So far this year, Regan Smith is off to a good start. He leads the points, 28 points over Justin Allgaier. He has two wins and two wins and 11 top 10s in 14 races. So how would rate that season? For the driver of the No. 7 TaxSlayer Chevrolet, he says a A-.
“Certainly, as any team thinks, there’s areas we can always do better at, but we’ve done a really good job of being consistent and taking what the race and what the tracks will give us,” Smith said. “Throwing out this past weekend with the problems on the track at Road America that we had, I feel like things have been going as anticipated, and we’ve been fortunate enough that, because of that, we’ve been able to kind of test as the season’s been going on and learn things that we feel like are really going to pay dividends when we get further into the year and get down towards the point where the championship’s really starting to get offline.”
This past weekend didn’t go well for Smith at Road America as he was got wrecked in the late going by road course ringer Billy Johnson.
“You’re certainly not happy about the way things went down towards the end of the race and the way that the driving turned into more slamming instead of actual racing,” he said. ” With that said, it’s in the rearview mirror, and you can’t change that it took place the way that it did. All you can do is focus on going forward. One of the reasons that we’ve worked as hard as we have this year to not only get the points lead but to try to have the points lead be as large as it was in case something like that did happen somewhere and we crossed bad luck.”
It’s no secret that Saturday was a big points hit, but Smith likes the position he is in.
“You can’t deny the fact that that was a huge point hit, but with that said, that’s why we worked hard to have the big lead and strive to have the big lead,” he said. “I would much rather be the one being chased from 28 points out in front than the one chasing from 28 points behind, if that makes sense.”
Smith added that one thing his team can look back on the race and be proud of is that they had the speed to run up front.
“Going to Mid-Ohio and going to Watkins Glen, that guys aren’t going to take that for granted anymore that they can make points up on us,” Smith added. “Instead, that’s going to be an area where we’re going to be looking to gain points further on down the road.”
Smith is going to try and get his season back on the track this weekend when the Nationwide Series heads to Kentucky Speedway.
