Rickie Smith is proud to accompany wife Nancy, a nurse for 48 years, to hospital-staff Christmas parties each December.

And the IHRA, NHRA, PDRA, and ADRL doorslammer legend does his best to keep up his end of the conversations. It’s over his head for extra bases sometimes, all the banter about highfalutin’ medical discoveries and chatter about daily life in the emergency room. He said he’s “getting better” at the awkward small talk through the years.

Those colleagues of his wife don’t wear firesuits and don’t mash on a throttle from a standing start and speed at more than 250 mph in a quarter-mile. And they would look at him like he was from Mars and be completely flummoxed if he struck up a discussion about the merits of nitrous oxide as a performance-booster for internal-combustion engines as opposed to turbochargers and superchargers in trying to generate greater horsepower.

“You don’t know how to talk to those people, because they are – I’m not saying they’re better than you. It’s just that they’re in a different league than you are when they’re talking doctor terms and all that stuff. And I want to talk drag racing. They don’t know nothing about what I’m talking about, and I don’t know what they’re talking about. So it’s kind of a hard deal to mix, but I’ve been making it work for the last several years. I can talk and mingle most times with anybody. It’s something that you learn as you get older,” Smith said.

But when he comes to the dragstrip, Smith is comfortable. His world is in its proper orbit. Communication flows easily. Everybody talks the same language. He is where he belongs.

“You just don’t realize how many people that you see and talk to all the time at the dragstrip that when you get home, you just don’t know the people around you. Everybody is so busy anymore and they’ve got their own life to live and their own job to go to, and it’s just a hectic schedule for a lot of people anymore. It’s hard to strike a conversation up, because they don’t know drag racing,” Smith said. “So when you get to the track, you know what you’re talking about and who you’re talking to, and it makes a difference.

“I’ve done it 50 years. Actually, this year was my 50th year of actually taking a car to the dragstrip, and this is 41 years I’ve done it for a living. So, when you do it 41 years for a living in the high ranks that I think I’ve been in, it’s hard to back away from it,” he said. “And the biggest thing is to me is, yeah, I know a few people around home, not many. A lot of people, unfortunately, that I went to school with have left us. So, when you stay on the road and you stay drag racing all your life almost, you don’t have a lot of friends locally. I guess, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just drag racing against my family. I mean, that’s where I know people at and you just feel – I don’t know – you feel wrong by not being there, almost. It’s a hard thing to let go of when you feel like it’s family.”

And that is one key reason Rickie Smith really hasn’t retired.

“I don’t want to retire. I’m kind of going to at the end of this year, I mean from full-time driving, but I’m still going to be active,” he said. “I’m going to crew chief some cars and do things and get up every morning, go to work.”

He has other reasons, as well. It’s not necessarily his age (he’ll be 70 years old Christmas Day). It’s not necessarily his health (he has had various injuries and faces cataract surgery in mid-November). And it’s not the increased costs to participate.

“I like NHRA. I’ve always wanted to run over there,” Smith said. “The deal with me not running in the NHRA full-time was all my decision. Parkway Ford [his Winston-Salem, N.C. dealership sponsor] really kind of wanted me to run all the NHRA. They might go with me another year if I would run all NHRA. But what I got tired of is NHRA penalizing me. Every time I’d go out and work hard and find a little more e.t., within 48 hours – and sometimes 24 but never over 48 hours – after I’d win a race or two, they’d penalize me . They’d let these blower cars all run six months and a year at a time, outrunning me three and four and five hundredths. That’s what I have against the rules committee and NHRA.

“If you’d have treated me just like you treat everybody else, I had nothing to gripe about, but the proof’s in the pudding. It’s all on record. I’m not saying anything that ain’t true, because you can go back and look at the records. It’s absolutely wrong. So how did they expect somebody — whether it’s me or anybody else with a nitrous car — how do they expect us to come over and spend the money and the time and effort to run with ’em when they’re going to knock you down within 48 hours? I just got tired of trying to ask people for more money to go find some more e.t. when in 48 hours they’re going to take it away from me. I want to race with ’em, but a man’s just not going to keep getting slapped and not do something about it. You don’t want me there? I don’t have to come over,” he said.

I’ve done it 50 years. Actually, this year was my 50th year of actually taking a car to the dragstrip, and this is 41 years I’ve done it for a living. So, when you do it 41 years for a living in the high ranks that I think I’ve been in, it’s hard to back away from it. – Rickie Smith

So, he said, “I’m not coming back. Not over there full time. I mean I just, there’s, there’s too much politics involved, period, in that deal.”

However, he’ll still be influencing the sport. He didn’t want to reveal yet for whom he’ll be tuning, but he did say, “Mainly right now, it’s two people in PDRA.” He said, “I can’t say you won’t” see him serving as a Pro Mod crew chief in the NHRA ranks, “but the problem you’ve got is nobody wants to go over and run a nitrous car. And I understand. So what do you do? I mean, I would love to be over there, tuning a nitrous car, and probably could, there’s some guys that have talked to me about it. But how in the world are those people going to spend the money and the effort to go do that and know that they aren’t even going to make it to the next race and they’re going to get penalized? I’m not lying about anything. Every bit of what I’m saying is in the record books when they’ve done this stuff. So I ain’t saying nothing that ain’t the dead truth.”

