Nothing gives a drag racer a feeling of relief more than getting the proverbial monkey off his or her back. Prior to this weekend’s triumph at Denver, Pro Stock Motorcycle competitor Matt Smith had reached seven final rounds and won only once. This second victory will hopefully banish the pesky creature for good.

That would give Matt a leg up on his dad Rickie, who once fought a monkey in real life and didn’t fare so well. But, we’ll get to that later in the story.

“I had to get that monkey off my back,” Matt said in a post-race interview. “We can get to the finals but just can’t seem to close the deal. We’ve had parts failures and stuff like that.”

It was almost over today for Smith before it began. He broke a piston against first-round opponent Mike Berry, but fate nodded favorably and provided an automatic victory when Berry fouled.

In fact, Smith had problems in the semifinals when his bike stalled against former teammate Chip Ellis. In a show of sportsmanship, Ellis waited patiently for Smith to re-fire his bike.

“I got down to the finish line and thanked him for it,” Matt said. “We have a $1 bet going on and I think I’m up to $5 now. He said he’d pay up when we got to $5. We have fun racing one another and if the situation were reversed, I’d wait for him.”

Matt got the breaks all weekend long, unlike his St. Louis victory where the competition needed them. He totally dominated that event from start to finish.

This weekend didn’t begin on such a good note, however. Had it not have been for his Pro Stock driving dad, Matt might have been in a world of hurt.

“We got lucky to hit the tune-up as close as we did,” Smith said. “I have to thank my Dad. He steered me close to what we needed to do. We just made adjustments to what we had as we went along.”

Matt said he and Rickie studied the bike’s graphs before Matt left for Denver and that gave him a good idea where to start. That’s more than he got from his fellow competitors.

Rickie doesn’t know the first thing about Pro Stock Motorcycles, but he knows engines. To him it’s universal.

“I don’t know how to crank up one of these bike things,” said Rickie.  “That’s the truth. I don’t know much about ’em at all.” He trusted his instincts, however, and gave his son some tuning suggestions, sharing what he knows about the thin air and how it affects motors.

There’s nothing like making a first impression.

“This was the first time I’ve got to come to the mountain and tune the bike myself,” Matt said. “Wouldn’t nobody give me a tune-up. I asked around what they all were doing. Nobody gave me any hints. Nobody.”

Now back to Rickie and that battle with the monkey. Once Matt tells the story, Rickie might be inclined to not help his son next time.

“Back when dad was in high school, they used to have this tough man competition,” Matt said. “You would go in and there was this monkey in a cage. No one had ever hit the monkey because the monkey would just knock them out.

“Dad was a wrestler in school and he got the monkey all wrapped up. No one had ever been able to do that before. Dad drew a little blood with the monkey in a headlock and the thing went all crazy. The monkey went all the way up to the top of the cage and dad was taunting him. Telling him to come on down.

“I don’t know what the trainer said, but he said one word and the monkey came down with all fours on my dad and hit him in the jaw. The monkey broke dad’s jaw. It knocked my dad out cold.”