Dirt
TRIBUTE
Monte Smith
W
ith more than
35 years expe-
rience, Monte
Smith was one
of drag racing’s most-popular
and prolific nitrous tuners,
often calling the shots on
as many as 20 entries over
a race weekend. His time in
the sport dated even farther
back, though, to 1970 when
his dad brought home a brand-
new Dodge Challenger and
promptly turned it into a G/
Automatic Super Stock entry.
“I loved that car and even be-
fore I was a teenager my dad
had me working on it pretty
much every week,” Smith told
DRAG ILLUSTRATED for
a 2012 story about his work
with Holley/NOS. “In fact,
the whole time I was grow-
ing up, even before my dad
started racing regularly, there
was all kinds of stuff sitting in
the driveway at my house, so I
grew up around hot rods.”
Smith also took plenty of
turns behind the wheel over
the years, competing in every-
thing from Stock Eliminator to
Alcohol Funny Car. Even af-
ter starting up Monte Smith
Performance in 2006 from his
home in Moulton, Alabama, he
continued making occasional
runs down the strip. “I’ve been
known to climb in something
at the track that somebody
couldn’t get down, just to see
if it was them or the car,” he
said. “And I do miss the driving,
I can’t deny that, but I have to
say that it’s been very reward-
ing from the tuning aspect to
go to the track, tune these guys’
cars and improve their perfor-
mance and see them winning the race, or whatever. It’s very satisfying
from that side.”
Unfortunately, Monte Smith’s life-long enthusiasm and dedication
to his craft was cut short Mar. 6, as he died of a heart attack during a
rest stop while driving home from a job in North Carolina.
Drag radial racer Chad Henderson said he felt fortunate for getting
to know Smith so closely as a friend and teammate for the last dozen
years or so. “It didn’t matter if we’d had a good or a bad day at the track,
we could both get in the truck and go home and laugh about what
we tried that day,” Henderson
said. “He was a fun guy to go
racing with.”
Chris Rini, who won the
2010 NMCA Pro Street cham-
pionship with Smith under
the hood, agreed. “Monte was
great; he always had a good,
positive attitude. He was real
fun at the race track and later
to go out and eat with. We
always had a good time to-
gether and remained friends
even after we weren’t racing
together anymore.”
According to Henderson,
Smith had an aggressive streak
as a tuner, but it was tempered
with a genuine concern for not
tearing up parts. “That’s what
he always feared. He was al-
ways very concerned about
being careful and not hurt-
ing stuff.”
Again, Rini confirmed Hen-
derson’s claim. “He was always
that guy who wanted to go out
there and set the world on fire.
Monte liked his set-ups hot and
he was a believer in putting it
on the edge to where it would
start to smoke the tire and then
back it up a little from there,”
Rini explained. “I remember
probably the second time we
tested together and the car was
running real well and after the
third complete pass I asked
him what he thought and he
answered, ‘Well, pretty good,
but it’s going down the track
every time; we’re obviously not
giving it enough power!’ He
was very adamant about push-
ing it to the edge and seeing
where the edge would take you.”
Henderson said as much
as he was stunned by Smith’s
passing, it’s shown him there are “so many people, just like me, who
were touched by his good humor and attitude. You wouldn’t