Yahoo Autos Without Parity, Matt Smith Says He'll Pull His Five Bikes From NHRA Motorcycle Class
‘Our bike count gets lower and lower and lower every race we go to,’ Matt Smith says.
Gaige Herrera has carved an NHRA record by being the class’ only winner this season, and Smith lays blame with the sanctioning body.
Smith vows, ‘I hope they fix it. If they don't, I’m signing out of this class’.
Drag-racing history has unfolded in the past year and a half with NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle’s Gaige Herrera winning 11 consecutive times, breaking Bob Glidden’s mark of nine that dated back to the 1978-’79 seasons.
Six-time bike-class champion Matt Smith said at this weekend’s Northwest Nationals at Seattle the he doesn’t resent Herrera or even Herrera’s Vance & Hines Racing team. But he said that result signals an ongoing problem that the NHRA isn’t fixing—one that has chased away champion L.E. Tonglet and veteran riders Kelly Clontz, Joey Gladstone, and Cory Reed.
Smith contended, too, that one NHRA tech department official conceded during a meeting at the previous race, at Norwalk, Ohio, that ‘We have done a very, very bad job at keeping parity in this motorcycle class for the last year and a half. We are going to make a rule change and try to fix this before the West Coast [swing].’ And they did nothing.”
Now, he said, he simply wonders, “Do they care?”
And if the current rules support the status quo after a meeting he and sponsor Denso have arranged for next week during the annual stop at Sonoma, Calif., Smith said he’ll leave the class with his five-motorcycle team.
“We have a meeting with NHRA at Sonoma, which is the Denso[-sponsored] race. So we're putting the ball in their court,” Smith said. “We're going to be there, and if they want to fix the class, they will fix it. If they don't, then it'll go elsewhere. We are ready to just give up out here, unless NHRA fixes it. We will go race with Denso on another platform somewhere else or in another category. But the simple fact is we're done spending the money in the Pro Stock Motorcycle if the NHRA doesn't fix it. They have to get this disparity problem fixed in our class, or this class is done.
“I love this class. Matt Smith is one of the biggest contributors to this class over the last eight years. I've fielded more bikes than any other team out here. I have helped more people out here than any other team out here,” he said. “But when you don't have a shot of even winning unless somebody breaks, that's not right. [Herrera] is doing a great job. But do you realize in the 17 races he won, he has won only one time on a holeshot. That's how much of a performance advantage he has.
"They clearly have an advantage. I’m not mad at Gaige at all. He's a great rider. He's made that bike very consistent, but they have a big performance advantage. And that's where NHRA has to do their job to get it under control or nobody wants to come run.”
Herrera shrugged it off, saying, “Everyone says we’re hurting the class, but I really don’t think [so]. I think we’re making everyone go back home and do their homework and try to figure out what they’re missing. The class has excelled in such a big way that everyone else has to stop and regroup. I have a feeling the class is going to be big again, as it should be. There’s nothing better than good competition.”
That is one key reason Smith pulled his fleet from Friday’s under-the-lights second qualifying session at Seattle: to show the NHRA, which attracted just 11 bikes to Seattle for a 16-racer field this weekend, that it would have an insignificant class if Matt Smith Racing defected. That’s beside his contention that “the night time pass doesn't do anything for Sunday set-up. For wearing parts and pieces out, we learned nothing to prepare for race day Sunday.”
At issue is this, Smith said: “We've been asking for rules to help the category, and as everybody can see, our bike count gets lower and lower and lower every race we go to. And they [NHRA officials] always want to come back and say, ‘Well, you ran close to him [Herrera] on Friday and Saturday and then Sunday they go out there and they go...faster than everybody else.’
"And I said, ‘That's because they're not showing their full hand in qualifying, but they turn it up on Sunday.’ So in my perspective, we always make good passes at nighttime, evening, sessions. I said, ‘We'll just sit it out and we'll show everybody what we have on Sunday.’ And they're going to see that they [Herrera and team] clearly have an advantage. That's kind of where we're at right now.
“We're trying to get the NHRA Tech Department to understand that we have a major problem. NHRA, it’s like talking to deaf ears with the Tech Department,” Smith said. “They come back with: ‘Well, you got as much power as they do, because you run the same speed or perform more speed than them. But that's not the problem here. We don't race mile-per-hour. Mile-per-hour means nothing out here. E.T. (elapsed time) is what counts. E.T. is what wins races.
"Their argument all the time is, ‘Well, you got as much power, so you just need to go do your work on finding how to make your bike better down low [in the first feet of the quarter-mile course]. The V-Twins have a major problem because we have 80 more foot-pounds of torque than a Suzuki. We have a problem sticking the tire at the first part of the track. It's not just our team. It's all of us on the V-Twins.”
Smith said the inequity is compounded on a 120- or 130-degree racing surface. “We can't do that. The night time pass, yes, we can do that. We've proved that every time we can do that, but we don't race at nighttime. So that's the main reason why we sat out, to show them if we quit, you got seven bikes. You don't have a class.”
Smith put the big picture in perspective: “You look back at 2022, we had seven different winners in our class. I think that's great. Out of 15 races last year, we had four different winners. And the only reason we had four different winners is because Gaige red-lit [fouled out] one race and broke the other three, or he would've won all the races last year.
"This year we've had one winner. And that's the problem. It's not Gaige's fault, and I'm not going to blame Vance & Hines. It's NHRA, they're not doing their job and keeping parity in the class. Our Tech Department has to do a better job.”
The NHRA this past week reduced weight on the Buell bikes, but Smith said that weight break helped only the Buells powered by a Gen-1 motor—which affects only Hector Arana Jr. and, as of this weekend, 18-year-old Brandon Litten of Smith’s organization.
