Freddie Carpenter prepared for Thursday’s opener of the Gateway Dirt Nationals like it were his last go-around at the megaevent inside The Dome at America’s Center.

As much as the 52-year-old loves what The Dome has done for his son — now popularly known as two-time event winner Tyler Carpenter — the Parkersburg, W.Va., veteran and overseer of the family chassis business, Kryptonite Race Cars, started to accept that Dirt Late Model racing’s indoor spectacle just isn’t made for him.

“I’ve thought exactly that. I’ve even said, if I don’t run good this time, I’m not coming back,” Carpenter said. “I struggle every time I come here. But … we’re doing good.”

Indeed, the elder Carpenter had something to smile about when reflecting upon his prelim night, the fourth-place run that leaves him in good shape ahead of Saturday’s all-important qualifiers.

Thursday was by far Carpenter’s best performance at the fifth-mile oval. In 10 previous starts, prelims included, he failed to qualify for the feature seven times and never finished better than 13th, which came during his 20-lap prelim the 2018 season. Since then, his son Tyler’s forged quite the reputation at The Dome, banking the $30,000 top prize in 2019 and then once more in ’21.

Of course, the elder Carpenter has leaned on the foundation of his son’s success to finally get himself point in the right direction this week after six years of trial and error. But copying and pasting his son’s setup into the framework of his No. C4 race team and expecting his Gateway Dirt Nationals fortune to immediately change for the better hasn’t been that simple for the elder Carpenter.

“We’re not running the same setup,” Carpenter said. “What he runs doesn’t work for me. I kind of run a hybrid of his setup and my setup. It’s working pretty good.”

While they both share the same last name — a name now synonymous with The Dome’s knack for exalting the underdogs of the sport — and operate Kryptonite Race Cars together, the Carpenters’ driving styles are polar opposites. Rougher track conditions tend to bring the best out of Tyler while Freddie is out of his comfort zone.

But the smoother the conditions, the better Freddie feels, which is exactly what happened on Thursday. Actually the track was so smooth — smoother than the Carpenters anticipated after an extensive reworking of the track before the 40-lap main event — that Freddie overcompensated on a minor shock adjustment.

“I made a couple small changes to the car when I should’ve left it alone,” Carpenter said. “When they were out there doing that track prep, I was like, ‘Man, the track has a lot of traction.’ Changed the rebound on the right-front two clicks when I should’ve left it alone. Killed the traction. I think we’ll be good Saturday, I hope.”

Carpenter quipped that “maybe I should’ve leaned on somebody, got them rooted out of the line,” but that kind of roughhousing doesn’t fit his character. He did acknowledge that in order to find victory lane at The Dome, a few proverbial elbows likely have to be thrown. But on a night like Thursday, setups seemed to matter more than a hard-nosed mentality.

“No, not really, especially like tonight,” Carpenter said. “It was something as small as two clicks on the rebound on the right-front shock adjustment that hurt me. I felt like, if I would’ve left it alone, I could’ve won that race.”

As the adage goes, hindsight is 20-20, but if Carpenter would’ve left his race car following his heat race victory and selected the pole instead of the sixth-starting position, maybe he would’ve been the one celebrating on Thursday instead of Nick Hoffman.

Despite that, Carpenter isn’t kicking himself. He’ll have a clear shot at starting inside the top 10 for Saturday’s finale, as long as he does what has to do from the pole of one of the qualifiers.

“To be starting on the pole in one of the heats on Saturday is great,” said Carpenter, acknowledging that no lead is safe at The Dome, as displayed Thursday when a log-jammed restart resulted in a flat tire for leader Jason Feger. “That’s my concern, too. You can get run into on the first corner and get a flat tire and you’re out that quick.

“It’s exciting, every corner, every lap. But we’ll be in the first heat, so the track’s going to be muddy and fast — elbows up. I would much rather it’d be glass slick. … It’s one of those bittersweet things. We’re really happy to run fourth and be starting on the pole of a heat. But, man, would’ve loved to got third.”

Upon Freddie’s return to the designated pit area Thursday, son Tyler awaited to debrief the night with his father. The two talked for 10 minutes, a conversation in which Freddie and Tyler “both agreed to putting too much right-rear drive on exit” from the minor shock adjustment.

“If I would’ve left it alone, I probably would’ve been a lot better,” Carpenter said. “Just discussing what killed the traction. We still had decent traction, but nothing like we had in the heat race. And the track was in better shape (for the feature). We should’ve had more, but instead got less.”

Regardless, Thursday delivered exactly the elder Carpenter’s been searching for since first racing The Dome in 2017. His family puts an unquantifiable amount of time, effort and energy into the Gateway Dirt Nationals — “We prepare a lot,” he emphasized — so to finally see the reward of his persistence is rightfully gratifying.

“We work on these cars steadily for a month,” Carpenter said. “Not all day every day, because we work at the shop during the day. But in the evening and the weekends, up until last week, we’ve worked every day for this.”