Pat Musi puts them together, and I keep them up from there. “I run Dart heads, C&M block, Callies crank. All these motors – Ford, GM, Chrysler – they’re all aftermarket stuff,” Smith said. The engine will remain … well, let him describe the current state of Pro Mod horsepower. Into mothballs will go the Chevy Camaro he drove to an 11th-place points finish, and without a final-round showing, in 2021.īut one thing that won’t change will be the power under the hood. From there, it will be loaded into Smith’s racing hauler, where he will will take it to Orlando, Fla., for a day of testing prior to the Gatornationals in Gainesville. Smith expects to fetch the new car early in the first week of March, and take it home to his shop on Newsome Road in King, N.C. “Even when he was in a Chevrolet in recent years, we were involved through our Capital Chevrolet dealership.”Īnd that’s why there’s a Mustang in the paint booth right now at Jerry Bickel Race Cars in Moscow Mills, Mo. “We’ve been with Rickie in some way for long time, even when he wasn’t racing a Ford,” Michael said. Michael said his company’s involvement with Smith precedes the years of Ford factory sponsorship that the racer enjoyed in the mid 1980s. I wouldn’t mind going another year (as a sponsor), but I’d really like to see you run a Ford.’ I said, ‘If that’s what you want me to run, I’ll run a Ford.’ ” “We got to talking late last June and he said, ‘You know I like Fords. Anyway, he asked me what I wanted (in sponsorship) for the door of the car, and he got me this deal with Sokal,” an advertising agency with offices in Raleigh and Huntersville, N.C. COVID had started, maybe I was ready to quit. “So I was down there a coupla years ago, trading trucks, and he was asking me what I was going to do. I haven’t had anything but a Ford truck since the late ’80s. “I had bought a Ford truck, and Parkway was on the car as an associate sponsor. “Back in the ’80s when I was winning my stuff and had Motorcraft and Ford with me, on the back had Parkway Ford most of the time,” Smith, 68, said. Simply, it’s because a long-time sponsor, Junie Michael of Parkway Ford, asked him to make the switch. It’s not for sentimental reasons in an attempt to bring his career full circle, he said. When the 2022 NHRA Pro Modified season kicks off March 10-13 at Gainesville, Fla., Smith will roll to the starting line in a late-model Ford Mustang. (And, no, for the umpteenth time, he’s not about to retire.)įor the past 33 years, the multi-time NHRA, IHRA and PDRA champ has piloted General Motors products. There’s a strong chance that he is going to end those pursuits in the same brand. Rickie Smith began racing on a national level in 1976 in a Ford.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |