Rickie Smith stood on the starting line at Bristol Dragway and looked up at the names above the hospitality suites when he concluded, “I’m the only one out of all of those names still out there racing.” Well, there is one who is out on medical leave… John Force.
Indeed, of the 22 names considered the Legends of Thunder Valley, Smith is the only one in competition. This past weekend, he was racing in the PDRA’s Thunder Valley Throwdown. Smith is in the Pro Nitrous field heading into Saturday’s final eliminations.
Save for the 2010 Pro Modified accident, which resulted in a helicopter flight to a local hospital for a broken leg, the doorslammer icon from King, NC, has been great sailing.
“I have a lot of good memories here, going back to the Super Modified days with the old Maverick. I won a lot of races here,” Smith said. Being good when it counted is what got my name up there.
Smith won Super Modified, Mountain Motor Pro Stock and Pro Modified races since he first started racing here in 1974. He’s even made laps in a 500-inch NHRA Pro Stock and even a Top Alcohol Funny Car.
Yes, the man who answers to the nickname Trickie once drove an alcohol flopper, coming within a tenth of the team’s winning lap the day before. It was the first time he’d piloted a Funny Car in his life.
“That was 30 years ago, I guess, or more,” Smith recalled. “You had that feeling. Did I want to go fuel racing or not? And everybody said, ‘Oh, you get one of them cars or claustrophobia and you shut that body down.”
“I wanted to see what it felt like so they give me a chance. They let me make a run. I give them $1,500 to make a run and we made a full pass, full damn run here. I think I run within a tenth or less of what they wanted to race with us so they didn’t calm it down. It’s just like these Pro Mod cars with these big tires. You calm it down too much, it’s going to shake, so you got to let it go and if it’s going straight and it made a pretty nice run. I was pretty happy with it.”
Smith has done pretty much everything since, even making a run in Scott Palmer’s Top Fuel dragster last year. He aced that challenge as well.
But, Bristol, it wasn’t always an easy place to race but it was indeed a fun one.
“We run up here to IHRA days and crap, we’d be out here running at 2 AM. You know that. It’d be foggy as hell,” Smith said. “You couldn’t even see the scoreboard and they’d be running something down the track. But that stuff, I’m glad I’d done it when I was younger because it’s true. The older you get, the hard it is to see at night so I’m better off. I’m better on a Christmas tree at night, but it is hard to kind of see where you’re at on the racetrack at night. I love the place.”
And with his name high above the track with the other legends, Bristol loved him too.
