Anyone who tuned in to see Sunday’s Pro Stock Motorcycle final at the Auto-Plus NHRA New England Nationals on ESPN2 certainly had good reason to raise an eyebrow or two, after Matt Smith’s deadly-consistent bike went mysteriously silent at around 1,100 feet, allowing his wife, Angie, to streak by for her first career NHRA victory. Nearly as quickly as the run occurred — 6.90-seconds in Angie’s case — viewers were taking to the internet message forums to debate whether the fix was in or not.

In his post-run interview at the top end, Matt indicated that he put the bike into high gear and it shut off, mentioning the fact that he’d been having rocker arm issues with his motor throughout the weekend but wasn’t sure what went wrong with the bike. On Monday, he set out to curtail the negative attention that final round has gotten via Instagram, with a photo showing the metal tip on one of the pushrods out of his engine broken off.

Beyond the photo, whether he did or he didn’t will continue to be a source of conversation, as have other cases of perceived ‘team orders’ years in the past. In reality, however, drag racing is (or has become) a team-based sport with head-to-head competition that doesn’t directly affect the outcome of the race for anyone else, and without any points ramifications at the present time, Mr. and Mrs. Smith are essentially free to do what they need to do in the final round. No one has to like it, but it’s a reality in the modern era of auto racing. Of course, the key word in all of this is “if”, and we’re not the judge or the jury, so we’ll defer that to the message boards.