Wythe Raceway
Quite the adventure for Smith's trip to Wythe
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Garrett Smith's car at Wythe. (facebook.com/SouthernNationals)
RURAL RETREAT, Va. (July 12) — Garrett Smith was rolling along so well during Saturday’s 40-lap Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals feature at Wythe Raceway, far behind behind leader and eventual winner Chris Madden but seemingly in full control of his position.
Nevertheless, the 21-year-old from Eatonton, Ga., couldn’t settle in and feel comfortable. His mind just wouldn’t let him.
With every lap Smith turned on the massive half-mile oval made lightning fast by a two-hour rain delay before qualifying, he figured something was going to short-circuit his outing. That’s just the way his Saturday was going.
A run-in with the track’s inside guardrail upon entering the pits in his hauler. A altercation with a packer car when the show restarted. Two unusual occurrences had him primed for one more as he was seeking a career-best performance on Ray Cook’s long-running miniseries.
Don’t problems come in threes?
“I was just waiting for, like, a fan to run out on the racetrack or something,” Smith said later, laughing as he considered the absurdity of his first-ever visit to Wythe.
Smith made it unscathed to the checkered flag, though, bringing him a sense of relief after spinning off 40 circuits with a sense of impending doom hanging over him. He lost second late in the distance to Chris Ferguson of Mount Holly, N.C., and settled for a third-place finish, but how could he complain?
Smith turned his attention to Monday’s Southern Nationals Round 3 at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn., figuring that perhaps his steady podium finish was a sign that he had exhausted his bad fortune, which actually began in Friday’s miniseries opener at Beckley (W.Va.) Motor Speedway where he led laps 26-28 before falling to second and slowing on lap 32 with a flat left-rear tire apparently resulting from contact with eventual winner Ross Bailes of Clover, S.C.
The black cloud from Beckley followed Smith to Wythe. With crew member Justin Sims behind the wheel of the team’s transporter, disaster struck — nearly in major fashion — after he eased down the steep access road leading from the sign-in shack to the crossover gate to the infield pit area just off turn four.
“We went down across the track and the trailer started sliding underneath the rig, underneath the truck,” Smith said, remembering the scary situation that developed on the slick racing surface upon the team’s afternoon arrival.
The huge trailer appeared headed toward serious contact with the steel guardrail on the inside of the homestretch. Fortunately, however, Sims had the toterhome far enough through the infield opener that the trailer bumped and scraped the wall at its far left-rear corner just after the rear wheel and axle. The trailer sustained damage but it was just to the outer body.
“I was sitting on the couch” inside the toter when the incident happened, Smith said. “In these big trucks, you don’t really feel those, like, little bumps. It looks like a big hit, but these things can probably take a lot.
“I don’t think it’s too bad. We already found a sheet of metal, I believe, and we’re going to fix it up tomorrow.”
Smith experienced his second strange episode of the evening when he drove his family-owned Longhorn Chassis onto the track for the hot-lap session preceding the resumption of the program after the rain delay, which was caused by a brief shower just as time trials had been set to begin. As he circled the track slowly to help finish the drying process, he felt contact to the right-rear corner of his machine. It wasn’t from a fellow competitor but instead one of Wythe’s packer cars that was about to make its way off the track.
“I was like, ‘What was that? I think I just got hit by a Crown Vic,’” Smith said, shaking his head in dismay. “And I did. The Crown Vic knocked the quarterpanel off.”
When Smith returned to his trailer, his car’s right-rear bodywork was pushed up and crinkled significantly from the contact. His crew had to put in more than a dozen pop rivets to repair the damage that, for the second time on Saturday, fortunately wasn’t as serious as it could have been.
The remainder of Smith’s night went more according to plan. He timed fastest in the first qualifying group to earn the pole position for the 23-car feature — heats were eliminated with the rain delaying the start of the program until after 10 p.m. — and ran second behind Gray Court, S.C.’s Madden until being overtaken by Ferguson on lap 37.
“Once I got beat (by front-row mate Madden) on the initial start on the outside, I moved to the outside,” Smith said. “I felt like that was better on the restarts all night long to run down the hill and get a good run.
“But, yeah, I didn’t have anything for Chris. He was really good. Like, really good.”
Smith couldn’t stick with Madden’s Kale Green-owned Longhorn Chassis on any of the race’s five restarts. Within a few laps, in fact, Smith was a straightaway behind Madden, but considering his own unfamiliarity with Wythe compared to Madden and Ferguson, he couldn’t help but be satisfied with a third-place finish.
“Yeah, Madden has a lot of laps here, and Ferguson does too I believe,” Smith said. “This is my first time here. It’s a tough place and it was real fast tonight after the rain.”
Smith’s finish was his best in 13 career Southern Nationals starts over the 2021, ’23 and ’25 seasons. His only previous top-five run was a fourth in 2021 at West Georgia Raceway in Whitesburg, Ga.
The run will go a long way toward helping Smith toward his goal of winning the Southern Nationals championship as he rebounded from his 16th-place finish at Beckley. It also allowed him to leave Wythe — through the same crossover gate that created a headache a few hours earlier — with no race car damage to repair.
“I’m glad nothing’s wrecked. That’s one less thing to fix tomorrow,” said Smith, who is seeking to become the second driver to win both the Schaeffer’s Spring and Southern Nationals in the same season, join Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga. (2017) . “But after the eventful day today, I’m ready for Bulls Gap.”
