For the second year in a row Tyler Erb will have a difficult road ahead of him in pursuit of another Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals Arch trophy at The Dome at America's Center. 

A flat tire with two laps remaining in his heat on Thursday's preliminary night caused the New Waverly, Texas, driver to finish ninth in the eight-lap qualifier and miss out on starting one of the evening's two B-mains. Because of the tight-quartered fifth-mile layout, finishers third through sixth across the six heat races transfer to consolation races.

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Heat race finishes worse than sixth mean that a driver's prelim night is done with, which is what happened exactly to the 2022 Gateway Dirt Nationals winner Thursday.

“I ran over some debris in turn two and it is what it is," the 27-year-old Erb said. "There’s nothing you can do about it. Hopefully, I don’t even know, I guess I’m in some sort of race on Saturday, right? We’ll try again then.”

If there's a silver lining, it's that Erb's prelim night Thursday didn't go as awful as last year's. Erb lost a transfer spot from his heat because his transponder was mounted in the wrong spot, a penalty that docked him three positions, making him finish fifth instead of second. A flat tire soiled his B-main two laps in and he was credited with 12th, setting himself up to start 13th in one of Saturday's qualifiers.

Erb eventually used a past winner's provisional to make the 40-lap finale where he charged from 20th to finish sixth. He'll hope to avoid racing the non-qualifiers portion of the consolations.

“I mean, if I can race, I feel like I can win from anywhere," Erb said. "Last year I ran sixth from 20th with like one caution. Right there (before the flat tire Thursday), I passed a bunch of cars. Just had a flat. Sucked a little bit in qualifying, but right now the luck is not our way.”

Erb buried himself in qualifying Thursday, timing 21st of 33 cars in Group B. He made his way to fourth from the seventh-starting spot by lap six of eight in his heat race until the tire gave away. Erb made sure to emphasize that “I’m not mad" and he simply "had a flat and it didn’t pan out for me today.”

What's been different for Erb the last two years is that his prelim night has been Thursday rather than Friday. Erb raced his prelim on Friday the year he won in 2022 and he implies that in hindsight that might've been a bigger boost for him.

“The past two years, Thursday has been way dry, and that kind of sucks for sure," Erb said. "Like, tomorrow will be baha and get it on, and it’ll be awesome. Right there the top was getting pretty good. The bottom was whatever. Hopefully Saturday I can pass a bunch of cars. That’s all I can do or maybe they’ll give me a provisional again.”