Photos by Alex Owens, Todd Dziados
Competition Plus’ random water-cooler topics from the Potomac Nationals at Maryland International Raceway.
1 – ANGIE SMITH SNAGS NHRA MILESTONE VICTORY – With her recuperating husband out of the hospital and by her side Sunday at Maryland International Raceway for eliminations at the NHRA’s inaugural Potomac Nationals, Angie Smith capped a challenging weekend in which her emotions ran the spectrum. After four days of her feeling at once worried, overwhelmed, determined, thankful, and relieved, Sunday she was inspired.
And she was rewarded for her pluck and her focus, as she defeated Ryan Oehler in the final round to win the event on the Mechanicsville, Md., quarter-mile and record the NHRA’s 200th professional victory by a woman. Legendary drag racer Shirley Muldowney presented Smith with the diamond “Wally” trophy that marks the sanctioning body’s 75th anniversary.
Smith said her message is “You just can’t give up when people believe in you. And when my husband called me and told me to come to the hospital and said, ‘We’re running the bikes,’ that meant he believed in me and he believed in our team. And it’s just unbelievable that this is happening. It was an emotional weekend to finish it off like this.
“I was bummed about Chicago, but I guess it was meant to be,” Smith said, referring to her final-round loss at the most-recent race. “This Denso bike is bad to the bone.”
She thanked everyone who helps the Matt Smith Racing team on a regular basis and those who pitched in this weekend. And she paid respects to Muldowney: “Two hundred wins for women! Shirley Muldowney paved the way for us. Let’s go!”
The King, N.C., racer’s journey began two weeks ago near Chicago. There she experienced the lows of the sport at the previous race, at Joliet, Ill., when her Buell broke at the starting line in the final round and she watched her husband sail away in the opposite lane to his second straight victory.
Smith spent a week or so indignantly trying to convince critics that her husband did not sabotage her motorcycle at Route 66 Raceway. But before she could take the first step toward rejuvenation on the racetrack, she found herself thrust into a challenging role of responsibility for the entire team. Matt Smith turned the wheel of the team hauler over to her for most of the drive through three states because he felt ill. He was hospitalized with serious abdominal pain – gallstones diagnosed as the culprit – and at the hospital, he passed his leadership mantle to her for the weekend.
Angie Smith gathered up all the resourcefulness and gumption she could muster and went to work. She collected the laptop computers the team uses for tuning the bikes and took them to Matt Smith’s hospital room, where he inserted the tuning maps into each laptop for each bike in the multi-entry team. She returned to the track, helped Michael Ray oversee the operation and had a hand in getting four Matt Smith Racing (MSR) Buells into the top half of the field. Oh, and she raced to the provisional No. 1 qualifier position Friday.
Running on three hours of sleep, literally only two bites of food, and remarkable help from MSR’S keenest rivals and even teams in other pro classes, she did more than maintain her No. 1 start for Sunday eliminations. On Saturday, she won the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge that pays cash and Countdown to the Championship bonus points.
But maybe her biggest victory Sunday was having Matt beside her once again, directing the team and putting the organization back in its proper orbit.
2 – PROCK BACK IN WINNING GROOVE – Two-time and reigning Funny Car champion Austin Prock had been relatively subdued so far this year. Switching teams in the offseason, then coming out of the gate with a DNQ and four first-round losses will cause that. But Prock certainly wasn’t shy Sunday – or all weekend, for that matter – especially when he outran former John Force Racing teammate Jack Beckman in the final round.
“Look who’s laughing now,” the younger Prock said with his in-your-face bravado. “This has been a lot of work. We’ve been busting our asses and all I can say is [crew chief and father] Jim Prock is one bad mofo. We came here, we changed everything. I mean everything, even the generators on the trailers” when he joined this Tasca / Ford Racing team during the offseason.
Austin Prock called it an honor to earn the specially crafted diamond “Wally trophy” and to be in his current situation.
“I can’t believe that we’re holding the Wally seven races in, and this is just a start. I said that we were going to have a race car to compete for a championship, and you bet your ass we do,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Prock said, “We stunk three races ago. But the Prock Rocket is back, and it’s looking pretty damn sporty. And this is just the beginning. Today just might be our day.”
It was.
3 – LANGDON PULLS AWAY FROM TOP FUEL FIELD – When Shawn Langdon knew he was going to meet formidable teammate and current champion Doug Kalitta in the Top Fuel final round Sunday, he smiled. Langdon knew it was going to be a close side-by-side match, and he knew the result easily could go either way – exactly what a real racer always hopes for, that thrill of winning a true challenge.
“This is the goal, and we’re just trying to capitalize as much as we can. Obviously, we have the same race cars. We run the same E.T.s in about the same mile an hour. I know the last time we raced, Brian [crew chief Husen] said, ‘Well, I’m going to give you a race car, and I’ll just leave it up to you and Doug. You guys can fight it out.’” With that, he said, “So, it’s going to be a great final.”
He was right.
