In five completed Pro Stock Motorcycle appearances on the Camping World Drag Racing Series tour so far this season, Matt Smith has advanced to four final rounds and won twice. And at the one event he didn’t make the showdown, the Las Vegas four-wide race, Smith was No. 1 qualifier and set the low elapsed time and top speed of the meet. 

The four-time and reigning class champion continued his domination Saturday at the Dodge//SRT Mile-High NHRA Nationals presented by Pennzoil on the outskirts of Denver.

Smith will lead the field for Sunday eliminations with a 7.113-second elapsed time and track-best 189.47-mph speed he posted Saturday on the Morrison, Colo., quarter-mile course at Bandimere Speedway.

But Smith wasn’t totally satisfied with his run Saturday evening.

“We missed it a little bit there. We should have went a little bit better. I felt like we could’ve went a [7].10 or a [7.]09 there. We just didn’t have the low numbers we needed,” he said.

However, he said he was happy with the performance of his Matt Smith Racing team, which landed all three racers in the top half of the order. His wife, Angie Smith, qualified second, and teammate Scotty Pollacheck – the Atlanta winner in May – was No. 8.

“Great run for our team,” Matt Smith said after securing his second No. 1 starting spot this year and 45th overall on his Denso/Stockseth/Lucas Oil/Greg Butcher Trucking EBR bike. “I’m No. 1, and Angie’s No. 2. I think Scotty ended up No. 8 [at 7.199, 185.84]. I wish we had gotten Scotty up  little bit more, but he’s right there. I think No. 3 [Steve Johnson] is a [7.]16. So he’s only three-hundredths [of a second] from No. 3. All in all, we’ve got a great team here.”

Smith won at this venue in 2007 and 2008 and has been runner-up two on other occasions.

“It’s been awhile. Like to win again,” he said.

He’ll take a 14-3 record into the first round, and his record should be 15-3 after he takes a first-round bye. His second-round opponent will be the winner of the Pollacheck-Cory Reed Round 1 match-up.

Smith said Sunday’s conditions will be unlike what racers have seen so far this weekend, but, he said, “Everybody’s got the same conditions. We’ve never been on the racetrack at all on where we’re going to race at. I don’t knw – it’s going to be a little slower, should be. Track should be a little slicker.

“All in all, we’ll be good. I think we’ll be fine,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll just take one round at a time. That’s all we got to do.”

Smith flirted with Bandimere Speedway records from the start of the weekend and finally reeled in one of them.

He nearly reset both ends of the record Friday night. His 7.145-second pass was slightly off Eddie Krawiec’s 2018 mark of 7.111, and Smith’s top speed of 188.46 mph almost erased Hector Arana Jr.’s three-year-old clocking of 188.86 mph.

He came back Saturday and in the early session lowered his E.T. to 7.128 seconds, but he broke the track speed record at 189.39 mph.

Smith closed qualifying with a 7.113-second pass that was just two-thousandths of a second shy of the Bandimere Speedway E.T. record, so he had to settle for having the second-quickest speed there ever. However, he reset his freshly minted track record with a speed of 189.47 mph.

Smith moved up from the No. 2 spot in the order to No. 1 late Friday night after Steve Johnson’s class-quickest 7.130-second run was disqualified because of a fuel violation.

Those who keep track of such things have noticed since his winners-circle pictures from the previous race, at Norwalk, Ohio, that Smith has grown his hair long. He said he has done so because Lisa Michler, the marketing communications manager for his sponsor Denso, “likes the long hair. She told me to keep wearing it, keep doing it. It’s good luck. We’re going to take it to, hopefully, some more race wins and, hopefully, a championship.” - Susan Wade