Several years ago, Smith — a the seven-time IHRA Pro Stock and Super Modified champion and three-time NHRA Pro Mod champion – said, “I was going to retire three years ago because I was ready. But you hate to quit when you’re winning and doing this good. I know I’m going to have to quit one day. You can always quit, but you can’t always keep winning.”

And age, forget about it. Oh, Smith knows that he – like everyone else – isn’t getting younger. But such talk distracts from his strategy planning for the next ADRL race or the next tune-up he’s pondering.

The fact he came back from serious injury and has healed from various chronic aches, à la John Force, is remarkable.

“People don’t realize if they’ve never been through it that — and I’ve been through a wreck and broke my leg all up 13 years ago — until you get mangled up like that, especially when you’re getting 60 and older, what it takes to get back,” Smith said. “John Force went through a hell of a lot of shit to get his body back in shape to be able to race again after his crash. And man, you’ve got to admire that. When you’re 20 and 30 years old, 40 years old, that ain’t too bad. But buddy, once you get over 60, especially 65 or 70, when you start trying to heal, it ain’t as quick and its harder to do. It’s your focus [that’s] really hard to keep under control. And so much about drag racing is staying focused on what you’re doing, and especially the tree. So it is a tough thing to do when you get at this age.

“And I think between me and old Force – I’m not comparing myself with him, he’s a lot better than I am — but between us two, we have raced in the professional ranks a long time at our age. And we still can do it. Yeah, we have our bad days. Hell, everybody else does. Young kids do, too. ‘Force was late’ [on the launch] or ‘Oh, Rickie was late that time.’ Well, OK, what about this guy that was 25 years old, 30 years old? Go back and look at his light. He was late. That stuff’s going to happen when you’re fooling with hundredths of a second or two- and three- and four-hundredths of a second. A second. You can’t even bat your eyes all the way [in that time], so you’re messing with stuff that’s just way out there, as far as what your body is capable of doing. So I’m not worried about it if I’m a couple hundredths late on the tree, OK? That’s just what it is,” he said. “I’m going to try harder next time, and I’ll be OK most of the time.”

Smith said his mantra is to stay active. “I think that’s the reason we stay where we are, because we keep our mind active every morning we get up. We’re thinking and working like crazy, trying to figure out how to be better. That’s just the way it is. I won all three of my NHRA championships in Pro Mod after I turned 60. So can’t say you can’t do it after you’re 60. You’ve got to believe in yourself. You’ve just got to, when you go down the path that me and John have, from nothing,” Smith said. “He was a truck driver. I was a bulldozer operator. When you go down that path from nothing and make it, it’s a tough thing to do. And you have to put up with a lot of grief sometimes from people that are jealous and this and that, and you just have to wade through it. You have to believe in yourself. And that’s what I’ve been able to do. I’m sure that’s what John’s been able to do. You’ve got to believe in yourself and just let the things fall where they’re going to fall.

“You want to try and do the best you can, but I live in reality and I always have,” Rickie Smith continues. “And that’s kind of helped me get through as long as I have. Yeah, I’ll be 70 here pretty soon. Am I as good as I was at 35? I don’t think so. So I just do the best I can and try not to overdo something. You’ve just got to do the best you can.”

Rickie Smith’s best is plenty good. What’s more, he and his five-time Pro Stock Motorcycle champion son Matt Smith have made NHRA history together. Ten years ago, they won titles in their respective classes, becoming the NHRA’s only father-son duo to do so in the same season. Besides those IHRA and NHRA crowns, Rickie earned the 2013 ADRL Battle of the Belts and the 2015 PDRA Pro Mod championship.

For all that, he’s being honored in March 2024 with induction into Don Garlits’ International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. The Class of ’24 also includes Pat and Walt Austin, Walt Barbin, Joe Gibbs, “Jungle Pam” Hardy, Scott Kalitta, Gary Hogan, and Gary Southern.

“That was something that I looked at over the last few years but didn’t know if I would get in there or not. I think it’s the biggest one I feel like you can be in, as far as drag racing,” Smith said. “I was inducted into the NHRA Southeast Division Hall of Fame about seven or eight years ago, and I’m in the one here in North Carolina. But this right here to me is the ultimate thing, as far as drag racing.”

It’s an even greater honor for a driver to be tapped for membership while still active in competition.

“Yeah,” Rickie Smith quipped, “I think they figured out me and John Force just weren’t going to quit until we died.” Force entered the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2023.

“I’m proud to be in that deal and just very proud that they chose me to be in there,” Smith said.

But one of the highlights of his career was being selected as one of the four original Legends of Thunder Valley at Tennessee’s Bristol Dragway.

“There’s no three bigger names than Don Garlits, Larry Carrier, and Wally Parks. There’s no bigger three names in drag racing, period. And I went in with those three. I mean, that was just freaking unbelievable when that happened,” Smith said.

“That told me right there I’ve made it out here far as a name. I mean, that just didn’t come by accident. That had to come from hard work and people recognizing who I was. I had won a lot of races over there. Even though it was IHRA,”he said, “I was probably the winningest professional driver at Bristol for a lot of years. And from what I gathered, the media kind of picked those four names to go up on that tower. I know one thing it wasn’t: it damn sure wasn’t ‘cause of money.”

It was because of hard work – which all seemed like an easy task compared to making small talk with physicians and health-care big-shots.