By Anthony Caruso III | Publisher
Denso-sponsored Pro Stock Motorcycle rider Matt Smith has claimed another Reading Wally. Smith has won the 38th annual Pep Boys NHRA Nationals on Monday at Maple Grove Raceway in Mohnton, Pennsylvania.
Smith defeated his teammate Chip Ellis in the final round. There is a bit of controversy with this race.
The King, North Carolina native went 6.807 at 198.50 mph. Ellis went 6.727 at 199.37 mph.
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However, here is the dilemma. Smith had a normal reaction time with a 0.076.
Ellis, though, had a very late reaction time of 0.400. Was it team orders to be this late? We don’t know.
“Today was exciting. We’ve won races on Monday before and we pulled it off today,” Smith said. “All in all, we had a great weekend. Personally, my bike still isn’t the bike I need out here to win a seventh championship. We just have to get my bike better. My bike isn’t 60-footing the way it needs to. We know we have really good power, even though we qualified fourth, we’re still way behind.
“(But) we’ve won six championships because we play our cards right and we’re smart and we do what we need to do. We brought a fourth bike (to this race) and that was our goal. When you don’t have the best stuff, you have to bring other stuff in to try to learn. All in all, that’s why we brought that bike to Reading and Chip knocked out some people that we needed him to knock out.”
Before this final-round appearance, Smith held a 15-5 advantage over Ellis. He also held a 2-0 advantage in previous final-round meetings.
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This is Smith’s 38th Wally of his career. He now has two wins this season.
Smith also has Reading Wallys from wins in 2008 and 2013.
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