Blame it on Ricky Johnson.

For anyone on the receiving end of a Rickie Smith starting line lesson. Or anyone who has watched the bumper of his doorslammers go across the finish line ahead of them.

Or, even a race official who has had to endure his patented rules tirades can look to Ricky Johnson. He caused it all.

So... who in the world is Ricky Johnson?

"I was one of the best [football players] coming out of Walnut Cove [NC] at that time," Smith recalled. "I guess they had a running back named Ricky Johnson that come out of King [NC] that was pretty good. I was a guard, linebacker, all that type of stuff, a bully on the ballfield. I knew the guy couldn't whoop my ass, but he was a good running back, and he was fast. About halfway through ninth grade, they moved him up to varsity, and that pretty much ticked me off."

Smith has never stopped being ticked off since. Well. There were those few moments earlier this week when he got the call from Don Garlits confirming he was an inductee into the Class of 2024 International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

Smith understands his championship skills were honed back in those early days of high school, long before he ever learned a race car. He'd driven the bulldozers on job sites and, when the opportunity presented itself, would even fight a wild animal at the County Fair in King, NC.

But it was the perceived disrespect that lit a fire under Smith's rear that drove him.

"I worked my ass off that summer with my grandpa in construction companies, toting big wrenches, walking the jobs, running the jobs instead of riding their car down the road half a mile," Smith explained. "I made up my mind when I went back to school in the 10th grade that if there's any way possible, I was going to be on the senior squad. I ended up being on the senior squad. From that point on, I've just had an attitude of just don't like to lose. People gotta know that.

"This didn't just start in racing. It started in high school. My attitude of my words are basically refuse to lose. That's my attitude. That's just the way I've been. I realize now I'm getting on up in age. I'm not 15, I'm not 18, I'm not 25, I'm not 35, I'm not 45. I'm getting up to an age that it's time that I slow down. Anybody that starts getting around 70, you're going to slow down."

Smith's standard of slowing down, even at 70, surpasses many of his younger peers.

 

 

 

 

When it comes to drag racing, his accomplishments span a mile, dating back to the 1970s when he raced in the IHRA's Super Modified class, winning so much that the class was eventually disbanded. Smith moved into the IHRA's Mountain Motor Pro Stock division, driving a Mustang II for Keith Fowler, sponsored by the Oak Ridge Boys and powered by Jack Roush horsepower. 

Smith's legend grew early and often with him becoming the first official Pro Stock into the seven-second zone during the 1980 IHRA Pro-Am Nationals in Rockingham, NC. He would go on to win his first IHRA national event four months later. His prolific career as a large displacement Pro Stock racer would yield 31 wins in 53 final rounds. Smith scored five IHRA Pro Stock championships in his time at IHRA.

Smith transitioned into NHRA 500-inch Pro Stock racing in 1989, never achieving the success he did in IHRA, but it set the stage for a Pro Modified run in NHRA competition that would set the standard. After winning the first NHRA Pro Modified exhibition in 2001, Smith won 17 more events since NHRA  recognized it as an official category. Still, in exhibition status, Smith had another dozen or so victories, thus making him the winningest driver in the class.

That said, with those stats and the fact he's driven a Funny car and, most recently, a Top Fuel dragster, there's a little that Smith has left to accomplish. 

Come to think of it, the only thing he had yet to accomplish to this point was an appointment into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. 

"That's the only thing I was waiting on, and I figured I was going to have to retire. And I didn't know it was going to happen then because I was at one time the IHRA hero, but I was lucky enough that NHRA came up with this Pro Modified class," Smith, an 11-time champion, said. 

Then the phone rang, and it was the man himself on the other end of the phone. It was the call he'd hoped for but never knew if it might come.

 

 

 

"I thought, 'Holy cow." 

"I thought that might be what it was, but you just don't know until he says it because Don Garlits has never called me. But when he called me, he said, 'This Rickie Smith?" 

"I said, 'Hey, Big Daddy.' That's exactly what I said.

"He said, 'Well, this is Don Garlits. You've been inducted into the Hall of Fame." 

All of a sudden, the memories flowed from punishing players on the football field to racers on the drag strip. Smith broke down in tears, and he wasn't even giving a speech. 

"I don't know if people realize how big an honor this is, but I think it's the biggest one you can get drag racing," declared Smith, whose previous high point was appointment into the inaugural Legends of Thunder Valley class.

Smith said his presenter would be former IHRA executive turned television personality Ted Jones, the man he said "Watched me grow up and put up with my s*** along the way.

Smith even understands and welcomingly embraces the good-natured ribbing from his peers, who are reportedly prepared to set up a betting pool on how long into his speech he will go before getting emotional.  

"People made fun of me and still do," Smith said. "Nowadays, when you see more and more people on their own team footing their own bill, whether it's Ron Capps, Antron Brown, all these type guys that are not just drivers, now they're having to realize what it is to get sponsors, pay the bills, manage the team, drive the car when you realize all of that and you have success, and it's hard not to break down because there's just a lot in it. I see a lot more people now breaking down when they try to talk because they've made it, and they realized how hard it was to get there. I realized it a long time ago."

And probably Ricky Johnson, too; he probably realized it a lot sooner than anyone else.