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Joseph Joiner And Hunt The Front’s Gateway Dirt Nationals End Early

December 5, 2025  ·
  John Trent

Joseph Joiner and the Hunt the Front team saw their Gateway Dirt Nationals end almost as soon as it started as the team suffered an engine failure during hot laps.

During hot laps, Joiner’s car started blowing out smoke before he made contact with the wall and brought the car to a stop.

After the car was pushed into the infield, FloRacing’s Blake Anderson reported, “They said it was the motor broke.”

When it made it back to the pit area, Chris Moore shared an update from the team, “The crew’s guess: a broken piston on Joseph Joiner’s #10. The backup plan: Drink some beer.”

The team shared an update on Facebook, “Not the update we wanted to give from the Dome… We blew a motor on the second lap of hot laps, and that means our race weekend at the Gateway Dirt Nationals is over.”

“Definitely not how we hoped this trip would go, but we’re still thankful to be part of such an awesome event and grateful for everyone who supports us,” the team added.

Speaking to FloRacing, Joiner explained why their night was over, “I don’t have nothing else with and even if we did I think Terbo nailed it when he blew up yesterday. You’re too far behind and we might as well cut our losses. It sucks. … It was the most confidence I had coming into this thing, the third year we’ve been here. I was pumped up. Felt like I had a really good chance. Felt like my race car was going to be really good. I went around there pretty decent the first lap or the first half a lap whatever I got.”

“It sucks,” he added. “We’ll do the best we can to try and come up with what we come up with to get it put back together. Or come up with whatever we come up with to start our season and hope it doesn’t set us back there going into 2026.”

As Moore noted in his report, Terbo Tyler Erb suffered a similar fate last night. However, Terbo was able to make it to qualifying and put down a fast fifth place lap despite qualifying last on a track that had gotten significantly slower throughout the night indicating his car had a ton of speed.

Terbo shared more details about his engine failure when he was asked what his plan was for the rest of the weekend, “Sell t-shirts and try to buy like 7 more motors because that one’s pretty tore up. It was cool. Qualified good being out literally dead last so I guess have some sort of notes for next year. I guess I’ll just start like that. Come back next year.”

“Some point luck will turn around. Last year had a flat. This year I blew up. The year before that I got thrown out for a transponder and then I won the first year. Really, since I won nothing’s gone good here. But it’s cool. It’s a lot of fun. Try again next year.”

As for why he did not attempt to put a second motor in the car, Terbo explained, “Cut your losses. You ever see a guy bleeding out on the side of the road and just walk by and stab him some more? You don’t race for the provisional. Starting 20th sucks.”

“It would be humanly impossible to change oil system, motor and all that in about 32 minutes,” he continued. “You can change the motor, but not the oil system and everything, and it was killed too. Just no time to do all that and to start 12th.”

“I want it really bad, but I don’t know that I want it that bad. That’s a little crazy. Sometimes you got to know when to call it quits and we’ll fire off again in Phoenix at the Wild West Shootout,” he concluded.

NEXT: Devin Moran Reacts To Wreck With Hayden Cardwell That Eliminated Him From Competition

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Author: John Trent