Winning Thursday night’s 25-lap preliminary feature to kick off the Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals certainly excited Nick Hoffman. But it didn’t satisfy him.

As Nick Hoffman stood amid dozens of closed, parked trailers in the quiet convention center pit area of The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., on Wednesday night, he wistfully thought of the Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals that would begin in less than 24 hours.