Matt Smith has found himself in the NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle pits, working hard  into the evening, after most of the crowd have gone home, when a random fan will wander by and ask how it's going -- and discuss the problem Smith is trying to fix.

"Now how did he know that was what we broke?" Smith will ask himself. Then it occurs to him: wife and teammate Angie Smith has been on the social-media outlet Twitter again.

And it's all good, he told WFO Radio in a recent interview: "That's what it's all about, keeping the fans interested in what we do and how we do stuff. Every pass is a pit pass. Everybody gets to come to the ropes and see what we're doing. They might not can come in our trailer and see what we're doing, but at least they can get the perspective and see the actual hands-on maintenance of what we do."

Angie Smith said tweeting regularly (@AngieSmith77) about their progress each day at the racetrack is part of connecting with fans.

"That's how I try to make fans part of our life and part of the racing life," she said.

And she is the first to say she puts it all out there, warts and all.

"Do I get on there sometimes and say bad things -- not bad things about my husband but bad things in general? I absolutely do," she said, " because you know what? That's real life. I mean, we don’t live in a fairy-tale lane. Nobody lives in a fairy-tale land, and there's goods and bads in everybody's life."

Angie Smith isn't afraid of plain talk, even with advice for Matt. She's respectful, but she speaks her mind.

"I'm not one not to say what I feel," she said with a "Well, that's how I am" kind of laugh. "If I think he needs to go another direction, I'll tell him. Whether he likes it or not, that's on him. He doesn't always like it, but that's racing, that's being married, and that's all of it, wrapped together."

Matt Smith can hold his own in such conversations.

"We fight all the time because she doesn’t get to race right now," he said. "It's not that I didn’t want her to. It's just money. It takes money for these bikes.

"Yeah, I've got four motorcycles and nine motors, but it takes people to make the bikes go down the track. If we don't have crew help and we don't have the right stuff, I don't want to put nobody out there and make 'em look bad. So that's the whole thing."

She said she understands, even though she might not have liked sitting on the sidelines since the July race at Sonoma, Calif.

'I HOPE THEY DON'T WIN A RACE NEXT YEAR'

Angie Smith isn't the only straight-talking, straight-riding one in the Smith NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle clan. *** Husband Matt Smith told Joe Castello during a WFO Radio interview from the recent PRI Show, "Not saying anything bad about Harley-Davidson, Eddie [Krawiec], or Andrew [Hines], but I really hope they don’t win a race next year, the way they dominated this year. I hope they spread the love between everybody this [next] year."

He said his bike "should be pretty good" with the new class rules changes. Even without them in effect, he said, he has seen an improvement. He sandwiched a final-round appearance at Las Vegas in October with semifinal finishes at Reading and the Pomona finale for a sixth-place effort. 

"We found some power at the end of the year. We did bring out the back-up bike, but that wasn't the reason we ran fast. We had an experimental motor [and] found some stuff . . . went to Vegas to try some stuff, and it worked. So we should be pretty strong next year," he said.

Matt Smith said, "I hope with all the money that Vance & Hines and Harley-Davidson have they don’t develop something hat's way out of whack in the rule and come out with something that's really stupid and really fast. I hope they build something like what we got.

"Our technology that we've got in the two-valve is 2002-2003 technology. We haven't changed anything since then," he said. "Hopefully they'll design something like that and the Buells and the Harleys will be one package and they put 10 pounds on us to help us, help the Suzukis against he V-twins."

He predicted that this coming season will bring more excitement than NHRA fans have seen from the bike class in some time.

Kidding around about the sunshine in Florida versus the cold at their home in King, N.C., led to Matt Smith saying, "I hope we're on fire with the new rule changes."

And that's the cold, hard truth. - Susan Wade"I've learned a lot this year," Angie Smith said. "I've had to be kind of the mechanic on his bike, and I've learned a whole new aspect of the motorcycle."

She said she and Matt are "putting some things together" and "some thing look very promising for me to be back out there next year." And she said that "if we get this deal to go out and race fulltime next year with me, I think things will be a little bit different. It's not that I didn’t appreciate it before, but I have a new look on things. And I WILL appreciate it more, because I know what kind of hard work it takes to get it out there.

Her one highlight-reel moment came this July at Norwalk, Ohio, when she lost the brakes on her bike and blew through the sandtrap and bailed just before hitting a cornfield. The bike plowed through six rows of unforgiving cornstalks, but luckily the only damage to her was a broken right pinkie finger.

Angie Smith said she learned several things through the scary experience:

- Her instincts were correct. ("I think it made me a better rider, because I had to come up with a plan in a small amount of time")

- She certainly still has the desire ("What I would have wanted to do is fix the bike on Saturday night and go race on Sunday, because I was qualified. Unfortunately we couldn't do that. We weren't prepared for that to happen, and we didn't bring our back-up bike. If we would have, I would have raced on Sunday.")

- Her team is skilled and dedicated. ("We went home, we repaired that bike, and we actually raced it at Denver and Sonoma. So we have a lot of heart in our race team. If we have to stay up till 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning to get things done, then that's what we're going to do. We don't work 9-to-5 hours. We works as long as it takes to make our program successful. That's what we do, and that's what we have to offer a sponsor.")

"There's much more to racing than making horsepower. There's much more to racing than just riding the bike. It takes a lot of desire," Angie Smith said.

As for her opportunities for next season, she said, "I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed and stay positive like I've been and try to work hard. Hopefully we're going to put some stuff together. My dream and my love is to be out there, letting the clutch go."

And she'll let everybody know through her Twitter account how it all works out.

All articles and photography published in CompetitionPlus.com are protected by United States of America and International copyright laws unless mentioned otherwise. The content on this website is intended for the private use of the reader and may not be published or reposted in any form without the prior written consent of CompetitionPlus.com.