Pro Mod Champ Rickie Smith Ready To Rock Again

A “cotton-pickin’ cold” has two-time and reigning NHRA Pro Modified champion Rickie Smith stopped up and coughing this winter.

Otherwise, he said, he’s ready to tangle with a bear or a monkey.

Just for the record, he’s 1-1 against nasty circus monkeys. It’s uncertain how he stacks up against bears.

But it’s absolutely no secret he knows how to handle his drag-racing competition when he’s behind the wheel of his IDG Chevy Camaro on the racetrack.

Back in October he wasn’t sure he wanted to pour that same effort into another season. He knew he didn’t have anything to prove – he had done that with nine series championships (two in IHRA Super Modified, five in IHRA Pro Stock, and two in NHRA Pro Modified) in four decades of drag racing.

Somewhere around his 61^st birthday on Christmas Day, up in his beloved North Carolina hometown of King, the Pro Modified king declared “Game on” for 2015.

He said he told his IDG sponsors that “as long as they want to go, we’ll roll.” However, he drew some boundaries for himself, saying, “When I got to go look for another sponsor, I’m pretty much going to retire.

As long as they [IDG] want to go, we’ll roll. When I got to go look for another sponsor, I’m pretty much going to retire.

“Right now I’m going to roll another year,” he said. “I plan on going out there and aggravating them guys another year.”

Oh, and he can do that with as much finesse as he has in letting out the clutch.

His famous starting-line strategies and mind games, he said, “started with me and Ronnie Sox and Warren Johnson and people like that. There’s more to racing than just going up there and letting the clutch out. You got to have some excitement in it. You’ve got to have some controversy in it. It ain’t got to be all bad, but if everybody’s lovey-dovey and there’s no drama involved, I don’t see why people would want to watch it very much.”

Smith said, “I think I learned off of them. The first year I went into Pro Stock, we could run pretty fast, and I was getting kind of wore out. They were just holdin’ me out up there. They knew how to play it. The second year I got involved, I think it was 1980 or something, I figured . . . I had run Super Modified and won two championships in the sportsman deal, but when I went into the pros, it was a little bit meaner crowd up there. Either I had to get mean or get out. I figured with my background of high-school football and everything else, I wasn’t about to lay down. So I just got mean with ’em.”

He said the badgering was real, not staged to entertain the crowd, and sometimes might have resulted in fisticuffs if they had gotten by with it. Maybe it was age or maybe the wisdom of an old married man talking, but today Smith has put it in perspective.

“When we got mad at each other, we were mad at each other. At the time, we might have gotten in a little bit of a scuffle. But we knew we couldn’t or we’d get thrown out of the sanctioning body,” he said. “It’s not a WWF deal, nothin’ like that. When we got mad at each other, we were mad at each other.

“But, you know, I’ve been married 42 years and what you’ve got to learn in life is you’re going to get mad. You’re going to have some bad times,” Smith said. “But you’ve got to figure out that if you’re going to move on in life, you got to cope with it and let it roll off the back of your shoulder and go on. That’s what I’ve been able to do through life. A lot of people who haven’t, I think that’s what hurts ’em. I hold a grudge for a long time, but I still let it roll off. I don’t let it just wear me out.

“It’s the same thing in marriage. You’re going to have some good times and bad times. If you can’t give and take in life, you’re not going to make it long in a marriage,” Smith said. “It’s the same thing out here in racing. You’ve got to be able to give and take. You’ve got to be strong with it, but when it’s time to let it roll off, you got to let it roll off. You’re going to have controversy every year somewhere or another.”

Smith, nicknamed “Tricky Rickie,” expresses his aggressive side plenty, but just as often he isn’t ashamed to show his softer side.

Everybody wants to know why I get so emotional about things. But unless you work with me, you don’t see who I am and how hard I work at this deal and the hours and the stress that go on.

“Everybody wants to know why I get so emotional about things,” Smith said. “But unless you work with me, you don’t see who I am and how hard I work at this deal and the hours and the stress that go on. And when I succeed at something, it’s very enjoyable to me. It comes from my heart when I win stuff. Hey, I’ll fight a bear. I’ll fight a monkey. I’ll fight anybody. I feel like I’m as good a man as there is out there. Also, I let my emotions get to me, too. That’s just part of it.”

Respect plays a big role in Smith’s approach to the sport.

“A lot of people don’t realize how much of an honor it is to be able to do this stuff and to be able to do what you love to do. If you don’t love to do it, you need to get out,” he said. “There’s a lot of hard work in it for somebody who’s going to run up in the top five, and a lot of people dedicate their time to help you, somewhere down the line, whether it’s sponsors or engine builders or whatever. If you don’t respect that, you need to move on. I see a lot of drivers who don’t respect that, and maybe that’s the reason they’ve never got no farther than they’ve got.”

Smith found out a racer can’t take success for granted. He began in 1973, then stepped up to an IHRA Super Mod car in 1976 and won back-to-back championships.

“The first year I won something like 13 out of 17 or 18 races. The next year I don’t think I lost but one race all year. I was young, and I was like, ‘We were just winning everywhere we went. I remember thinking back then, ‘Man, there’s nothin’ to this. This is boring.’ It didn’t take me but a couple of years to realize there was a whole lot to that. When I finally did get back to winning some races in the early ’80s, I never forgot those days. And I realized how hard it is to win,” he said.

“That’s the reason it’s very rewarding. You never know with this business. I don’t care who you are – Dale Earnhardt or Jeff Gordon or Tony Schumacher or whoever – you never know . . . The last race you win could be your last one,” Smith said. “It’s that tough. You can run good, but that don’t mean [you’ll win]. Things have got to line up for you on Sunday. It seems like one out of the four rounds you’ve got to get a lucky round. Those things don’t always add up. There’s a lot of good-running cars out there that hardly ever win a race.”

Smith said he’s “always had the will” to work hard and said, “When I get in the car I control myself pretty good.” Yet he said he has one nagging issue.

I don’t care who you are – Dale Earnhardt or Jeff Gordon or Tony Schumacher or whoever – you never know . . . The last race you win could be your last one.

“The biggest thing I’m fighting,” he said, is that “it’s so daggone hard for me to lose weight. I played sports and I’ve done all that stuff since I was in the eighth grade. I’ve done it so many years. When I even think about it anymore, it almost discourages me. But I know that the only way I’m going to lose weight is I’m going to have to work out. If I could lose 30 pounds, I probably could be a little meaner in that car, a little better on the tree. At this point in my life, I probably won’t. I don’t know if I want to put my body through that, with all the work I have to do at the shop and the stress I have to put up with with owning my own team.”

He’s also in demand as a tuner/consultant in the Arabian Drag Racing League with Pro Mod driver Mahana Al-Naemi and his new teammate, Khalid alBalooshi. “If it’s up to Balooshi, that’s what it will be,” Smith said.

While he prepares for the NHRA Pro Mod season opener in March at Gainesville, Fla., Smith is set to return to Qatar Jan. 25 to help Al-Niemi and alBalooshi. And who knows? With the added work, he might shake his cold and lose some weight – and dispense a little marital advice.