They were a fine sight, standing there in the pits at Gainesville, Fla., a couple of years ago, scratching their heads, wondering why their Top Alcohol Dragster wasn’t behaving correctly.

Finally somebody pointed out to John “Bodie” Smith and wife Rhonda Hartman Smith what was wrong with daughter Megan Smith’s A/Fueler.

“Everybody looked at us,” Hartman Smith said, a wee bit chagrined by the “What are you, nuts?” looks they were getting. And we’re like, ‘We don’t know.’ We just were like, ‘We don’t know what we’re doing.’

“We had Top Fuel parts on there,” she said, laughing at that now.

Her husband said, in looking back, “I’m just trying to teach my kid how to drive a fuel car. We took everything we got, and we put it on. I had too big of a fuel pump. I had too big of everything.”

Despite the stumbling blocks, Megan Smith did get her license – the one for which she finished her graphic-design degree at Clemson University in just three and a half years, the one that came with extensive involvement of not only her former Top Fuel-driving parents but both of her grandfathers, Paul Smith and the late Virgil Hartman.

“My dad was there, helping me, and Virgil was on the phone talking to me all the time,” John Smith said. “Then you go to the races and you learn from the other guys, like Rich McPhillips Jr. and Sr. They both helped us. Randy Meyer had my ear. All those guys were like, ‘Alright, this is what you’re going to need.’ Before you know it, I had everything that I needed.”

“I’ve always known how to tune a race car when it comes to learning from my dad and Virgil and blown cars and the Top Fuel cars and the Funny Cars. I take pride in doing that,” he said, “but it’s humbling, going and learning something new. And I’ve been able to do that with her with the Juniors, Super Comp, Top Dragster, now the A/Fuel car. They say you never quit learning.”

I find it a blessing, just because I can go to anyone in my family if I have an issue or need advice. – Megan Smith

Rhonda Hartman Smith said, “We got a lot of advice from teams out there, and we were grateful that they were there to help us. I feel like we’re finally on the right track. We’re really making progress and figuring the car out. I think it was harder because we were so used to a Top Fuel and Funny Car, nitro cars. It was kind of a big difference.

“These combinations just took us time,” she said, accusing the A/Fuel cars of being “really finicky little things to tune.” Hartman Smith said, “Once you get your tune-up figured out, they’re not as hard to work on, because you don’t have to tear them apart completely each round. You’re doing the clutch and checking the heads and stuff, but you don’t have to tear them completely apart. You need more people for a Top Fuel car. You’re servicing it each round. But just figuring the tune- up…there are so many different combinations in A/Fuel.”

John said, “It’s almost similar to the Jr. Dragster. With the junior, you’re doing it. Megan did the Super Comp car. There really wasn’t much tuning with those. It’s up to the driver.”

Megan has more than her share of advisors. She might be the only third-generation drag racer to have both grandfathers, both parents, and uncles on both sides as racers.

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Photos by Katey Knight

“I definitely don’t have a lack of knowledge helping me out,” the 24-year-old graphic artist and employee of the family’s molded-plastics business said. “I find it a blessing, just because I can go to anyone in my family if I have an issue or need advice. Even my Uncle Richard [Richard Hartman, crew chief for Chicago and Seattle Funny Car winner Tim Wilkerson’s crew chief] came over at Norwalk because I was just a little upset about something. And he’s like, ‘You’re doing a great job.’ That’s always good to hear. I hear it from my parents all the time, but it’s good to hear from Uncle Richard, who’s always around the stuff. So I think it’s definitely an advantage and not just on the driving side, also the mechanical side.

“There’s more people for me to get advice from, and it’s not even just within my family. It’s people who have worked with my family a bunch, and there’s always crew guys coming and helping,” Megan said. Top Alcohol driver Garrett Bateman, a former crew member for the family, is one.

As a baby, Megan traveled the racing circuit full-time when her parents were competing in the FRAM and Prestone dragsters, and her mom said the crew guys “are all her big brothers. They’re around today, and it’s really funny to see them with her. We’ve had a few that have helped us on the dragster that have worked on my car. The guy that does our clutch, Neal Brittain, worked on my IHRA car back in the day, before Megan was born.

