QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. (Jan. 15) — Tyler Erb was standing behind his Best Performance Motorsports car, rehashing his stirring victory in Friday night’s 30-lap Keyser Manufacturing Wild West Shootout feature at FK Rod Ends Arizona Speedway, when his crew chief, Randall Edwards, suddenly appeared to ask a question.

“Hey, did your ass pucker up when you made it three-wide back there?” Edwards said, recalling one particularly memorable moment during Erb’s march to the $5,000 winner’s prize. “That one time … whew!”

Erb, 24, of New Waverly, Texas, broke into a bright, knowing smile, well aware of the instance Edwards was mentioning. It had come on lap 12, and boy, was it ever a take-your-breath-away maneuver.

Running third, several car lengths behind race-long pacesetter Jason Papich of Nipomo, Calif., and Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., Erb sailed around the top of turns one and two with the leaders tucked much lower on the 3/8-mile oval as they approached the slower car piloted by Gordy Gundaker of St. Charles, Mo. To the naked eye there wasn’t but a sliver of space between Thornton (on the inside) and Papich (in the middle of the track) as they exited the second corner, but Erb thought otherwise. He spotted an opening and, with his XR1 Rocket carrying a head of steam, he instinctively sought to fill it.

Striking in a manner worthy of his “Terbo” nickname, Erb vaulted off turn two, slid between Thornton and Papich with inches to spare on each side of his No. 1 machine and pulled ahead into turn three. That Erb actually didn’t lead lap 13 because Thornton dived under him off turn four to assume command was immaterial. The mere fact that Erb was able to split the gap with such aplomb was unforgettable — and it became even more significant after he went on to outduel the 30-year-old Thornton down the stretch to emerge triumphant.

As is usually the case with a driver who completes what to the untrained observer appears to be an impossible move, Erb didn’t act like the three-wide pass was especially worthy of acclaim. He calmly described its circumstances.

“I felt like I was better than them,” Erb said of the leaders he was chasing. “I could stay all the way up against the cushion where Thornton would kind of slide to it or come off, but he was definitely running the bottom better than anyone. And Papich, he would slide to (the cushion), where basically, I could get a really, really good run off the center of the top leaving both ends. I could just get in the cushion more.

“I hit it really, really good right there in (turns) one and two (on lap 12), and I was like, ‘Man, I’m going way faster than Papich, and I can see Thornton here and if (Papich) hits the brakes I’m probably not in a good spot because he’s gonna pass all of us.’

“I got it bent really, really hard, and I made sure I didn’t get on Papich. Thornton was like crowding, crowding, and was almost gonna use (Papich) as a pick, but he left me a lane and I was able to get by him and whoever we were lapping right there.

“It didn’t seem like there was much of a hole really, but when you have that much more speed you can really anticipate where Papich was going, and I could tell I was going down the straightaway faster than he was going out the exit. So I was like, ‘This is at least my chance to take the lead getting into three and I can maneuver with just Thornton. If I have both of them I’ll never get past them.’”

Erb paused, and then concluded: “I just threaded the needle and got lucky I guess.”

The race then became an epic battle between Erb and Thornton, who traded sliders in rapid-fire fashion for most of the remaining distance. Erb surged into the lead on lap 16, Thornton regained command on lap 21 and Erb went back ahead for good on the 24th circuit. With the exception of the ensuing three tours after Thornton slid high in turn two on lap 26 and lost ground to Erb, the two drivers ran close together and unofficially swapped the lead numerous times.

Thornton mounted one final charge on the final lap, but his attempt to slide Erb through turns one and two fell short and Erb pulled away to beat Thornton by a margin of 1.380 seconds that belied how tightly they raced.

“They was having a helluva show,” asserted third-place finisher Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., who threatened Erb and Thornton late in the distance but had his hopes for a third win in four WWS starts hampered by three caution flags on laps 17 and 18 that slowed his advance and a bent right-front suspension from a lap-16 scrape with Papich.

Erb was charged up by his struggle with Thornton and raved about the hard-but-clean competition the two engaged in.

“He left me a lot of room, and that just goes down to who you race with,” Erb said. “We race with a lot of ‘Darrells’ here — one’s obviously very fresh in my mind (noting his controversial run-in with fourth-place finisher Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., during last August’s USA Nationals) — but, I mean, I haven’t raced with Ricky that much, and obviously he has a tad bit of respect for me and in return I have a tad bit of respect for him.

“Shout out to him,” he added. “It takes two to tango, and he did me really, really right, and in return I feel like I raced him as hard as I could and as clean as I could.”

Thornton actually refrained from attempting a go-for-it-all move through turns three and four on the final lap, opting instead to take his last shot at the other end of the track because he thought Erb “was driving into three so hard, I think we probably would’ve wrecked if I would’ve tried to slide him off of four.” And in fact, Thornton didn’t even throw a full-throated slider on Erb in turns one and two with the white flag flying; he decided to “fake like I was going to throw a slider, and hope he overdrove and got into the wall.”

From Thornton’s vantage point, the difference was Erb’s control of the outside line after the Texan grabbed the lead on lap 24.

“I think had I been able to clear him one time down the front straightaway and entered high (in turn one) like I wanted, I might have been able to cross him off of two and then we would’ve been reversed (for the stretch run),” said Thornton, who won Sunday night’s 40-lap feature in his SSI Motorsports car. “I think that would’ve been good because in three and four there was still a lot up there to grab.”

While nothing was as dramatic as his three-wide explosion on lap 12, Erb made all the right moves in the closing stages, including on the deciding final lap.

“(Turns) one and two I felt more vulnerable, just because it’s such a wide corner,” Erb said when asked where he thought Thornton would challenge him on the last circuit. “And he was actually really good at circling the bottom, better than I was.

“Once I got clear (of Thornton after taking the lead on lap 24) I ran five laps up there and never really saw him try to slide me, so I was like, ‘Man, I think I got my momentum built up so if he does try to slide me in one and two, he’s gonna have to slide me and drive off or I’ll never get back by him.’ I just made the decision at the flagstand (at the white flag) that I was gonna enter at the top as hard as I was before and I got a really good run.”

According to Erb, a relatively lengthy pre-feature surface reconditioning overseen by Johnny Stokes, the promoter of Magnolia Motor Speedway in Columbus, Miss., who WWS promoter Chris Kearns brought in to handle Arizona Speedway’s track prep, laid the groundwork for the entertaining feature.

“It made it top dominant to an extent, but it didn’t rubber,” Erb said. “So that leaves the door open to slide people back-and-forth. That was the longest and most track prep they did, and I think it made the racing better. Doctor Dirt (Stokes’s nickname) did a good job tonight, so he can add that one to his belt.”

From the larger perspective, Erb’s first win of 2021 and his first-ever WWS triumph provided him a fine start to a busy opening stretch of his season. He will head back across the country immediately following Sunday’s $25,000-to-win WWS finale to kick off his Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series campaign on Jan. 22-23 at All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla., flush with the knowledge that he’s on par with Davenport and Thornton, two drivers who will join him as Lucas Oil regulars.

“Normally the last three years I’ve got to win in December in Australia, so I guess we set the bar in America (in 2021),” said Erb, whose only previous WWS appearance came in the 2017 edition at Arizona Speedway (his best finish in four events was ninth). “We’re one of the first ones to win, and I’m glad we came out here. It shows we’ve got a lot of speed. Those guys are ones we’re gonna race with every single night on the Lucas tour, so I’m glad they showed us where the bar needs to be and we didn’t just show up to Florida (for Georgia-Florida Speedweeks without tuneup races) because the Longhorn camp (with Davenport and Thornton) obviously is really, really fast right now.

“(Longhorn) built all new cars this winter, and we built this (Rocket) car just a little different to what I thought we needed,” he added. “Randall’s worked hard on it. We got into J.D. on Wednesday so we had to change a bunch of stuff, and I’m glad we’re the first ones to beat ‘em. I don’t want it to be like, ‘Man, they are beatable and we can’t do it.’"