By Rick Sheek (rsheek@starhq.com)
BRISTOL — Rickie Smith, Bristol Dragway’s all-time national event winner, doesn’t think much of the Pro Stock class these days.
The veteran driver and crew chief stresses big money has taken over the sport, fan interest has deteriorated and no longer does ability on the drag strip win races.
“We won a lot of races up here,” Smith, the five-time IHRA champion with 10 victories at Thunder Valley, said on Saturday at the eight-annual O’Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. “We always ran good up here, but things just got out of hand with NHRA. If you can’t spend a million or million and a half, you can’t even be competitive in Pro Stock.
“We’re just kind of playing. We really don’t expect to qualify. It kind of helps me to learn about the car a little more, but you’ve got to have power to qualify. I don’t care how good you think the car works.”
Smith, 54, was inducted into the Legends of Thunder Valley last year. He wasn’t able to attend, but his daughter and grandson were on hand to accept the honor.
The stands are full now, Smith believes, because of the Fuel classes. And NASCAR is having no trouble maintaining its popularity.
“You’ve got Dale Earnhardt or Jeff Gordon tapping on somebody’s bumper, that’s where the fans get into it,” Smith said. “That’s the only thing we’ve got in Pro Stock to get excited are the fans in staging line battles. Because the cars don’t catch on fire, blow up or hit the wall like Funny Car. That’s excitement.
“The guys over here, I think they’ve lost the point of Pro Stock – keeping the fans involved. If you don’t keep the fans involved, there’s not much to it.”
Smith, the 1977 Super Mod IHRA champ, won his first Pro Stock race here in ‘80 and his last in ‘93. The final year Bristol Dragway was open under IHRA sanction, Smith prevailed in Pro Modified.
“You’ve got teams coming in with two or three million dollar deals, they’ve just dominated the class because they have money,” Smith said. “I’m not saying they don’t have talent. They have talent, but they’ve just dominated it with the money so bad.“Back when I was coming up, with Glidden and all of us., we worked like hell to get where we were at – and we didn’t have big sponsorship. We did 90 percent of all the work.
“Clutch calls, gear ratios – I made all the calls, Glidden made all the calls and Warren made all the calls. Now you’ve got three or four guys doing it. The excitement of the class is gone. Right now, I don’t see fans into Pro Stock like they were back then.”
In the old days, Smith was archrivals with Warren Johnson and Bob Glidden – the all-time winners in Pro Stock history. Smith said those relationships don’t exist any longer.
“Back then we had staging-line battles,” Smith said. “We argued a little bit. There was a little feud going on here and there.
“There just isn’t any of that going on over here no more. To me, Pro Stock is dead in a way. There’s no rivalries like you had years ago. That’s what keeps the fans interested.”
Smith is currently running a Pro Mod circuit overseas in the Middle East country of Bahrain. He will return on Monday.
“Right now the most exciting thing to me is the Pro Mod thing,” Smith said. “It’s just the cars get a little crazier. These things here, they just go up and down the race track.
“They’re more like a Super Gas car, is what I call it. The excitement is just not there. Nobody’s playing staging line battles -nobody’s playing a mind game. That’s what gets the fans involved in it.”
Smith’s son, Matt, is the reigning NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle champ. The younger Smith, with one win this year, is second in the points to Matt Hines.
“Matthew does 98 percent of his own deal,” Smith said. “I just help him a little bit here and there on tune-ups and different stuff. He runs that deal.
“He doesn’t have a fourth of the budget that the top teams have. He does all of the work himself, he builds his own engines, he drives his truck to the track – he does just like I did. I applaud him. He’s done all of his on his own.”
The elder Smith stresses what it means to him to be mentioned among the elite in Thunder Valley history.
“Through the years for people to respect you that much, it’s a big honor,” Smith, from the mountain town of King, N.C., said. “That right there is probably worth more than any championship I ever won. I worked hard to win those championships, but when you get voted to go up there beside Larry Carrier, Wally Parks and Don Garlits – it doesn’t get any better than that. That was amazing for me.”