“Richard has helped us machining parts that we need. He has helped us with parts and pieces at the track. He’ll swing by all the time in between rounds and keep up with Megan or he’ll be on the starting line to watch her. At Charlotte when she went to the final last year, he was in there, helping us service the car. So he has helped us quite a bit, too – when he can. He’s busy himself. John’s talked to him about tune-up and different things. It’s all in the family. And my father-in-law, Paul, has helped quite a bit.”

I haven’t had another dream other than driving a race car like my parents. I went to school for graphic design, so I’ve always thought I would open a graphic shop one day, but that was always Plan B. – Megan Smith

Paul Smith supplied the car. What Megan Smith drives – the dragster the family refers to as “the school car” – has a rich history, one not many (if any) racers today can brag about.

“It’s the red, white, and blue school car that Clay Millican got his [NHRA] license in [at Moroso/Palm Beach International Raceway]. Big Daddy [Don Garlits] drove it. So it’s got a lot of history behind it,” John said. “It didn’t have many runs, because we do some school stuff and then a couple of match races, and then you ended up having only 60, 70 runs on it. But it had a lot of history behind it. It was built for my brother Mike originally. Marshall Topping drove that car. You can still tell every time you go up to it. It’s still got the same front wings, the same rear wing on it, and it’s been updated, all the safety stuff. And it’s been checked a bunch of times, but it still goes down the racetrack and it’s a safe car.”

And Megan said, “It still has the paint underneath the vinyl. I vinyled it myself, and the paint, it was starting to crack. I’m worried when I take the vinyl off. But yeah, it’s cool. I wanted to run it at least one race with the old paint scheme on it, but I was like, ‘No, you need to make it your own and go ahead and put vinyl on it.’ So we went ahead and did it, but it’s still there so I might be able to strip it off.

“My Grandpa Smith had the school he was running, and that was a car he had built for that. And it was one of the first cars he had built with [Murf] McKinney and it’s had a bunch of people in the seat: my uncle Mike [Smith] and then Garlits. That’s the one I say the most, because it was so cool. I’m like, ‘Big Daddy in my car!’ I just think about it when I’m bragging about it. People are like, ‘Is this one of your mom’s cars? And I’m like, ‘No, it’s actually from the other side of the family.’ It’s cool to be able to brag about that car, for sure. And it’s turned out to be a great fuel car for what we’re doing.”

Garlits drove the dragster in a special 1999 New Year’s Eve “Nitro Millennium Mania” match race in Florida with Shirley Muldowney.

Megan’s younger brother, Dylan, is content to drive the tow vehicle rather than a race car (and to help where the team needs him). His mother said the Clemson-bound teenager “has had the opportunity. We had a Jr. Dragster for him, but he never really showed a lot of interest in driving it. But Dylan likes to see how things work, and he’s kind of like my father and Richard in that aspect of designing and seeing things work. Anything with technology or if you need help with your phone or your computer, Dylan’s the one you go talk to. He loves photography and has won several contests. He actually does most of Megan’s photography at the racetrack that she posts.”

Megan is the one who’s immersed in the race car.

“I haven’t had another dream other than driving a race car like my parents,” the Top Fuel hopeful said. “I went to school for graphic design, so I’ve always thought I would open a graphic shop one day, but that was always Plan B. My parents gave me crap about that. I was like, ‘You guys are making me go to school for Plan B here. They’re like, ‘You need to go to school and then you can do racing.’ Racing’s always been my Plan A.”

She has plans, for her mother, too, but Mom isn’t necessarily buying it – or maybe she is.

“She wants us to have a two-car team and race each other. And I want to put all my effort towards her racing, and I just want to go in and do it for fun. It would be cool. If the opportunity came about, I would do it. But we put everything into her deal right now, and I’m so busy. It’s kind of hard to get away,” Rhonda – a part-time real-estate agent and full-time employee of the family business – said. “But I would, if the opportunity came about. I would do it. We’d have to get another car, and we’d have to put everything together and it would just be…if something came about we had the funding to do it, yeah, I would do it.”

