NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

As if tuning four Pro Stock Motorcycles wasn’t enough, reigning world champ Matt Smith decided to increase his work load this weekend by making his national event debut in the Super Comp class. Smith has owned a dragster for more than two years, but given his busy schedule, he’s only been able to race it a couple of times at local bracket events. With the NHRA tour returning to his home track at zMax Dragway, the reigning Pro Stock Motorcycle champ decided to as he put it, “try something a little different.”

Fortunately for Smith, his PR agent, Sadie Glenn, and her husband, Dallas, are accomplished sportsman racers, and they agreed to help him adjust timer, delay box and throttle stop settings in the unfamiliar car. After two successful time trial runs on Friday, Smith not only won the first round of eliminations on Saturday morning, but did so with an impressive .000 perfect reaction time.

“I’ve had this car for two years and I got tired of just letting it sit around,” said Smith. “I was going to race it at Bristol but that didn’t work out and when we were preparing for this race I just decided that it was a good time to bring it out. I had a couple of passes yesterday to get it dialed in and I felt pretty comfortable except my reaction times were .050 and that wasn’t going to cut it. I talked to Dallas and we took a little out of the [delay box] and it came up .000. The last thing I wanted to do was red-light, and I’m glad that I didn’t. I even got a chance to womp the throttle a few times down there. That's not something I've ever done before."

As far as his Pro Stock Motorcycle effort is concerned, Smiths did not have a good Friday. In fact, it was nothing short of a disaster. In Q1, Smith slowed to a 7.07 at just 162-mph. He was prepared to challenge for the top spot on Friday evening, but a broken clutch basket; a component that rarely ever fails, had other ideas.

“I’ve been racing motorcycles since 1996 and I’ve never had a clutch basket fail,” Smith said. “I’m pretty sure this started on Monday in St. Louis. I was doing a tire test for Mickey Thompson and I had a couple of runs where the clutch was trying to pull me through the lights. I changed clutch hubs and I thought we were okay. Then on the first pass here, I broke a transmission. We fixed that and thought we were good to go. Last night, I threw the clutch and the bike hesitated. I thought it just slipped the clutch, so I stayed with it but in third gear it just locked up. I stopped on the track and couldn’t move, even if I pulled the clutch lever. We’ve been chasing the clutch program with this bike all year, but this is the first time I broke the basket. I hated to lose two runs, but we’ve got two more today. I think we’ll be just fine.”

With four events remaining in the 2019 season, Smith is in a position to defend his Mello Yello championship. He came into Charlotte as the No. 4 ranked rider in the class, 61-points behind leader Andrew Hines. Smith must climb over Hines, Karen Stoffer, and Eddie Krawiec to take the lead and Indy winner Jerry Savoie is also lurking in fifth place, just five points behind Smith. Given his precarious position, one would have to ask if Smith is wise to be racing a Super Comp car in the middle of a points chase but he doesn’t see it that way.

“To me, this is a nice way to help take the pressure off,” said Smith. “It’s a nice distraction and it helps me clear my head. I’m not sure if any of the data translates from bike to car and vice versa, but it’s just something fun that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”