Offseason Spotlight: Smith Earns Top Late Model Rookie Honors in Season Full of Learning

Barre, VT – Being the top rookie in any division is an honor that racers treasure. Although it’s not a guarantee of future success, it shows a driver is on the right track for it, as they adapted better than any other first-year racer to a new division.

Essex Jct., VT’s Matthew Smith has been close to Rookie honors before. In 2015, the then-19-year-old came up one point short in his first Thunder Road Street Stock season. Five years later, Smith sealed the deal on a bigger stage, taking the Rookie of the Year Award in his first full season with the Maplewood/Irving Oil Late Models.

Although it was Smith’s first full year behind the wheel of the #04VT A.H. Fence Co. Chevy, he was hardly a stranger to the seat. Smith made a total of 10 starts in the car between 2017 and 2019, and even qualified on the outside pole for the 2019 Vermont Milk Bowl.  A longtime family relationship with car owner Arny Hill led to the opportunity for Smith to work out of his shop and eventually pilot his race car.

“(Arny’s) been a pretty good friend of mine and my family for awhile, and he’d been racing with his son,” Smith recalled. “When his son stepped away, (Arny) still had his car, but he didn’t really know what he wanted to do. We ended up selling our Street Stock, and we had been working out of the same shop — Arny allowed us to work out of the same shop with the Street Stock all four years that we were in it. So we were pretty close. The deal kind of just fell together where Arny approached me and asked if I wanted to run a little bit with his car, which I did — and it was an awesome opportunity. Then finally, last offseason, he decided, ‘Hey, let’s try this full-time and see what happens’.”

For awhile, it looked like Smith’s rookie effort could be over before it began. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in force in mid-March, putting the Thunder Road season on hold and leading to the team reassessing their plans for 2020.

“We were full-bore ready for the season, and we were looking forward to our first full year in a Late Model,” Smith said. “And then COVID hit, and we kind of had to take a step back and really think, was it worth it? Arny’s A.H. Fence Co. was the main sponsor, and at the time, he was struggling with work, so we weren’t sure what the funding was going to look like. We didn’t really have any other sponsors lined up because we made the decision to run full-time so late. So we sat back and waited to see what was going to happen. Then Arny said, ‘You know what? We made this deal – we’re going to make this happen.’ So luckily, Thunder Road was able to piece it together and we were able to get the ball rolling, and slowly but surely it looked like there was going to be racing, so we just stuck with it.”

Once the season got underway, it didn’t take long for the team to show their potential. In the second feature of the year on June 25, Smith crossed the finish line fifth. Following post-race technical inspection, Smith went home with the third-place trophy, his first in a Late Model.

Despite early success, Smith tried to remain focused on learning each week without worrying about the results. There were a few stumbles along the way, but Smith didn’t let those distract him from the overall goal.

“Don’t make a fool out of myself,” Smith said with a laugh when asked what the goal was. “Really, try to gain the respect of everyone on the track and all the competitors. There’s a couple instances where I’m sure I didn’t, but I think the majority of the season went well. But I think the main goal was just to learn as much as I can. Being new to it and being new from a Street Stock into a Late Model, the learning curve is huge. I knew I was up for the challenge, and I knew my team was up for the challenge, so the big thing was to learn and be competitive when we could be, but just know you held the cards you were dealt.”

The philosophy held true even on the good nights. Although the third-place finish on June 25 ended up being Smith’s best of the year, the Mid-Season Championships on July 24 may have been his finest performance. Smith led a total of 49 laps in the double-point 75-lap feature, but was overtaken by Scott Dragon in the closing stages and eventually slid to fourth in the final rundown. Still, it made a big statement that the team was moving in the right direction.

That was a heartbreaker,” Smith remembered. “I was sitting there thinking, ‘you know, if we can ride this out with no yellows, we have a shot at this.’ Then that yellow came out (just before halfway), and unfortunately, the car tightened up really bad. I was just able to hold on to what I could for a position, and I think that’s one of the learning curve moments. Yeah, I could have overdrove the car and tried to compete with Scott, but it just wasn’t going to be worth it. Knowing that I got to lead laps was cool, but trying to finish the best I can and not tear anything up was the main goal there.”

Smith continued to post solid results throughout the second half of the year. In a 13 point-counting events, he finished with two top-5’s and seven top-10’s to his credit, putting him 12th in the final driver standings.

Admittedly, Smith was the only full-time rookie competing in the Late Models this past year. Still, he remains proud of the award and will go in the Thunder Road record books forever as the top rookie.

“It’s huge for me,” Smith said. “I missed Rookie of the Year to Chris LaForest in the Street Stocks by one point. So I guess, even if I was the only competitor in the Late Models, it’s kind of some redemption — I at least got something out of it. But even if there were other rookies, I think we would have been in contention for winning it anyways. Not to sound too cocky, but I feel like with the limited stints I had before, I was probably more prepared to go into this full season than a fresh-off rookie would have been.”

With the regular season over, Smith and team turned to the Vermont Milk Bowl, where they had first turned heads the year before. After being fast all weekend, Smith rolled to a top-five finish in Segment 1. He was working his way through the field early in Segment 2 when another car lost an axle entering turn one, covering the track in grease and triggering a pile-up that eventually ended Smith’s day. Although the result was disappointing, Smith focused on the positives he took from the Milk Bowl while discussing it later.

“Segment 1, we ended up starting 11th and got all the way up to 4th — mostly on the outside,” Smith said when recapping the event. “It was eye-opening. There was a lot of people I’ve looked up to while racing that I was passing, and there was a lot of people I was reeling in that I would have never thought we could do. The speed that we showed was fun while it lasted. Then the Segment 2 (crash) was just part of racing. You get inverted all the way to the back, and you’re trying to race your way up through. If I remember correctly, looking back at the replay, I think when that accident happened, I would have been leading the Milk Bowl because I was leading Jason (Corliss) by enough. But unfortunately, it didn’t last long.”

The question now becomes what, if anything, will happen for an encore. Smith admitted the team has not yet made a decision about who will drive the car next year. When not at the controls in 2020, Smith served as a crew member on the car as D.J. Shaw piloted it on the ACT Late Model Tour. While he would prefer to be racing, Smith will be Thunder Road in some capacity no matter what.

“I’ll be completely honest: it’s the same deal that I’ve had with Arny before,” Smith said. “As of right now, I don’t know what next year looks like. I know we still have the car; I don’t know if I will technically be piloting the car. But we’re currently working on the car — we’re getting it torn apart, we’ll get it fixed back up, and I know Arny is pretty loyal to Thunder Road and I am, too. So if I do end up behind the wheel there, I will more than likely be competing full-time again at Thunder Road. I know if I’m not driving, I’ll be there crewing. There’s no way I can leave that place.”