MATT SMITH SCORES FOURTH CONSECUTIVE NO. 1 QUALIFIER

Written by Bobby Bennett, photo by NHRA    Sun, 2020-10-25 13:55

 

Matt Smith is intent on scoring a third NHRA series championship. Saturday afternoon at Houston Raceway Park, the second-generation drag racer secured his fourth consecutive No. 1 qualifier and both ends of the track record with a 6.729, 199.88 pass at the pandemic-delayed NHRA Springnationals.

The run came after what was absolutely a head-scratcher for Smith in the opening session.

“We don’t know what actually happened to the bike, but it actually left in third gear for some reason,” Smith explained. “We don’t know why, but we came back and I made sure everything was right. We put a new transmission in, and it was in first gear, and it left good. I just plugged away, and it started drifting into the wall, and I had to get out from behind the panel a little bit and probably cost us a little bit of ET, maybe a half a hundredth, maybe a hundredth, but it definitely hurt the mile-an-hour.

“We would’ve went 200 pretty easy, even with the headwind. But I can’t say enough. We’ve got a fast bike, and I think a lot of people are missing the tune-up right now because the air is phenomenal. Just got a little bit of a headwind. If people aren’t even running what they should be running if there was no wind running. So I just think that a lot of people have missed it.”

Smith faces Marc Ingwersen to open eliminations, and after last weekend’s first-round loss, he’s not taking anything for granted.

“We just have to do our job on Sunday,” Smith said. “What happened to us last week in Dallas, the battery shorting out, stuff like that is out of our control. It’s in God’s hands, and we can’t do anything about it. But all we can do is go up there and prepare our bikes, and the rider does the best he can and turn win lights on. As long as I can do that, I feel like I’m going to be hard to beat this year. As long as something on the bike doesn’t happen or whatever, but we’ve got a good bike, and that’s all I can say.

And though he’s spread a bit thin wearing the hats of rider, crew chief, and team owner, Smith relishes the ability to compartmentalize.

“I love it as a crew chief being the number one qualifier,” Smith said. “I don’t care if I own my own team or not, or if I was helping somebody else, and we got the number one spot. I think that just shows how diverse I am with everything that I do, and then I get to ride it. It kind of sucks being a team owner because I know what it costs to do this, and I’m not making money like we need to keep going like we need to. But all in all, maybe we get through this COVID thing, and we get some new sponsors that want to come on and jump on board with us next year. That would be great.

“I know Denso is proud of us, Lucas Oil is proud of us. But you still need the funding to do this right and we don’t have the funding to do it right like I want to do it. I think if I can do it right, they’ll probably kick us out of here. All in all, we got a great team and I’m just proud of our team.”

Angelle Sampey qualified second with a 6.789 at 198.88 and Eddie Krawiec took third after going 6.799 at 197.48.

 

 

 

 

 
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