Langdon – the points leader, No. 1 Top Fuel qualifier, and owner of both ends of the track record – became the first to earn three consecutive victories since now-idle Steve Torrence did so in 2021. And he claimed his class-leading fourth victory of the season, beating Kalitta by 2/10,000ths of a second, or about one inch, on the 1,000-foot course.
“You thought the [Indianapolis] 500 finish between [Felix] Rosenqvist and [David] Malukas was good, this right here was worth the admission,” FOX Sports analyst Tony Pedregon said.
“That was a little too close for comfort,” Langdon said, “but when you race Doug Kalitta and [tuner] Alan Johnson, you better be on your A game. Man, our Kalitta Air Careers team has been so good lately. They’ve given me a better race car than I deserve.”
But Langdon was careful not to wallow in the achievement. He said, “You ride the wave, enjoy it, and soak it in, but you know what? The first thing we’re going to do is get back, analyze it, and try to be better for the next race.”
In his opening-round bye run, Langdon also set both ends of the track record with a 3.718-second elapsed time and 338.00-mph speed.
With the victory, he leaves Maryland in first place in the standings, 76 ahead of Kalitta. Third-place Leah Pruett trails by 216 points.
“We had two Kalitta cars in the final round, and [team owner] Connie [Kalitta] hasn’t been out at the last couple of races. He’s been recuperating a little bit. We’re thinking about him. Can’t wait for him to come back. I never met a guy that loves drag racing more than me until I met Connie Kalitta. That guy is the epitome of drag racing. I’m very fortunate to be able to race his car and race against Doug. It’s been a tough week for a lot of us in the racing industry with [the death of] Kyle Busch. We’re definitely thinking about the Busch family. Hopefully, they know we love and support them.”
He said this team is performing so well, individually and collectively, because of the mix of people.
“A couple of years ago, bringing over Alan Johnson and Brian Husen and then [Doug Kalitta’s crew chief] Mac Savage and [assistant crew chiefs) Arron Cave and Justin Groat on our car and all of our crew guys … It’s getting all the right guys together, and we really have, just across the board including the DHL [Funny Car] team, three great groups of guys. They all work so well together – everything’s clicking. We knew the potential of what we had three years ago. It was just a matter of time, getting the cars dialed in, getting the right parts and pieces, getting everybody on the same page. Alan and Brian won all those championships for a reason, and so for all of us, we just keep our mouths shut, keep our ears open, listen and learn.
“Winning cures about everything,” he said. “This year’s been unbelievable. We had one little hiccup at the first race, but that’s just how good the team is. They bounced back, and now we’ve won three in a row. When this kind of thing happens, you just ride the wave because you never know how long it’ll last. A couple years ago, we didn’t finish in the top 10, and now we won three in a row.”
4 – ANDERSON ADDS 114TH TROPHY TO HIS CASE – Greg Anderson scored a runaway 114th Pro Stock victory over Dallas Glenn in a familiar all-KB Titan Racing final round.
For Anderson, the HendrickCars.com Chevy Camaro driver, it brought back a vivid memory at Maryland International Raceway. Anderson, a Minnesota native who makes his home at Mooresville, N.C., said, “It’s been a lot of years since I’ve been here, but I used to have so much fun when we come up here and race and I learned a ton. I came and tested here on 9/11, the day of [September 11, 2001], when the world changed. And two weeks later, I won the very first race of my career.” He told longtime track owner Royce Miller, “So obviously this started it for me, buddy. Thank you so much. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
5 – MATT SMITH BACK … AS SPECTATOR FOR NOW – Hospitalized since Thursday with a flare-up of gallstones, Pro Stock Motorcycle racer and team owner Matt Smith returned to the racetrack Sunday. He said he was sore but glad to see his racers, including fill-in Chip Ellis, advance past the first round.
The six-time series champion said, “I’m proud of this team for just doing what they’ve done without me being here. It’s good to be back out of the hospital and getting here today to watch this. I’m just grateful to be here. And my biggest thing is I’ve raced in pain before. And that whole instance that happened last week with Kyle Busch, we prayed for Samantha and the family. But this was something I haven’t felt before, and it scared me and I went to the hospital.
“I’ve got a gallbladder that’s got stones in it. I’ve got an inflamed pancreas. I’ve got kidney stones, and I’ve got two hernias. I’ll get it addressed,” Matt Smith said. “And you probably won’t see me back out racing a bike until Indy [the U.S. Nationals in September at Indianapolis], but I’ll get this addressed, and I’ll be back strong.”
6 – EVARISTO LAYS DOWN MONSTER RUN – Bike racer Jianna Evaristo had a semifinal finish, but her day started out in almost record-breaking fashion. Against Kelly Clontz in the first round, the Matt Smith Racing rider powered her Buell to a winning 6.702-second pass at 204.98 mph. That speed was the second-fastest in NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle history, ranking only behind the 205.04 mark her boss set in 2021 at her home track at Sonoma, Calif. Evaristo had been tied with Gaige Herrera for the second-fastest speed at 204.54 mph. Both did that in 2024, but Herrera did it first at the Gatornationals to open the calendar. She followed with an identical number that summer at Sonoma.
