’s smooth, glassy racing surface. And his mind doesn’t change on the matter even if the very conditions he favors soiled his prelim night on Friday, when the rough track surface broke something in the rear suspension and sent him spinning around.

“As a racer, nobody likes the holes. But nobody likes follow-the-leader either,” Carpenter said.

Being a two-time winner of the Gateway Dirt Nationals, and with the notion that the fifth-mile brings the best out of Carpenter each year, it could be assumed that the Parkersburg, W.Va., driver doesn’t have a glaring weakness at The Dome. Friday, though, exposed Carpenter’s biggest challenge of the week.

“I’ve been fighting a bounce on this thing since I’ve been here,” Carpenter said. “I tried changing the right-rear shock to a different valving, but, man, that wasn’t the answer. I changed the J-bar and that wasn’t the answer. To be honest, I need that deck bounce out of it, so that way I can start running hard and getting after it. … I’m in a little rut and have to dig ourselves out of the hole for tomorrow.”

Three laps into Friday’s prelim, Carpenter, running ninth at the time, struck a series of bumps through turns three and four, and couldn’t emerge unscathed. Carpenter’s car then snapped sideways, thus triggering a multicar collision behind him.

“Had every right to break. I was bouncing 20-foot in the air,,” Carpenter said. “It felt like. Man, as I said, get that deck bounce out of the thing and try to make some headway. It’s going to be tough tomorrow night. But we’ll give it all we got and try to make some headway on it.”

The excessive turbulence Carpenter is fighting might not be something fixable at the racetrack. It may have to require Carpenter thoroughly searching his race machine over the winter to diagnose the issue.

“I’ve had the car pretty balanced out in years past being here,” Carpenter said."I don’t know if I have a shock going wrong or if there’s something else I’m overlooking. I’m not trying to look for excuses. At the end of the day, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on so I can run harder with these guys and put on a show for the fans.”

WATCH: Tyler Carpenter reacts to winning a second straight Gateway Dirt Nationals in 2021.

Carpenter, who will start fifth in Saturday’s sixth qualifier, hasn’t been that buried in a qualifying event at the Gateway Dirt Nationals since lining up sixth in his qualifier in 2018. He’s also never failed to qualify for the Saturday night finale since his Dome debut — a runner-up to Bobby Pierce — in 2017.

Then last year, as many recall, Carpenter rebounded from a prelim scrape with Hudson O’Neal to transfer to the Saturday finale via one of the qualifiers.

“Last year was probably one of my roughest ones here. But I still made some pretty good headway in the feature last year,” Carpenter said. “Man, I got my work cutout for me. It’s not going to be easy. … We’re going to have to start throwing some elbows tomorrow and get what we can while it’s getting good.”

Carpenter isn’t that envious of his father, Freddie, who excelled during Thursday’s prelim night on the smooth, rather calm racing surface. The younger Carpenter loves the thrill of The Dome, even if his back is against the wall this time around.

“At the end of the day, this place isn’t designed to be slow and slick,” Carpenter said. “This place is designed to put on a show for fans. Us racers know what to expect when we come here. Normally Thursday is the lay low, get the track packed in type of deal.

“Friday, it gets a little rough and rowdy. Then Saturday, it’s all out. I expect that track condition. And honest to God I expect it to be worse for tomorrow. But worse in a good way, for the fans and the drivers, that way you can maneuver around out there.”