{"id":78603,"date":"2021-03-31T16:34:48","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T23:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=78603"},"modified":"2021-03-31T16:34:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T23:34:48","slug":"angie-smith-builds-up-her-teams-bikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/angie-smith-builds-up-her-teams-bikes\/","title":{"rendered":"Angie Smith Builds Up Her Teams Bikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Matt Smith Racing had a great 2020 season. Not only did team leader Matt Smith earn his fourth NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series Pro Stock Motorcycle championship, but one of his teammates, wife Angie Smith earned her second PSM Wally winner\u2019s trophy and joined the 200mph club, while Scotty Pollacheck hit 200 and earned his first-class victory at the most sacred race of all: the U.S. Nationals.<\/p>\n

The goal of 2021 is to get another championship for the team and to get John Hall, now the fourth member of the MSR riding squad, into the 200mph club. And Matt Smith wants to see all four of the teammates in the winner\u2019s circle this season. \u201cWe know we can win the championship over here. That\u2019s the main goal because that\u2019s how you get and keep your sponsors.<\/p>\n

As he\u2019s increased the exposure of MSR beyond fielding EBR motorcycles for himself and Angie, Matt Smith has taken on some great riders. Pollacheck, for instance, has shown gobs of talent but until he hooked up with MSR, never attained a spot in the Winners Circle. Hall should be next up on the hit parade.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Angie, who had been on Matt Smith\u2019s radar long before they became teammates, much less husband and wife. He\u2019d watched her run some bikes \u201cand I liked what I saw. For one,\u201d Matt Smith noted, \u201cshe was marketable. I wanted to have a female on my team; she did a good job so we brought her on.\u201d Angie did a single race with MSR in 2007; she became a full-time member of the team in 2008.<\/p>\n

Angie Smith has turned out to be more than a two-time national event winner in Pro Stock Motorcycle. She\u2019s hurdled the 200mph speed limit twice in the past year and is always in the hunt any given weekend. Much of that is due to her husband\u2019s tuning of her hot-pink DENSO EBR; the balance is due to the fact that it\u2019s Angie who assembles the top end of all engines produced in the North Carolina shop.<\/p>\n

\u201cI taught her how to assemble motors and it took a lot of pressure off me in the shop,\u201d he said. One of the few things Angie isn\u2019t capable of doing is moving the EBR engines from a bench to a bike, since they weigh around 220 pounds. \u201cI\u2019m a very, very independent woman,\u201d Angie said, \u201cand not being able to do that myself is, well, frustrating, but I do have to ask for help.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Matt Smith is the one who builds up the crank and rods, it\u2019s up to Angie to perform top-end build-up on their engines. \u201cOver time he\u2019s taught me what I know and 10-12 years later I\u2019m building engines at the shop and doing maintenance on them,\u201d she said. \u201cLearning these fundamentals has made me a better rider. I can tell Matt what the motorcycle\u2019s doing and some riders lack that. I can give better feedback to help my crew chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a system: he puts the bottom end together and I do the rest. I put the heads on, I do all the valve train and we\u2019ve developed this system that works. It\u2019s really, really helped me a lot when it comes to racing the motorcycle.\u201d She also looks at the plugs on all four bikes between rounds of qualifying and racing. \u201cThey\u2019re integral to the engine. How they\u2019re put in is critical and you have to be very careful. You have to take care of your plugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

That she – and now Matt – are sponsored by spark-plug purveyor DENSO is part of the system. \u201cTheir involvement in motorsports is very big. DENSO is highly involved – not just a sponsor that sends a check – they\u2019re a lot more than that. They want feedback on their products and want to know how to make them better. When you have a sponsor who\u2019s that involved,\u201d Angie noted, \u201cyou will excel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Angie Smith learned her riding skills at George Bryce\u2019s school, where she licensed in NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle, and she rode for him a bit. Now, 41 and one of the most colorful riders in NHRA\u2019s very rich female contingent – at Gainesville there were five female riders and only one, Jianna Salinas, didn\u2019t make Sunday\u2019s eliminations – Angie qualified 10th, yet fell to the first rider to hit 200mph in the first round, Hector Arana III.<\/p>\n

At that first race of the season, Angelle Sampey took her four-valve Vance and Hines Suzuki to No. 1 and earned her first 200mph lap of the quarter-mile, yet both she and Karen Stoffer were gone by the quarterfinals. The finals at Gainesville fell Matt Smith\u2019s way – with yet another 200mph run – as he defeated Ryan Oehler. \u201cWe don\u2019t keep up with Matt\u2019s 200mph runs anymore; we don\u2019t even count them,\u201d Angie laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to let our work do the talking. Everybody out there knows we\u2019ve got good horsepower; we just need to get it down the track,\u201d she stated. Riding a new chassis in 2021, Angie Smith is ready to win more races and ready for her MSR team to win more races. \u201cWe\u2019ve been successful in testing and our 60-foot times have been good. This year, being able to 60-foot well should make us even more successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone knows that Angie Smith is responsible for building some of the fastest and quickest motorcycles in the NHRA Camping World paddock. \u201cI know how the bike works,\u201d she said. That should definitely make her competitors worried.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not only did team leader Matt Smith earn his fourth NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series Pro Stock Motorcycle championship, but one of his teammates, wife Angie Smith earned her second PSM Wally winner\u2019s trophy and joined the 200mph club, while Scotty Pollacheck hit 200 and earned his first-class victory at the most sacred race of all: the U.S. Nationals.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":78605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,17,4802,3470,5029],"tags":[974,5614,80,8365,6033,41,7],"class_list":["post-78603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-guest-column","category-motorcycles-and-powersports","category-news","category-racing","tag-angie-smith","tag-anne-proffit","tag-matt-smith","tag-matt-smith-racing","tag-motorcycle","tag-news","tag-nhra"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Angie-vs-Angelle-min-e1617232622225.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-krN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78607,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78603\/revisions\/78607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}