7 – BIKE FINALIST OEHLER ROUGHED UP – Never mind that Angie Smith left him in her wake in the Pro Stock Motorcycle final round, Ryan Oehler went through some pretty rough treatment before he even got to the starting line. Calling his operation “definitely probably the most underfunded team out here,” he said, “I’ve been telling everybody if we make it this far, I’m going to have to thank Capital One for not sending me to Collections yet.” He said it was “comical” but that after a “phenomenal” semifinal pass against Jianna Evaristo that was his career best and landed him in the final against Smith, “we had a transmission problem. We had pulled transmission out. We put it all back in. Then going up to the starting line, we had an accident, collided [he didn’t say with what or whom], ran me off the bike, down on the ground. I mean, it’s a pretty minor injury, but thank goodness we’re wearing leathers even in the pits.”
8 – TOUGH DAY FOR $TEWART – It was a costly day for Tony Stewart, the Elite Motorsports driver, and Tony Stewart, the TSR nitro team owner. He lost his opening-round race against Shawn Reed. Within about 20 minutes, he had a major repair bill on his hands. Matt Hagan, his hired Funny Car driver, experienced an engine explosion in the American Rebel Dodge in his first-round loss to Austin Prock.
Hagan’s spin on it afterward was fan-focused but a little bit flippant: “These fans paid a lot of their hard-earned money, and we just want to put on a show for them. I know it cost Tony a lot of money, but at the end of the day, that’s drag racing. We were getting our ass kicked anyway, so it’s kind of one of those deals where we might as well add insult to injury and go ahead and blow it up, too. But these fans that came out here … It’s amazing. Hopefully they’ll come back next year and bring more friends with them. … I was just trying to get a new firesuit, I think, with all the fire.”
9 – THEY SAID IT – In case you missed some of the memorable comments from Race Day …
“He’s just as determined as he was when he was driving. Now he’s just an owner, and he’s on your ass.” – Jordan Vandergriff’s crew chief, Chris Cunningham, regarding John Force
“We didn’t have one ounce of luck this year, and we needed that.” – Crew chief Rob Wendland, regarding Shawn Reed’s first-round victory over Tony Stewart.
10 – FRICKE HEADLINES SPORTSMAN WINNERS – Jackie Fricke led the list of winners by capturing Top Alcohol Dragster, while Sean Bellemeur added another Top Alcohol Funny Car victory to his dominant 2026 campaign. Steve Szupka prevailed in Competition Eliminator, and Ronald Riegel earned his first national event title in Top Sportsman.
In Top Alcohol Dragster, Fricke defeated Gary Pritchett in the final round with a 5.478-second pass at 274.33 mph. Pritchett lost traction immediately and pedaled his dragster multiple times but was unable to recover.
The victory marked Fricke’s 10th NHRA national-event Wally. She secured the win with a starting-line advantage and never relinquished the lead.
“My team never gives up on me,” said Fricke, who pedaled her dragster when it lost traction. “If I screw up, make a bad tuning call, they are always 100 percent behind me. I am so blessed to get to drive this race car and be part of this team. I’ll never forget it.”
Bellemeur continued one of the strongest stretches of his career in Top Alcohol Funny Car, defeating Bob McCosh with a 5.393 at 270.92 mph. McCosh posted a competitive 5.453-second run after repairing damage sustained when he smacked the wall in the previous round.
The win was Bellemeur’s fourth national-event title of the season and the 52nd of his career. The veteran qualified No. 1 and maintained control throughout eliminations.
“This team never ceases to amaze me,” Bellemeur said. “To come here for an inaugural event, and the Maryland fans are incredible – great time we’ve had. Incredible weather and great facility. I can’t wait to come back. As far as Steve Boggs, Tony Bartone and the Killer B’s, we are on quite a run this year. It couldn’t be possible without them and our sponsors.”
Competition Eliminator produced the closest finish of the day as Szupka edged Joseph Arrowsmith by just .0024 seconds – approximately seven inches – at the finish line. Szupka’s .006 reaction time proved decisive as he drove to a 6.923-second pass at 173.72 mph. The victory was Szupka’s fifth NHRA national event title and came in his first event back after an 11-month absence.
“To get this diamond Wally is something special,” Szupka said. “ I really don’t want to race with anyone but [my crew]. It was a dream come true to win one of these, I am really blessed. This victory is for the Boyd Brothers.”
In Top Sportsman, Riegel earned his first national event Wally by defeating Vince Fourcade in a final-round duel decided by .0028 seconds, roughly nine inches. Fourcade left first, but Riegel chased him down and crossed the finish line first with a 6.725-second run at 202.91 mph.
The victory came in Riegel’s second career national event final round and capped a consistent performance through five rounds of eliminations. – Bobby Bennett
SATURDAY NOTEBOOK – LANGDON, ANGIE SMITH SCORE DOUBLE ACHIEVEMENTS; STANFIELDS GRAB PRO STOCK SPOILS; BECKMAN ENJOYING NO. 1 START; PROCK RISING AGAIN; BIKER POSKEY HITS WALL
1 – LANGDON COUNTING HIS BLESSINGS – For the third race in a row, Shawn Langdon and his Kalitta Air dragster have earned the Top Fuel No. 1 qualifying position. As if that weren’t enough of a highlight to his day, Langdon also defeated Leah Pruett in the final round of the class’ Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge at the inaugural NHRA Potomac Nationals in Maryland.
