A Victory for Victory: Matt Smith ousts wife Angie in Denver first round

DENVER – Matt Smith scored a round-win at the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals on Sunday at Bandimere Speedway the hard way: It came against his wife and Victory Motorcycles teammate Angie Smith.

The Smiths qualified in the No. 5 (Matt) and No. 12 (Angie) spots in Denver, meaning they would have to face each other in the first round. They raced heads-up, with Matt getting a slight edge on the starting line (.068-second reaction time to .080) and then leading all the way to the finish line.

Matt’s pass of 7.251 seconds at 183.67 mph inched away from his wife’s run of 7.314 seconds at 180.00 mph. Angie, though, could feel her Gunner slowing in high gear and could only watch as her husband took the win light.

“No, it’s not fun to lose, but at least one of our Victory Gunners went to the second round,” Angie said. “We were on a better run. I lost the oil pump belt probably in 5th gear, and that has a lot to do with our performance. I feel like we were on a better run than we’ve been on all weekend. We were just tiptoeing up on the tune-up.

“With us losing the oil pump belt, that’s why it only went 180 mph. I think we made good ground, but the thing about Denver is everything we learned here stays here.”

That’s because of the mile-high altitude in Denver, which robs engines of air and horsepower, causing tune-ups to be vastly different here than at any other track on the circuit.

Matt’s tune-up was solid all weekend, as witnessed by his No. 5 qualifying spot, but after beating Angie in Round 1, he was forced to change engines in his Gunner for the second round against L.E. Tonglet.

“We came back after the first run and we saw a problem with the other motor,” Matt said. “The EGT started getting cold on one hole and we think we hurt it. We thrashed in between rounds and changed motors, and for some reason it just blew through the clutch, so that kind of tells me the other motor is hurt a little bit.”

Smith was off first against Tonglet, .030 to .040, but his Victory soon slowed. Tonglet sped to the win with a pass of 7.304 at 182.33 mph while Smith coasted across with a 16.874 at 44.19 mph.

“It shifted into 2nd, but as soon as it went into 2nd it went right to the high-side limiter,” Smith said. “I don’t know if the transmission broke or what happened. We’re going to get it out, look at it, and evaluate. We got some stuff to do here tomorrow. We got a run here tomorrow for Victory and S&S and we’ll see what happens.”