Rickie Smith initially had a hard time believing what his drag racing buddies told him ahead of his monumental first run in Scott Palmer's Top Fuel dragster. The car he was about to get behind the wheel of at the PDRA ProStars event was Scott Palmer's nitro-burning Top Fuel dragster, and nothing could remotely compare, Smith thought. 

"I had a couple of people I talked to about it that drove some door cars; Billy Torrence and Scott told me, 'They said, "It's going to be like what I'm used to leaving, but when that thing gets about 150-200 feet, it's going to get on with it," Smith said.

It turns out, Smith admitted, they were right. 

"Felt like it was going to pick the front end up out there when that clutch started coming in, and I mean, it just started charging," Smith revealed. "That was where I wanted to go. I might, if it had been daytime, went another hundred feet. But we didn't get the chin strap quite tight enough; I don't think. My head got back against the roll cage. It started shaking my head like a paint shaker. Everything got blurry."

Smith admits he hasn't been knocked that blurry since the fighting monkey came off the top of the cage and cracked his jaw at the King County Fair as a teenager.

"I knew I was going just a little bit left. I said, 'Okay. We're good," Smith recalled. "I thought I was right close to the eighth when my head got back against that roll cage; it just started getting everything blurry. It was nighttime, too. I wasn't going to do nothing stupid. 

"As far as I thought, it all went perfectly. I mean, it went in and out of gear, right? It did everything right. I'm tickled to death. I was a little worried about it for the last week or so, but it ain't intimidating me. I'd get in that thing tomorrow and race it if I had the chance."

Smith,  who swears this time he's really on the cusp of retirement, checked another item off of his rapidly-filling bucket list, alongside skydiving. 

"I thank the Lord for Scott Palmer giving me this opportunity. He did this," Smith said. "I helped him a little bit this winter on his car, and he just wanted to do this with me. Scott didn't charge me not one dime to do this. That is awesome because Scott isn't a person that has stupid money, and he gave me this opportunity. You just can't ask for somebody no better than that."

Smith admits he's having the time of his life this season where he has made PDRA his primary focus.

"I enjoy the PDRA. I enjoy one-on-one with nitrous cars. We run really good the first two races," Smith said. "I hurt my good motor, my big motor. We got it fixed. It didn't do right at Budds Creek. We took it out. Then we put another motor in here that was supposed to be good. It's way off on the tuneup for some reason. 

"I just don't want to be stupid and hurt it. So we're going to do the best we can tomorrow with it. But I'll be all right with that, eventually. But just this deal here with Scott, doing this, it has been the time of my life." (Rod Short contributed to this report)