Matt Smith Backs Up NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle Trash Talk, Wins GETTRX All-Star Call-Out

Six-time Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Matt Smith, who one week ago was criticizing the NHRA for a perceived lack of parity that he said favored Gaige Herrera’s Vance & Hines team, dominated Saturday’s qualifying for the Denso Sonoma Nationals.

Smith backed up his pre-race trash talk directed at both season-long dominator Herrera and career-long nemesis Steve Johnson to win the GETTRX All-Star Call-Out for the bike class, set the Sonoma Raceway elapsed-time record, and claim his fourth No. 1 qualifying position of the year. What’s more, he’s $25,000 richer for it.

He scored a final-round victory over teammate Jianna Evaristo in the GETTRX All-Star race-within-a-race to grab the winner’s share of the $61,000 purse and put three of his four motorcycles in the top four spots in the order for Sunday’s eliminations.

But he said, “We haven’t won a race yet. We’ve won the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge (another bonus event) twice. We just haven’t been able to do it on Sunday. We’ve been good on Saturday, but we’ve got to be good on Sunday.”

As for his complaint about suffering from a seeming unlevel playing field, Smith said, “We made some very, very nice runs. Ultimately, I still think they [the Vance & Hines team of Herrera and Richard Gadson] have an advantage.”

Herrera picked Smith on Friday as his opponent in the grudge-style bonus event, saying, “There's been a lot of talk on social media, this and that about the class not doing good, and it's all come down to one person. You know who you are. Go ahead and come out, and we're going to settle it on the track.”

Smith bounded out onto the stage, seemingly eager for a verbal joust. And he had some trash-talk of his own, taking aim at Herrera and Johnson: “You know what? I might have a shot of calling Steve Johnson out second round, because I'm going to tattoo his [Herrera’s] butt and put him on the trailer. And I’m going to make Vance & Hines feel like they made the wrong pick here.”

After Saturday’s fulfilment of his promise, Smith said, “My pick was going to be Steve Johnson, because he annoys me all the time. He talks a lot of stuff about me. I got to pick him second round. It worked out good. Gaige doesn’t smack-talk. He doesn’t say a lot. But it was their mistake [to go head-to-head against him], and maybe they’ll learn from it.”

Smith’s 6.655-second, 204.23-mph triumph against Evaristo erased Angelle Sampey’s 2022 mark of 6.696 seconds. Evaristo, Sunday’s No. 2 starter, No. 3 Herrera each clocked quicker times than Sampey’s mark.

That capped a wild qualifying and call-out process that saw Herrera’s bike break on the starting line Friday night, Johnson call Hector Arana Jr. “a corporate snob” because he tucks in his shirt, Angie Smith described clean-cut competitor Chase Van Sant—the previous week’s Seattle winner—as “The Tom Brady of Pro Stock Motorcycle.”