He’s making it all look easy. That’s because his Kalitta Motorsports crew and tuner Brian Husen have been giving him what he called “the best car I’ve ever driven from a performance standpoint.”
Langdon said Saturday, “It feels good to have such a good-running car. It’s making some really good runs, and in some of the sessions outrunning opponents by two, three, and four hundredths of a second. That gives us a lot of confidence going into race day.”
He’ll benefit, as well, from a bye round to start eliminations thanks to a 15-car field. In the second round, he’ll take on the winner of the top-shelf Justin Ashley-Antron Brown pairing.
And gathering 10 of a possible 12 bonus points will help later in the season, he knows. That was one of the areas the team elected in the preseason to focus on in 2026. “It’s not your primary focus at the beginning of the year,” Langdon said, “but you know it’s going to pay dividends in the long run.”
He said, “The crowd was good today. The crowds have been great, so it’s neat to be able to put on a good show for them.”
2 – BECKMAN BOUNCING BACK – Jack Beckman, who said he has struggled in the early part of this season, isn’t looking shabby. He snagged his second straight Funny Car No. 1 qualifying spot Saturday.
Any slight performance lag this season, he said, can be attributed to crew chiefs trying to find ways to make his Chevrolet consistently quicker and faster – the ‘Take Two Steps Backward To Take One Step Forward Syndrome.’
“It’s no secret we’ve been stumbling a little bit with the PEAK car and we haven’t been ourselves like last year, when our car could do no wrong. We’re just kind of struggling this year, but it’s because we did some things to try to be quicker,” he said. “And a lot of times that step backwards takes a while before you recuperate from that. But to know that every dart we’re throwing is hitting near the bull’s-eye means we could make good tune-up calls for tomorrow.”
With his back-to-back feat, Beckman said he isn’t going to brag about his improved results: “No. 1 qualifier is a crew-chief award. What that means is I rode the fastest horse and didn’t fall off during the run. We have a car that can win the race.”
Beckman looked at his watch and said, “I’m counting down the hours ‘til the national anthem [at Sunday’s opening ceremonies]. I can’t wait to get back out here.”
3 – LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON – The Pro Stock father-son tandem of Greg and Aaron Stanfield, teammates at Elite Motorsports, hogged the category’s honors Saturday. Greg Stanfield earned his first top-qualifying effort since 2009, and son Aaron won the Mission Challenge, which pays cash and Countdown bonus points. Dad red-lit against his son in the first round of the bonus race, as the younger Stanfield advanced to the final and beat Greg Anderson, the class veteran and headliner for fierce rival KB Racing – on a holeshot.
Despite the mistake, which obviously didn’t kill his chances to lead the field in Sunday’s eliminations, Greg Stanfield said, “My car’s really happy. I’ll feel better if I can hold that big Wally [trophy] tomorrow.”
Aaron Stanfield said, “I think our whole group has some momentum right now. For sure, it feels good to be turning on some win lights, especially against those KB guys right now. They’ve been tough to beat here lately, and it’s been nice to have some momentum rolling our way. It definitely feels good to beat Greg Anderson on a holeshot. I look forward to doing some more of it, and I’m going to try to stay on my ‘A’ game.”
4 – ANGIE SMITH DOMINATES IN BIKE CLASS – Pro Stock Motorcycle’s Angie Smith shared with Top Fuel’s Shawn Langdon the distinction Saturday of securing the No. 1 qualifying position and winning the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge bonus races in their respective categories.
Langdon’s Kalitta Air dragster is running on rails this season, and he’s hoping to cruise to a third consecutive and fourth overall victory this year come Sunday. Smith, on the other hand, is thriving this weekend, despite being thrust unexpectedly into a leadership role because of husband, teammate, and multi-bike team owner Matt Smith’s sudden bout with gallstones. He has been in a nearby hospital since Thursday, recuperating and tuning the bikes off-site.
A grateful Angie Smith said, “Everybody has stepped up. Every single team in Pro Stock Motorcycle and even in other classes has come over and said, ‘If you need anything, let me know and don’t be afraid to ask.’ And the entire Vance and Hines team – [of keen rivals Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec] have been remarkable” in lining her team’s bikes up properly on the track, she said.
“I’ve never really picked a spot out on the racetrack, because Matt has been 100 percent, he does that all the time for all of our bikes. I know kind of where to go, and I kind of know where not to go. But I don’t know what the good is and what the best spot is. And the Vance & Hines team, Eddie and Andrew have been remarkable, telling me where we’re going to go, telling me if we’re going to go to the inside groove or outside groove. They have been remarkable.
“I can’t thank the entire Vance and Hines team enough, [also Ryan Oehler’s] team. Everybody’s been so helpful, and it’s such a blessing to race with other racers like that.
“Yes, we are such fierce rivals when we put on our helmets and when we line up at the tree, they want to kick our butts as much as we want to kick theirs. But at the end of the day, we all are a family and we all come together and we rally together,” Smith said. “When I was hurt [with two broken feet and an arm injury], everybody rallied together for me. Matt’s hurt, and everybody’s rallying together to help me run this team because he’s at the hospital. So hats off to every single person that has helped, has lent a helping hand. You don’t know how much it means to me. We can talk trash and be rivals, but not this weekend. They’ve really helped me.”
5 – ANOTHER SELLOUT CROWD – NHRA officials announced a sellout Saturday for its debut at Maryland International Raceway for the inaugural NHRA Potomac Nationals presented by JEGS.
The race marked the second visit to four new facilities during NHRA’s 75th anniversary season. Fans packed the grandstands of MIR at the seventh event of the 2026 NHRA season..
“I have to say a special thanks to every one of y’all in the stands,” said MIR owner Royce Miller. “I knew you would show up if we brought it here. You are the reason we do this. We love you, we appreciate you very much, and we’ve got great things to come. And thank you to all the staff here at MIR and all the work that has been done to get to this point.”
It is the fourth sellout day of NHRA’s milestone 75th season, including the season opener at the Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla., and back-to-back days at the Southern Nationals during its debut at South Georgia Motorsports Park.
Eliminations begin at 11 a.m. EDT Sunday. Television coverage will start at 3 p.m. ET on FOX, following the NTT IndyCar Series’ Detroit Grand Prix.
6 – PROCK TASTING SUCCESS AGAIN – That ear-to-ear grin is returning to Austin Prock’s face and the swagger starting to peek through his personality after a rocky start to the season. He reached the semifinal round at the previous race, at Joliet, Ill. That earned him a spot in Saturday’s Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge. Prock won the bonus race for new team boss Bob Tasca III and for his Jimmy Prock-led crew – and for his own satisfaction.
Two-time and reigning Funny Car champion Prock, vilified rather unfairly for leaving John Force Racing in the offseason and for his sometimes brash, sometimes self-critical demeanor, is breaking out of his uncharacteristic decline at the start of this year. Now he’s starting to seem like the Austin Prock that has energized the sport.
He said Saturday evening, “It feels great. It’s been a hot minute [since he last won]. It’s been about, I think, eight races and an offseason, so it’s been a long time and feels good. We’ve had a decent car all weekend and good enough to win the Mission #2Fast2Tasty today. We’ve got a lot of work to do still, but the race car’s going down the racetrack and giving me the opportunity to get comfortable in this Ford and practice chopping down the Christmas tree. So proud of what we’ve done so far. We’re going to be hard at it tonight and we’re going to have a fast Prock Rocket in the morning, I can guarantee that.”
Naturally, few people enjoy having critics, but Prock indicated he isn’t trying to reverse their opinions.
“The people on the Internet, I try not to pay attention to. Their opinion really doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “So I’ve just been focused on myself, working on myself. When you’re not winning, you have more time to pinpoint yourself on the things that you’re doing wrong. So I’ve definitely been stressed out this season so far.
“I always want to be better, but when you’re not winning and you want to be better, it’s a little bit tougher on yourself. So, learned a lot about myself again this year and just going to keep putting in the work. I was happy with my performance driving today. So that gives [me] some confidence.”
Besides, Prock said, “We go out there to win every weekend. So, I think that wearing your heart on your sleeve, there’s nothing wrong with that when you’re a passionate racer like I am.”
7 – OUCH – Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Charlie Poskey was taken to a local hospital for further evaluation after he hit the retaining wall during his final qualifying session Saturday. Poske brought the bike to a stop, dismounted, and gave the crowd a thumbs-up. He underwent an initial exam from NHRA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Phil Surface. Poskey is a second-year racer from Alabaster, Ala.
8 – HALL OF FAMER RECALLS MIR ‘BACK IN DAY’ – Top Fuel legend Darrell Gwynn was happy to be on hand this weekend at Maryland International Raceway. It’s where he made some fond memories as a youngster. He said the last time he was at the Mechanicsville, Md., facility was 1973, when he was 12 years old and watching his dad Jerry race the “Baby Huey” alcohol funny car.
“It was nighttime. We were racing with a bunch of other Funny Car racers, and we had a problem with the car. So we went down the road to Gene Altizer’s shop, worked on it all night, and raced in Virginia the next day,” he said. “I have great memories of this place as a kid. They had a lot of cool entertainment – a lot of motorcycle jumps and all kinds of stuff.”
Alluding to the announced sellout crowd Saturday, Gwynn said, “And I always said if this place wasn’t packed, something’s wrong. This place was the pinnacle of motorsports back in the day.”
9 – HAPPY RUMOR – According to wife Angie Smith, Matt Smith might be onsite Sunday at Maryland International Raceway. She said in her post-qualifying interview, “Our MVP is down,” referring to her husband, owner of the multi-motorcycle team, and six-time champion. “But there is a rumor that he might be at the track tomorrow.”
