SMITH RETURNS TO NITROUS; NO. 1 IN INDY PRO MOD QUALIFYING

by Bobby Bennett    Fri, 2019-08-30 20:22


The turbocharged experiment is over for Rickie Smith, at least until the end of the season.

“I’m just going to stay with the nitrous,” Smith revealed. [It’s] kind of what I know how to tune and do. I’m back in my nitrous car for the rest of the year.”

This weekend’s weather is expected to be in the upper 80-degree weather range; conditions many believe will significantly favor the nitrous combination. Point leader Stevie “Fast” Jackson even went as far as to predict a nitrous car will qualify in one of the top spots this weekend.

Smith isn’t buying it.

“Well, you know a lot of people run their mouth and don’t know what they’re talking about,” Smith said. “So it’s always a weekend for the nitrous car. Well what the hell’s happened the last year and a half? Why is it always the weekend of the nitrous car and a nitrous car can’t run?

“Until they get the rules right, we’re not going to be real good. All I’m saying is they slowed the blower car down probably a hundredth and a half. Well, they had three to four hundredths on us, so why all of a sudden are we going to outrun them?”

“I’m not trying to be smart here, I’m just trying to be realistic. All you’ve got to do is look at the numbers. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

So what would make Smith happy?

NHRA made rule changes following the most recent Pro Modified event on the tour in Norwalk, Ohio, reducing overdrive from the superchargers and boost from the turbocharged combination.

Smith, who was racing a turbo car at the time of the rule change, felt the sting of the reduced boost but feels the supercharged cars didn’t get what was needed to bring the three combinations into parity properly.

“What they should have done was took a pulley off of them like they done, but then put 50 pounds on them also,” Smith explained. “Then that would have been two more hundredths and then I’m still not saying we can outrun them, but we could have probably run within a hundredth or two of them.

“What you’ve got to watch here right now and not be naive if you’re tech people, Stevie has a pretty good lead on the points. Why is Stevie going to go show what he’s got now because he don’t want a rule change for next year. I ain’t dumb, nobody else is that knows what’s going on. So the tech people’s the ones that’s got to be the smart people that knows what’s happening and who is playing. them and who ain’t playing them.”

Smith says while there are some in Pro Modified who might sandbag, he isn’t one of them.

“When I can run up front, I run as hard as I can and I have all these years,” Smith said. “I’m not a player. I like to come and race hard and until [NHRA] figure out who the guys are that like to play them and lie to them, then we’ll all run good.”

The sage advice is coming from a man who answers to the nickname Trickie.

“That’s about the starting line and stuff like that, ain’t got nothing to do with the tech people,” Smith said.

"These tech people know for eight years I’ve been honest as hell with them on what’s going on. We’ve talked, they know that. So we’ll see where it goes."

For Smith, he went to the top of qualifying at the Chevrolet Performance, stopping the timers at 5.746 seconds, at 251.96 seconds. Mike Castellana was second quickest with a 5.774, followed by Jason Scruggs with a 5.795.

Point leader Stevie "Fast" Jackson anchors the field with a 6.108.

 

 

 
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