RIVAS FIRED IN MID-RACE
Sun, 2007-11-04 14:17
Pro Stock Motorcycle
standout Chris Rivas was summarily fired by team owner Rickie Smith following
the third qualifying session here at the Auto Club Finals.
Smith referred to Rivas
as “not a team player” as one reason for his dismissal, but there appears to be
more to this than a simple disagreement between rider and team
owner.
Pro Stock Motorcycle
standout Chris Rivas was summarily fired by team owner Rickie Smith following
the third qualifying session here at the Auto Club Finals.
Smith referred to Rivas
as “not a team player” as one reason for his dismissal, but there appears to be
more to this than a simple disagreement between rider and team
owner.
We asked Ms. McBride why Rivas had been
fired, to which she replied, “There was some controversy on the third qualifying
pass. His bike would not go into gear to do the burnout, and I think things were
said between Chris and Matt and Matt’s father.
I’m not really sure, and
I’m not going to be the one to put information out on
that.”
CP – Rickie, please tell us what happened
with Chris Rivas in the middle of the race.
CP – Tell us what happened out here
today.
Paired with Rickie’s son Matt, relations
between the two riders had become strained in recent weeks, and appear to go
back at least to an incident in Dallas, when Rivas left the track after failing
to qualify.
Adding spice to the story is that Angie
McBride of Winston-Salem, North Carolina made test runs on the motorcycle during
the IHRA World Finals at Rockingham Dragway three weeks ago.
However, after that test
session the local rider failed to take her riding leathers home despite knowing
that the race rig was slated for a three week West Coast jaunt to close out the
season. When we
asked her why her leathers were already on hand when she appeared at the track
this morning, she said, “My leathers were in the trailer.
I actually tested
Chris’s bike two weeks ago at the IHRA race because Steve Earwood (Rockingham
Dragway owner) and IHRA requested two bikes go down the track,
side-by-side. So, Matt
(Smith) needed some things tested, so I got to ride the bike.
I went to the 1,000 foot
mark and shut off every pass. My leathers were in the trailer, and I went home on Sunday and they
left on Monday to go to Las Vegas, so my leathers were in the trailer because we
had gone racing the previous weekend.”
Paired with Rickie’s son Matt, relations
between the two riders had become strained in recent weeks, and appear to go
back at least to an incident in Dallas, when Rivas left the track after failing
to qualify.
Adding spice to the story is that Angie
McBride of Winston-Salem, North Carolina made test runs on the motorcycle during
the IHRA World Finals at Rockingham Dragway three weeks ago.
However, after that test
session the local rider failed to take her riding leathers home despite knowing
that the race rig was slated for a three week West Coast jaunt to close out the
season. When we
asked her why her leathers were already on hand when she appeared at the track
this morning, she said, “My leathers were in the trailer.
I actually tested
Chris’s bike two weeks ago at the IHRA race because Steve Earwood (Rockingham
Dragway owner) and IHRA requested two bikes go down the track,
side-by-side. So, Matt
(Smith) needed some things tested, so I got to ride the bike.
I went to the 1,000 foot
mark and shut off every pass. My leathers were in the trailer, and I went home on Sunday and they
left on Monday to go to Las Vegas, so my leathers were in the trailer because we
had gone racing the previous weekend.”
We took Ms. McBride’s advice and asked the
same question of Matt Smith. “I can’t answer that,” he said.
Competitionplus --“Well, who
can?”
Matt Smith --“My
dad.”
CP – Are you essentially saying you won’t
answer, because you obviously know what went
on?
Smith – Well, I
do know what went on, but I’ll let my dad answer that to the
media.
When the senior Smith arrived back at the
team’s pit area we posed the same question to
him:
Rickie Smith – We just
had a little disagreement. That’s about all I can say.
He come back there to
Matthew (after the aborted third qualifying attempt) and made a little smart
comment right before Matthew made his run this morning and my daughter’s
actually the one who came up and told me what happened.
So I just come straight
back to the trailer and told Chris, before Matthew even got back after his run,
I told Chris he was done, to get his stuff and leave, that we were
going
to park the bike.
That’s basically what
happened. Then I
called Latrell (Preston, CFO for Torco, the team’s primary sponsor), and me and
Latrell talked and then I talked to Graham Light and we didn’t want a bye run to
show up (in the) first round (of eliminations).
I didn’t even know when
I let Chris go that that’s the way it would turn out.
But, like I say, Matthew
hadn’t got back (from his run), so I went to Graham and said The bike’s out, so
he said You can’t take it out unless something’s wrong and this and that, I
said, What can we do? He said we would have to put anther rider on the bike, and that
automatically throws Chris’s runs out and puts her runs in.
If she qualifies, fine,
if she don’t qualify, fine.
CP – We have a couple of sources who
report that you guys were having problems in Las
Vegas.
RS – Yeah,
we’ve had problems for the last three or four races,
really.
CP – So you were building up to this
regardless?
