Troubled by a trio of seven-second qualifying runs last weekend, Matt Smith made one or two new tuning touches to his Al-Anabi Racing Pro Stock V-Twin and got a welcomed performance boost.
He will be relying on that and looking for more during the O’Reilly Auto Parts Super Start Batteries NHRA Fall Nationals, Friday through Sunday, at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis. This is the third of six Countdown to Championship events.
Smith, the 2007 world champion, is among five drivers currently contending for third through seventh places. He is sixth with 2167 points, just 17 out of third place.
“We tried something on our last qualifying run last Saturday at Charlotte and it worked,”said Smith, who was runner-up at the Motorplex in 2008. We made some progress, and we hope to be running better this weekend.”
He moved from near the bottom of the qualifying ladder to the middle of the starting line-up with his 6.980-second quarter-mile time advanced to the quarterfinals, where he registered his quickest run of the weekend, 6.948 seconds.
“We’d liked to get off to a good start Friday, added Smith. We went to the semifinals at Dallas last year, and we’d like to go one more round Sunday.”