10 – CAN A STEWART-PRUETT FINAL HAPPEN? – It could, but a lot would have to happen Sunday if the husband-wife team of Tony Stewart and Leah Pruett were to meet in the final round of Top Fuel. Fans have been buzzing about that since last summer when Pruett announced her return and Stewart decided to stay in the class, driving a Richard Freeman-owned dragster.
She qualified third, he fourth, placing them on opposite sides of the ladder. To face off in their first final, Stewart first would have to beat Shawn Reed, then the winner of the Billy Torrence-Tony Schumacher match, and then a semifinal opponent. Before Pruett could imagine lining up against Stewart, she must eliminate first-round foe Spencer Massey, then either Maddi Gordon or Will Smith, and a semifinal opponent. But it will happen if and when it’s supposed to happen.
FRIDAY NOTEBOOK – ANGIE SMITH PULLS PRO STOCK BIKE TEAM TOGETHER IN WAKE OF HUSBAND MATT’S ILLNESS; LANGDON, PEDREGON, ANDERSON ALSO TOP EARLY QUALIFYING CHARTS; LEGEND SPICES P.A. CONVERSATION
1 – LANGDON SURPRISES SELF WITH EARLY TOP FUEL LEAD – Shawn Langdon said he and crew chief Brian Husen “came in not expecting to run what we did” after posting a 3.758-second elapsed time at 336.23 mph to take the Top Fuel provisional No. 1 qualifying position Friday at the inaugural Potomac Nationals at Maryland International Raceway. He quipped that “I’m just the steering-wheel holder,” crediting his Kalitta Air dragster team for improving from third place in the opening session and saying that “the track was better than we gave it credit for.”
The tentative order starts out like the current standings, with Langdon, teammate Doug Kalitta, Tony Stewart, and Leah Pruett occupying the first four spots with two Saturday qualifying opportunities remaining before Sunday’s eliminations.
Langdon, who had competed at this venue years ago in a bracket race, is hoping to hang onto that position to earn the first-round bye in the 15-car field.
2 – NOTHING TO CRITICIZE – Funny Car provisional No. 1 qualifier Cruz Pedregon didn’t specify why, but he said he walked the track Thursday, “looking for reasons to not like this place. Believe me, I’m looking to be critical.” But he stumped himself and concluded, “Damn, this track looks pretty good to me. They know their stuff here.” It looked even more appealing after he improved from 14th in the line-up to first Friday with a 3.951-second elapsed time at 323.19 mph in the Snap-on Dodge Hellcat.
Pedregon, who has no radio communication with his crew on the starting line, said that pass “felt pretty fast to me. In the car, I felt it was fast and smooth.” But he said he didn’t count on it keeping him No. 1, as “three or four cars” could out-do his run come Saturday.
He said Funny Cars “have more power than we need. The challenge is to pull it back and not get too fancy and cute.”
Spencer Hyde, at No. 2 overnight in the Head Racing Ford Mustang, was fastest in the class at 323.58 mph.
Pedregon praised the NHRA for courting different areas after losing those in the Englishtown, N.J./metro New York, Atlanta, Houston, Richmond, Topeka, and Denver markets.
3 – TRACK’S A GIFT – Pro Stock veteran Greg Anderson was kind of kicking himself for not keeping data about Maryland International Raceway he gathered about 25 years ago. But he ended up kicking every other Pro Stock driver’s rear end to claim the provisional No. 1 qualifier spot with his 6.494-second, 211.79-mph run.
“We don’t keep data from that far back. We should have,” he said of a time when he was the crew chief for driver Warren Johnson. But he credited the KB team, which grabbed the first four places Friday, saying, “We made pretty damn good guesses.”
Anderson, who edged teammate and points leader Dallas Glenn by three-thousandths of a second, said the Pro Stock class loves nearly sea-level conditions. “We don’t have a blower. We don’t have a power-adder. We don’t have a turbo. We have nothing [to boost power]. We’re dependent on Mother Nature,” he said. “We hope and pray we get races somewhere through the season that have conditions like this. These are fantastic conditions. They’re Disneyland conditions.”
4 – THIS TIME IT WENT HER WAY – Angie Smith has had a stressful two days – and a stressful two weeks, for that matter. But her Pro Stock Motorcycle provisional No. 1 qualifying accomplishment was a salve for some of the strain Friday.
Two weeks ago at Joliet, Ill., she and husband Matt Smith met in the final round of the Route 66 Nationals, and her bike broke at the starting line. She had no first gear – but she had plenty of conspiracy theorists suggesting her husband arranged for that to happen. Irritated, she took to social media to declare that he did not sabotage her motorcycle to ensure his second consecutive victory. He also provided visual evidence in another Internet post of what went wrong.
That settled, they were off to the North Carolina coast to do some mahi mahi fishing before heading to Maryland International Raceway for this weekend’s inaugural Potomac Nationals. He ended up not at the dragstrip, but rather the emergency room of a nearby hospital, grounded this weekend by gallstones.
Instead, Angie Smith took on the task of overseeing the Matt Smith Racing operation this weekend – at least until her husband might be discharged from the hospital and is able to rejoin the team. It all has been overwhelming, and she let her emotions spill out a bit when she established both ends of the track record with her 6.690-second quarter-mile run at 202.97 mph in the first qualifying session Friday.
After the conclusion of Friday’s racing, she said she’s “relieved, to say the least.” After sitting in the emergency room for hours and staying with her husband until he was admitted to the hospital, she didn’t return to the track until nearly midnight – and achieved what she did on about three hours of sleep.
“It’s been a circus. This day has been a blur,” she said. “I’m glad all the bikes went down [the track under full power] and everybody was safe. That was my main goal. I’ve never had this much responsibility. We rose to the occasion, but my whole team stepped up. Everybody jumped in together.
“Matt wears a lot of hats. I don’t know if everybody really knew how much that he did until today,” she said, praising him for orchestrating the team performance from afar. She said it was “pretty remarkable, to me. He’s not here to look at the weather conditions, not here to look at the track. He’s not here to do a lot of things he takes into account when he makes a tune-up call.”
5 – MISSING MATT – Matt Smith’s pursuit of a record seventh Pro Stock Motorcycle championship took a detour – through a hospital.
The namesake and mastermind of the MSR Buell team that includes Angie Smith, Jianna Evaristo, and John Hall is recuperating from gallstone issues and has turned over the seat of his Denso Buell this weekend to veteran racer Chip Ellis. Michael Ray is guiding the team on site, but Matt Smith isn’t out of the equation, by any means. He programmed the first-session qualifying set-ups for the entire fleet of Matt Smith Racing (MSR) bikes from his hospital bed and was communicating directions for the second session by phone.
The collective effort paid off. Hall reeled off a 6.746-second, 202.55-mph pass in the opening session, and minutes later, Angie Smith eclipsed that with her record-setting 6.690, 202.97 that held up for the tentative No. 1 spot. By day’s end, MSR owned three of the top four spots and got their primary bikes in the top half of the field. Vance & Hines’ Richard Gadson spoiled a 1-2-3 sweep by grabbing the No. 2 position overnight. But Ellis was third, Hall fourth, and Evaristo eighth.
An emotional Angie Smith said following her first-session qualifying performance, “What makes me the happiest is that we got all the bikes down the track. I’m sorry I’m crying. It’s been a long two days. Matt’s in the hospital. I just told him, ‘We’re going to do the best we can.’ And [that effort] is a testament to him, because he did all the [tuning] maps. I ran all the laptops back to the hospital. He did all the maps. We come back and this whole team has rallied together. It’s about resilience and being determined, because I really didn’t think that we were going to race this weekend, the whole entire team. These are his wishes. He wanted us to race.”
She called her pass “a really good lap, so we have a good start. So we’ll see.” But her attention was not on herself, it was on her husband. “Matt, please get better. I need you,” she said. “I need my backbone back.”
Angie Smith told National Dragster that her husband began feeling ill Thursday morning, awakening her at 2 a.m. The couple expected the culprit was kidney stones, because, she said, “He has a history of kidney stones, so we really thought that it was probably going to be that. So we were on the way up here, and his pain just kept getting worse and worse, so bad that I drove probably 75 percent of the way. I drove the hauler up here. We got it up here and got parked, and immediately we went to the emergency room. We got there about 12:30 yesterday, and they ended up admitting him last night about 9 o’clock. They ran a bunch of tests. I guess the conclusion is he has gallstones, not kidney stones. Gallstones produce a lot of pain, and so that’s where all the pain’s coming from.”
She said the medical staff is “just trying to keep him comfortable right now. They are giving him fluids, and rest is the protocol. But he made the decision for me to run all the bikes. He is truly the backbone of this team.”
6 – THE SPORTSMAN REPORT – Joey Severance, Bob McCosh, Joe Carnasciale and Michael Cerro led their respective categories Friday as sportsman competitors continued action at the NHRA Potomac Nationals at Maryland International Raceway.
Severance paced Top Alcohol Dragster, McCosh led Top Alcohol Funny Car, Carnasciale topped Competition Eliminator and Cerro claimed the No. 1 position in Top Sportsman heading into the weekend’s remaining sportsman competition.
Severance powered to the top spot in Top Alcohol Dragster with a 5.182-second pass at 279.79 mph. Jamie Noonan qualified second with a 5.231-second run, while Anthony Troyer followed in third at 5.276.
Matthew Cummings secured the fourth position with a 5.309, and Jackie Fricke rounded out the top five with a 5.314-second effort. Megan Smith, Melanie Johnson, Brandon Greco, Richard Bourke and John Ausherman completed the top 10.
In Top Alcohol Funny Car, McCosh led the field with a 5.450-second pass at 267.69 mph in his Camaro. Defending NHRA champion Sean Bellemeur remained close behind in second with a 5.468 while posting the quickest speed of the session at 268.44 mph.
Mick Steele qualified third at 5.489, followed by Christopher Menapace and Bruce Mullins. Melinda Green-King, John Headley and Doug Gordon completed the eight-car field.