RS – Yeah, I think so. I think that’s what was coming up. I’m
not saying nothing bad about Chris. Chris up and left Dallas with
Matthew hanging there. He could have stayed. He didn’t qualify. When
Matthew didn’t qualify in Reading and he had a motor hurt he could have
gone home and left Chris there to run the bike, but he stayed there to
try and get that bike in the (Countdown). At Dallas when (Chris)
didn’t qualify he just up and left Saturday night. He’s not a team
player. If you’re not a team player over here, we don’t need it.
Rivas disputes the senior Smith’s version of
the Dallas story, as you will see in his comments
below.
Rivas immediately left Auto Club Raceway
after being discharged, but will return as an interested spectator on
Sunday. He’s
determined to show his face and let the other competitors and fans speculate as
much as they want to. We caught up with him by telephone and asked him what had taken
place that led to his dismissal.
Rivas – What
happened today had been brewing for a while, really.
I guess the short story
would be that it’s been pretty obvious that it’s been in the rumor mill and
everywhere else that they’ve been doing testing with Angie McBride on that bike,
and that her leathers have been in the trailer since Las Vegas, so everybody
knew that that’s the direction they wanted to go.
Matt’s been wanting to
have a girl on that bike. They could just never put it together from day one.
I was able to convince
Torco to allow me to finish out the season on the bike.
We had that
agreement.
What happened this weekend was a strange
series of events of mechanical problems with the motorcycle.
My experience and my
background comes from being a hands-on kind of a guy.
All of my race bikes,
all my races teams, I’ve been the one that’s done everything, even with Mohegan
Sun. I was the
one that did the motors. Rick Manny and myself, we were very hands-on.
We built the motors at
my shop in California, and I did everything, really, so I’m not a
dummy. I’m not
just a rider. I know
how to actually build engines and tune the bikes and do all of that stuff, so
when the mechanical failures start coming up I questioned them a little bit, and
that kind of put some ill feelings in the way.
This weekend we had a mysterious electrical
glitch that caused the bike to leave the starting line 400 rpm higher than it
was supposed to have been programmed to do.
I’m kind of a fuel
injection/dyno tuning guy. That’s what I do every day, so I understand
the fuel injection components and everything that happens with the tuning and
all of that. I know
that computers just don’t change themselves, and stuff just doesn’t magically
happen. I
questioned them a little on that, and stuff kinda started getting
heated.
CP – When the bike left the starting line
at a higher rpm than you’d planned, was that on
Thursday?
Rivas – That
would have been on Friday. On Thursday everything seemed to go good with the first pass off
the trailer. I had a
.106 60 foot (time), and it was the best 60 foot of the class, which is kind of
what I’ve been known for, and the bike was tuned very modestly.
We ran a 7.03 right off
the trailer, so I was feeling pretty good about the weekend.
On Friday, when you
leave (the starting line) with that 400 rpm higher you can’t 60 foot like that,
so our 60 foot went from a .106 to a .110 and still ran (another)
7.03. They
actually did tune the bike pretty good for that session.
It’s just that I didn’t
get my starting line advantage and the good 60 foot so the E.T. went away in a
real bad way, but we still ran a 7.03.
For today’s first round, just prior to the
first round they had the transmission out and some other components were all
apart on the bike, and I was instructed to not work on the
bike.
CP – Who told you not to work on the
bike, Rickie or Matt?
Rivas – Rickie.
Rickie makes all of the decisions over there.
Any decision Matthew
makes, it comes from Rickie. So, Rickie told me, through Matt, to not work on the
bike. Then I
verified that with Rickie. I asked him plainly, flat out, So, I’m not working on the bike? And
he said, No, all we want you to do is adjust the rear wheel, because that’s what
you need to do to feel safe. You take care of the chain and the rear wheel, and we’ll do the
rest. That’s
not my style. I’m kind
of a hands-on guy. But I said, If that’s the way you guys want to do it, I don’t
really have a choice, so that’s fine.
Basically, at this point
I just wanted to finish the season.
When we got up to the starting line to make
the first hit for this morning the transmission shifter wouldn’t go into first
gear at all. I tried
getting to third gear, which is where we do the burnout, and it wouldn’t go
quite all the way into third gear, so I kind of rolled the bike around and tried
to rock it into second gear. I tried to get it back into first, and it wouldn’t go. I tried
three or four times and it was obvious it wouldn’t shift correctly.
The setup on the shift
adjustment wasn’t right.
CP – So you’re not suggesting that they
intentionally sabotaged the bike at all?
Rivas – I cannot
imagine that they would have done that.
I would not say that
they intentionally sabotaged the bike.
Here’s the deal.
When I’m on the bike, in
the burnout box, my adrenalin’s already going.
I’m already pumped up,
ready for the run. I got off the bike. I was pretty upset because I knew I needed to get a little better
in the field trying to stay in the Top 10 (points standings).
Qualifying low is losing
points, and I need every point I can get.
