If you’re only going to win one race in a season, many racers seem to most enjoy winning the final contest, and that was the case for Matt Smith, who logged his 18th victory by defeating longtime rival Angelle Sampey, who red-lighted with a -.020 light in the final.

Another major highlight for Smith was his second-round defeat of Eddie Krawiec, which knocked him out of contention for the NHRA Mello Yello championship. Said Smith, “The second round was huge for us. To beat Eddie Krawiec, he’s a great competitor. [The Harleys] are No. 1. To put him on the trailer and to tell him, ‘You know what, you can’t win the championship this year. We just defeated you. To capitalize on all that and to win the race was very big for us.”

“We’ve had a fast bike,” said Smith. “But man, we’ve had a lot of electrical problems and transmission issues. We finally solved that about four races ago. We kind of struggled with our tune-up in qualifying, but it came around today. We were fast, and I did my job on the Tree. The Lord was with us. That’s all I can say. To give Victory their first win with NHRA was huge. Now we can go forward for next year. We’ve got new bikes and new motors coming, and we’ve also got two more riders, a guy and a girl using our engines next year, and that will help us gauge our performance. So if they are way faster than us, then I’ll know I’m doing something wrong.”

Smith credited his team for his victorious day. “Everybody says that they have the best crews in the world,” Smith said. “But my guys have stuck with me in a great way. Nobody has complained about the long hours. Most of the times, we’re the last one working at night. We run three to four bikes out of our camp. We’ve got a couple of crew guys, and they go way above and beyond in doing their job. And my wife, Angie, is doing the fuel injection and helping me tune it. Lucas Oil came onboard with us this year, and Nitro Fish has been with us forever. I can’t thank everybody enough for all their help.”