Carnasciale secured the top position in Competition Eliminator with an 8.755-second pass in his I/SM Cavalier, posting a .725-second advantage under the index. Monty Bogan qualified second at .692 under, while Michael Hanratty followed in third at .684 under the class standard.
Calvin Hill secured the fourth position at .679 under the index, while Steve Johnson rounded out the top five. Former world champion Bruno Massel qualified sixth with a 6.907-second run in his CC/AT Cobalt.
Cerro paced the Top Sportsman field with a 6.180-second pass at 225.26 mph in his Camaro. Vonnie Mills qualified second at 6.282, while Jeff Brooks followed in third with a 6.398.
Brian Weis claimed the fourth position and posted the fastest speed in the category at 234.00 mph. Dave Muller rounded out the top five qualifiers.
Sportsman competition continues Saturday at Maryland International Raceway with qualifying and eliminations across multiple categories as racers pursue victories at the inaugural NHRA Potomac Nationals. – Bobby Bennett
7 – WELCOME BACK, CAPTAIN CHAOS – Kenny Koretsky, the loveable “Captain Chaos” Pro Stock driver turned track owner, returned to watch some NHRA action Friday for the first time in about two years. He was hanging out with close friend Bob Tasca III after experiencing health issues that eventually factored into his decision to sell Maple Grove Raceway to IHRA boss Darrell Cuttell.
8 – STILL A TOPIC – Austin Prock, who had a breakout weekend at the previous race, at Joliet, Ill., appears to be experiencing an upswing in his new situation at Tasca Racing. The two-time and reigning Funny Car champion’s surprising switch from John Force Racing, which he has explained from his point of view, apparently still is a topic of conversation.
Top Fuel legend Shirley Muldowney said Friday, “I was so surprised to hear that he made that switch. I thought that he must know something we all don’t know, but from the beginning he looked like he had made a mistake, alright? I think that they had stepped things up and kind of changed things around and let’s see. This weekend they have a wonderful facility here, so let’s see what he does.”
Prock went to the No. 1 spot at the time, and he said in his top-end interview that changing teams is “definitely difficult. You get here and you do as much as you can to diagnose what this place needs, and we hit it right on the head. So, really proud of this PPG team. You know when you can hit it right on the head within a thou, definitely feels good. So watch out.”
Announcer Joe Castello suggested the Prock swagger might have returned. He said he rather enjoyed the bravado: “I like it.” He asked Muldowney for her opinion, and she said, “No comment.” Then Castello said, “It’s hard to talk trash in this sport, though, because the car might not do what you want.” She replied, “Well, he’s good with that, and he’s famous for it. Very confident. I’ve been around to listen a few times. I didn’t always agree. In fact, I didn’t agree at all.”
Castello pressed her: “Some might say that Shirley talked trash back in the day. How would you categorize that? You were confident.” She countered, “Yeah, but I liked getting in their face. That was part of the scene. They had it coming.”
Curiously, Bob Tasca III, owner of Prock’s PPG Ford Mustang, said of the Prock acquisition, “I can tell you one thing. It was a much bigger undertaking than we thought, but they got all the parts and pieces they need. We had a great weekend in Chicago, and we need a little bit more momentum this weekend.”
9 – MIR PASSES MUSTER – Public-address announcer Joe Castello, noting that this is the NHRA’s first trip to Maryland International Raceway, asked drag racing legend Shirley Muldowney about what her experience was when she started racing, barnstorming the country and competing on tracks she hadn’t seen before. He asked, “What was it like going to these different facilities that you had never been to or known of?” She said, “Well, that I never went back to.
“So, I was basically an East Coast racer, and I knew the area pretty well and we had a lot of fairly nice facilities; this one being one that we could depend on to go and get some good numbers down. I just wish I’d had more time on the East Coast with the nitro car. I ran a gas dragster for a good number of years, and that gave me quite a reputation, let me say. Oh, boy, did they hate me. I gave them something to complain about, and it was fun. It made my day, let me tell you,” Muldowney said.
She said the women in drag racing today have it “a whole lot easier” than she did and reminisced about driving a Funny Car at this facility that most refer to simply as “Budds Creek.” She said, “This was a class that I ran for three years, and I cut my teeth on some of these racetracks that were not very forgiving, not as wide as you see today, not lit as well, and not as long as one would like. I guess this is almost like a freeway down there. It’s a pretty long racetrack, so the facility does give you all the amenities that a fuel driver looks for.”
10 – HART HARSH ON HIMSELF – Josh Hart, driver of the Speedmaster Top Fuel entry for John Force Racing, might not have the burden of being a team owner any more, but he can’t escape expectations that define championship performances. He said Friday, “We’re never really happy over here. The 3.81 was what we needed in the first run, so a 3.75 in the second round would have been a good run. [Crew chief David] Grubnic is hard on himself. I’m hard on myself. The team’s doing a good job, but we just need to do better. A good job isn’t good enough. We all know that going into tomorrow, so we’ll see what our chances look like with the conditions in the morning.”
