Fairbury Speedway
Terbo collects IOU from Rice but focuses on PDC
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Tyler Erb spun to a stop in turn one. (joshjamesartwork.com)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 22) — Maybe Tyler Erb would have outrun Hudson O’Neal to win Wednesday’s 50-lap One for the Road feature at Fairbury Speedway. Or maybe he wouldn’t have had enough speed to deal with the $20,000 FloRacing Night in America victor.
The 29-year-old from New Waverly, Texas, would just have liked the chance to find out, which he didn’t get because a lap-28 scrape with Josh Rice spun him out of contention.
“I felt really good,” Erb said after restarting at the rear of the field and going on to finish a lap down in 23rd. “I was good enough to drive to second and not kill anybody … and on the bottom at that.”
The possibilities of a showdown with Martinsville, Ind.’s O’Neal went unsaid. Erb preferred to move on from the frustrating outcome rather than dwell on what might have been.
Taking a brief break from working on his Best Performance Motorsports Rocket Chassis’s crumpled right-rear quarterpanel from the encounter with Crittenden, Ky.’s Rice, Erb stood and spoke calmly of his demise. Anyone who expected the excitable Erb to fly off the handle and throw verbal barbs at Rice was mistaken.
“He started second, I started fifth,” Erb said. “So for 23 laps I worked at the bottom, and I passed (Shannon) Babb, I passed (Rice), I passed whoever else, and …”
Erb paused. He recalled battling for a short time with Rice before surging ahead into second on lap 26. The contact that doomed him came on lap 28.
“This is exactly what happened,” Erb said. “Like, I passed (Rice), I floated out (entering turn one) for one lap, and he drove through the ass end of me.
“And it was at the end of the straightaway. Like, I get it. You follow some guys and you’re like, ‘Man, this guy floats out every lap.’ But for 10 laps, I left him a lane on the outside, and I could have, I should have, just slid him, but ... I mean, I would have thought maybe he’d give me a lap or two before he punted me.
“I mean, you hit somebody going down the straightaway … I hadn’t even slowed down. I literally just laid out and started to turn and I got mollywopped.”
As Rice carried a head of steam into turn one, the front of his JRR Motorsports car’s left-side door clipped Erb’s right-rear quarterpanel. Erb went twirling into the corner; he contemplated gunning the motor in an attempt to turn a 360 and perhaps continuing, but he thought better of a move that could potentially sweep up more cars and let his vehicle come to a stop without taking a hit from any passing machines.
Erb said Rice essentially “caught me square with his carburetor” rather than the left-front flopper. There was nothing Erb could do to maintain control of his car.
“The whole situation, like, he was in the wrong, and it is what it is,” said Erb, whose only career win at Fairbury came in a 2024 DIRTcar Summer Nationals event. “I mean, I think anybody in their right mind would know I didn’t do anything. It’s not like, ‘Oh, man, he deserved that.’
“He messed up. I mean, the way racing is, like, he’s driving really hard, and I get it. The good news is, I guess, if you’re on the IOU scale, I owe him for sure. But like the bad thing is, lately, I’ve not raced like that at all, and it doesn’t get you anywhere. It does make you feel good (to avoid aggression-caused incidents), ‘cause you’re like, ‘Well, my car's fast,’ but if you don’t win, it doesn’t matter.”
Rice, 28, went on to finish second in what he called the “best we’ve run in a Flo race and a Fairbury race,” but his car sported significant damage to its left-side door from the get-together with Erb. His satisfaction with a strong outing was tempered by the tangle that he acknowledged was his fault.
“Man, it’s so tough when they come all the way out to the wall like that, and I just misjudged it,” Rice said. “Crashed him. I didn’t mean to. I’m sure he’s mad.
“I was just trying to get a run on the top. As soon as he turned down (entering turn one), I tried to just shoot it above him, but once (the door) got hooked right there, he was just along for the ride because I had such a run.
“It's so hard to see … I mean, it's just, I don’t know, it’s just one of them deals. Like them quarterpanels are so flimsy anyway, sometimes you can hit ‘em and they don’t even know you hit ‘em, and sometimes you just hit ‘em and you hook ‘em and spin ‘em.
“It just sucks,” he continued. “I hate it, because I do like Terbo, and he probably had a car to win. He was really good. He probably owes me one now.”
Wednesday marked the second straight night that Erb was involved in an incident, but he didn’t consider his run-in with Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., late in the previous night’s FloRacing Night in America feature at Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway to be of the same ilk. There was a different type of back-and-forth that led to Erb bumping the wall between turns one and two as Pierce overtook him for third.
“Like me and Bobby were getting after it yesterday, but solely for the fact of he drives a little more aggressive than most, and it’s only fair to give it back,” said Erb, who ended up fourth at Lincoln, one spot behind Pierce. “Like, I wasn’t mad at him yesterday. He slid me, parked on my carburetor. I parked on his carburetor. I knew he was gonna cross me over. In a situation like that, I’m like, ‘Yeah, one of us is gonna wreck at some point,’ and I tried to drive him through the infield and he shot me up the racetrack. I hit the wall, and I was like, ‘OK, you win.’
“But tonight (with Rice), it was like, there wasn’t a situation like that. It wasn’t like me and this guy raced for 30 laps. I ran next to him for five or 10 laps and never killed him, and as soon as I passed him, he killed me, so …
“We were having a good night,” he concluded. “I was the dead-ass last car to qualify for Group A (and qualified sixth-fastest). I won a heat. I got to second. I overcame every obstacle you could possibly have today … except that.”