So, I got off the bike
and I walked back in the lanes and I was going to kind of stand off in a corner,
and Matt’s three or four bike lengths back, and he looks over at me and goes,
What happened? I walked over and I probably shouldn’t have said anything to him at
all. I should
have just waited because he was ready to make a run.
He wasn’t like in the
burnout box. He was three or four bikes back.
But, he asked me, and,
like I said, the adrenalin’s flowing, so I went ahead and told him, Hey, the
transmission won’t shift. I don’t know if you guys are doing this stuff
intentionally. I probably shouldn’t have said it like I did, but obviously, like I
said, the adrenalin’s was flowing pretty good and so he kinda got upset, and
shook his head and went ahead and made his pass.
We got back to the trailer and Rickie just
freaked out on me. I mean, I haven’t been yelled at like that since I was a little
boy. He just
freaked out and told me to get all of my stuff and get out of the
trailer. I said,
As a driver, you should understand, and I know you’ve been upset before yourself
a few times when something doesn’t go right.
Here I am in the
waterbox, and the thing doesn’t want to go into gear. I don’t know what’s going
on, and he said something about I should have checked the transmission, but how
can I check the transmission when you guys tell me specifically not to work on
the bike?
I don’t know.
It was a lot of
confusion, some miscommunication.
CP –Let’s back up to the Dallas race when
you didn’t qualify. After you didn’t qualify did Rickie tell
you it was okay to leave the track and go
home?
Rivas – Rickie
was not at Dallas. I specifically asked Matt if it was okay.
I said Matt, I would
like to leave. Do you need any help? You’ve got two crew guys here that are extra because now one bike’s
not running. If you
need help, I will stay, but if you don’t need my help I don’t really want to
hang around. I would
rather just go home, and he said, No, I think we’ve got it, so I
left.
CP – Rickie has has
told us that you left without permission, and in his words, you’re not a team
player because you didn’t stick around.
Do you have a
reaction to that?
Rivas – My only
reaction to that is that would be a lie.
I talked with Matthew
about (leaving). Rickie was not there.
CP – Do you have an opinion as to whether
or not the Smiths were planning something like this, and the opportunity arose
and they took that opportunity to fire you in the middle of the
race?
Rivas – I would
say yes to that because why else would another racer leave their leathers in the
rig for the western part of the swing at the end of the season?
There’s no reason that a
North Carolina racer would leave their leathers in a trailer that’s going to
California and Las Vegas. And then Angie shows up this morning, at this race, Saturday
morning.
CP – Is there anything else we should
know about this?
Rivas – That
pretty much wraps it up. I was excited to become a part of a Torco team.
I thought it would
really be a good move for me, and I was hoping to be in the championship with
Matt as a second team thinking that everybody would be treated equally, that it
was going to be a good deal.
I had really good conversations and
relations with Evan Knoll, Latrell and Brian Olson.
I enjoyed the experience
with those guys and the opportunity that they gave me.
Evan Knoll really did
give me a very good opportunity.
In Las Vegas, when Matthew said he didn’t
want me riding the bike, Evan Knoll and Latrell stood behind me and said they
wanted me on the bike.
Leading up to the Las Vegas race there was a
three or four week spread between Dallas and the Vegas race.
I hadn’t any real
conversations with Matt in between. I had left Dallas and nothing was said (to me).
Two days before the (Las
Vegas) event, this would make it Tuesday, Matt called me up and said, I got a
call this morning from Torco, and they said they didn’t want the blue bike to
run on the race track, so you might as well just stay home.
I said, What are you
talking about, Matt? He said, Well, that’s all I know.
I don’t know anything
else. I got a
phone call from Latrell at Torco, and they told me to leave the bike in North
Carolina, don’t bring it to Las Vegas, they don’t want it on the track any
more. He said,
I don’t understand it, but they don’t want you to ride it no
more.
CP – Did you have a conversation with
Latrell Preston or Evan Knoll before Las
Vegas?
Rivas – Yes. What I did was I talked to a couple of my buddies in the Pro Stock
ranks and they said I shouldn’t take (Matt’s) call as the final
word. They
suggested that I should call Latrell myself just to get his words and make sure
there’s nothing weird going on. I called Latrell myself, and he said, That’s not entirely
true. What we
said is if you’re not riding the bike we did not want the bike in Las Vegas, to
leave it at home, because Matthew wanted Angie to be riding the bike, and they
didn’t want her riding the bike at that time.
CP – Have you spoken to the Torco people
since this your firing today?
Rivas – No, not
at all. I figure
it’s already too late by now, and the way Rickie went off I don’t want to be
affiliated with them any more anyway.
Rivas, of Fresno, Calif., has already been
contacted by other team owners who appear eager to lock up his services for the
2008 season. He admits
to being a passionate rider. “That’s all I want to do,” he says.
“I don’t want this other
drama and soap opera thing going on. All I want to do is ride a bike and have some fun.
I’m trying to keep my
wife involved in some of my conversations.
That way she can kind of
keep me leveled out a little bit. Maybe she can help me make the right decisions so that I can be
back riding in the NHRA series next year.”
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