Two inches . . . that’s smaller than a golf tee or about the size of somebody’s big toe.

That’s the advantage Matt Smith had over L.E. Tonglet Sunday in the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals’ Pro Stock Motorcycle final when he crossed the Gateway Motorsports Park finish line with a quarter-mile elapsed time of 6.877 seconds at 198.44 mph.

In the battle for the points lead with four playoff races remaining, Tonglet was quicker with a 6.867-second E.T. (at 196.10 mph) on the Madison, Ill., dragstrip, near St. Louis, but the Nitro Fish Suzuki racer lost out on the spoils by six-10,000ths of a second.

The holeshot victory stoked two-time champion Smith’s seemingly unlikely rise to the top of the class. (“When we left Gainesville, we were 17th in points,” he said, looking back at the bike class March season-opener. “Our goal was to try to get to the top 10, if we could.”)

He encountered a double-crossing business partner along the way.

“We started the year on a Suzuki with that guy. It fell apart. I don’t know what happened. He didn’t want to race no more,” Smith said, declining to name the fellow who swiped his team’s motorcycle in the middle of the night, slipped out of town, and put a kink in Smith’s program. “We’ve been looking for a sponsor all year long, to try to continue this quest. Sometimes that just makes you work harder. We’ve really dug down, and I’ve really worked on these motors - with the help of all the little sponsors that we have.”

After the incident at Charlotte, Smith relied on the bike he calls “Ol’ Blue.” He said, “When we brought Ol’ Blue out at Charlotte, she was fast. Everybody knew we were going to be fast. But man, we got the Red Rocket.” That’s his current bike that the Aranas built for him. “When she debuted at Brainerd, she was hateful. It helps to find a little power, but the Aranas built a great body.”

Faithful blue or hateful red, the colors didn’t matter Sunday. Numbers were what mattered.

Smith leads Tonglet by 21 points and third-place fallen leader Eddie Krawiec by 41 as the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series heads to Texas for the Oct. 4-7 AAA Texas FallNationals at Ennis’ Texas Motorplex, south of Dallas.

So Sunday turned out to be a rewarding ending – “no better feeling,” he said – to the weekend for the sleep-deprived Smith. He and wife Angie, also a Pro Stock Motorcycle racer, had stayed up all night one night, engrossed in the romantic endeavor of repairing a roller bearing in the bike’s crankshaft and changing a motor.

Krawiec had a fragile grip on the points lead coming into this weekend, ahead of Hector Arana Jr. by just three points, Matt Smith by 37, and Tonglet by 40. And Krawiec lost it, fouling out by one-thousandth of a second in the opening round against Joey Gladstone.

Matt Smith took advantage, especially with Arana Jr. eliminated in his match-up against Angelle Sampey also in Round 1. Smith eked out a one-point edge in the standings with his quarterfinal victory over Gladstone. It was the first time since Smith’s 2013 championship that he has owned the points lead. And he wasn’t about to let go of it, even if his Elite Performance / EBR / Lucas Oil / Denso / Mark Stockseth Victory bike wasn’t terribly cooperative.

“We hurt our good motor Friday night. Me and Angie stayed up all last night rebuilding it. It broke a roller bearing in the crankshaft. We fixed it, put the motor back in today,” Smith said. “But when you’re sitting up there and see Hector [Arana] Jr.’s bike doesn’t leave the line, then right in front of us, Eddie red-lit, it was like, ‘Wow – both of them are out. Stay focused. Cut a light. And go down the track and we should be able to win first round.’ Luckily we did. Then we won second round, and they told me I had the points lead after that.”

He had to face Ellis in the semifinals. “Me and Chip are good buddies. We live there in North Carolina, about 30 minutes from each other [Smith at King Mountain, Ellis at China Grove]. Harley’s brought him out as a blocker. They’ve got three bikes out here, trying to whup up on us. Eddie said if they had four bikes, they’d have a fourth bike out here. If I had the money and manpower they had, I’d have four bikes out here, too,” he said. “Right now, I’ve got me and Angie, and we’re trying to knock ‘em over and do the best we can. But we’re going to do our best and try to stay focused and do our job. As long as we don’t have any parts failures or anything like that, we’ll be fine.

“Then I had to run L.E. in the finals. What a tight race. I knew L.E.’s a tough competitor,” Smith said. “My motor’s hurt. It’s not healthy. We limped through the day and got by. We threw the reel out and caught us a big fish today, and we took the win.”

Other winners Sunday were Steve Torrence (Top Fuel), Robert Hight (Funny Car), and  Tanner Gray (Pro Stock).

Smith said he didn’t realize until later that his victory margin was razor-thin: “I wear blinders. I don’t pay attention to what’s going on. That’s how you stay focused and get good and tucked. All day today I fought the tune-up. Whatever we’re doing, tune-up-wise, in high gear was working. We turned four win lights on and got by.”

It was Smith’s 20th victory.

“I told people after Indy, ‘We are going into the Countdown strong. They know we’re here.’ I made the comment then: ‘I know we can win three of the six races in this Countdown and run for the championship.’ And honestly, I think we would’ve won Reading, too, if the fuel line wouldn’t have broken in fourth gear. We had the best bike there,” he said. “So all in all, we’ve gone to two finals. In ’13 I went to five finals of the six [playoff] races and we won the championship. That’s my goal right now: keep going to the finals.

“I think if somebody can win three races in this Countdown, they’ll probably win this championship, unless something happens crazy to ’em in the other races. But right now, we’re on par with what we did in ’13. And if we can just keep going to final rounds, and I don’t mess up and just do my job, we’ll be fine,” Smith said after completing his sixth final round this season and 28th overall.

Tonglet defeated Jim Underdahl, Angie Smith (wife of his final-round foe), and White Alligator Racing boss Jerry Savoie in eliminations.