The excitement was palpable at the 24th annual Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. Anyone that braved the rapidly changing weather at Bristol Dragway and stuck around for the final rounds was waiting to see if today was the day – or if tonight was the night. Many had been waiting so long for this moment, especially the rider of Vance & Hines Motorsport’s No. 23 Suzuki Hayabusa3,
Richard Gadson, 39, won his first Pro Stock Motorcycle race in his second season with the team, after lurking in the shadows of teammate and two-time reigning champion Gaige Herrera. A third-generation drag racer, Gadson has been working towards this moment for years. No, make that decades! “I never had a Plan B,” he explained as he clutched his first national event Wally trophy. That he beat Herrera in the finals with a holeshot made the win even sweeter.
Over the past season and a quarter, Gadson has become accustomed to qualifying No. 2 and often racing to final rounds. He wasn’t able to close the deal until coming to Bristol, Tennessee’s Bristol Dragway, aka Thunder Valley for the natural terrain the surrounds this race track.
While he has five championship titles in a variety of two-wheel straight-line competitions, he still lacked a Wally NHRA trophy in Pro Stock Motorcycle. Gadson has won the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge in his class twice, taking his first victory in the bonus race last year at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio and then again this year at zMAX Dragway during the class’ initial 2025 four-wide competition.
All the while, he’s been tuning motorcycles, building motorcycles and racing motorcycles, just as his uncle, 13-time champion in a variety of straight-line motorcycle classes Ricky Gadson did – and still does. Richard Gadson intended to start his NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle career in 2019, on a Suzuki bike, but was stymied by a road crash that took out his tow vehicle and trailer. And its contents.
He eventually started to race in NHRA towards the end of the 2022 campaign, in the Dallas FallNationals at Texas Motorplex. Gadson made the field for that race but was out in the first round to Joey Gladstone, who was one of the first to congratulate Gadson when he won his first NHRA race at Bristol. The number and diversity of those congratulating Gadson on finally earning that race victory wasn’t left to the two-wheeled crowd. He had fellow competitors from all classes celebrating his win.
It was the first; it won’t be the last. Once these floodgates open, there’s no telling how many wins Gadson can rack up? He’s got some formidable challengers, of course, in his teammate Herrera, with the four-bike Matt Smith Racing team of six-time champ Matt Smith, Angie Smith, Jianna Evaristo and John Hall, a quartet of Buell motorcycles that are regularly in the semifinals and final rounds at all NHRA events. On the Suzuki side, he’s got to contend with Chase Van Sant, Steve Johnson and whoever is riding the Vance & Hines customer motorcycles, including Kelly Clontz and, and as we saw in Bristol, No. 1 qualifier Brayden Davis.
What was it that made Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec choose Gadson to take over Krawiec’s bike once that rider decided to put his enviable talents into tuning for his successor? Hines told me had similar feelings for both Herrera and Gadson, that their attitudes and work ethics were in concert with his and with Krawiec’s. Work ethics are so important in motorsport and with Gadson, not only is he a formidable rider, but his tuning talents can assist everyone at Vance & Hines.
There’s something about Gadson’s attitude on a motorcycle. Watching him stage and caress the bike with his body and his hands, you know the man and machine complement one another. It happens each round with the best riders. It happens with Richard Gadson.
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