Hartman Smith said she does long sometimes for that thrill of blasting down the dragstrip: “Yeah, I do. I miss being in the car. I told Megan I wanted to jump in her car and get back in it – and she would love for me to. I was going to do it last year, but then I broke my knee. I completely obliterated my ACL, and I tore my MCL, and I had to have surgery and it was a long, painful recovery. And then this year we were going to do it after Charlotte, but it rained. At some point I’d like to get in, just to get back and get the feel and just to make some laps. I don’t want to go and compete. I’ll leave that up to her, but I want to do it for fun.

“I’m proud of what we did – and with all that we had to work with,” she said of her driving days with her husband. “We didn’t have a big budget, but I felt like we did well. And it was enjoyable to be able to race with John for that long. We continue today working with Megan and racing as a family. So I love it.”

John still drives his father’s Funny Car on occasion, or tunes for other teams. He also travels overseas, mostly to England, where he sells parts to several Funny Car teams and tunes for British racer Kevin Kent.

“We’re not out [at the dragstrip] as often, but we’re busy running that car. So it’s just kind of crazy. I’m always working,” Hartman-Smith said. “I started real estate in 2010, and I just did it for the aside. My dad was talking about retiring. I always worked for my dad, doing accounting and kind of doing whatever he needed done at the plastics business. And you’re always working with your family. My mom works here, my husband and my nephew and everybody. And I just wanted something to get a little bit away every once in a while. And I always loved real estate and meeting people. But I’ve kind of taken a step back a little bit since my dad passed away. I’m pretty much running the plastics business. So I’m here 24/7 and running this. I’m doing all the quoting and all the jobs and scheduling and on top of all the accounting and just everything else.”

I miss being in the car. I told Megan I wanted to jump in her car and get back in it – and she would love for me to. – Rhonda Hartman Smith

So until Megan’s ultimate vision might happen, her parents take the same approach they experienced in their early days.

“When we were raised, my dad made sure that we worked on the car and that we knew everything about the car so when we got in we could relay stuff, what we felt and what was going on. And Megan is the exact same way,” Rhonda said. “She tears that car apart herself when it comes back to the shop. She tears it apart, and she services the heads, and she’s helped build that car from scratch. So she knows everything.”

John said Megan “learned a lot working on the cars, just like her mom. We work together here at the shop. It’s just her and I. So she knows how to service the heads. I’ve taught her that. And she actually learned that working with Grandpa Smith, too, on his car when she works for me when I’m driving.

“And she’s responsible for mixing the fuel,” he said. “In A/Fuel, that’s pretty critical. If you’re a little over, then your run doesn’t count. So it’s pretty neat, watching her grow and then taking care of her stuff and tuning her race car for her. She also works here [at Hartman Enterprises, a company Virgil Hartman established in the 1970s]. She’s always looking for money, and we found a few small deals to keep us going. She did the Red Line Oil deal this year, and we got a local company here that helps us with expenses. So it’s multifaceted, just like we were when in the early ’90s, when I was first started with Rhonda and all the way up through when we were with FRAM and Prestone. Virgil told us, ‘You got to make the business work in order to make the racing work.’ And that’s kind of the same mantra as knowing how everything works from top to bottom.”

It’s far from punishment for Megan. “I’m always asking questions. I’m always trying to learn more about the cars,” she said. “It’s just always something I’ve enjoyed. There is something to learn from it, even from the driving standpoint. You’re always learning. So I’m learning new things, like in the staging processes. I go back and watch old burndowns.

“I try to watch as many YouTube videos and stuff as I can. I run the Hartman Smith Racing [Facebook] page. That always helps with the sponsorship and marketing decks and all that,” she said. “It’s just cool to look back and watch our parents race against each other. Sometimes I just do it for enjoyment.”

Maybe Rhonda Hartman Smith will choose to form the NHRA’s first pro mother-daughter tandem. Maybe she’ll just remain “a nervous wreck” as she watches Megan Smith race. Or maybe she’ll be reassured because, as a mom more than anything else, she insisted that John has a crew chief shut-off device for safety’s sake – as the only Top Alcohol Dragster team to use one.

Whatever unfolds, John Smith said, “Every day we’ve got our little family gig going here, and God has blessed us. So that’s kind of the way we think about it and just do our family thing. And we’re always busy – between this place and what Virgil’s given us, it’s keeping us busy. I know he’s laughing at us in Heaven right now. He’s like, ‘You guys are going to be busy.’ Sure enough, we are.”