Last year, Regan Smith started the year off strong, including a 58 point lead midway through the year. However, as races added up, the points gap faded and Smith ended the year third in points behind Austin Dillon and Sam Hornish Jr.
Looking back on the year, Smith recognizes there were many things that he could’ve done better throughout the year.
“You hear everybody talk about you can’t‑‑ you can talk about it and say this is how it’s going to be, this is going to be how it’s going to happen,” Smith explained. “You hear people say that and you always think that’s not going to be the case, but it really is. You have to experience this stuff before you can have a full understanding as to how it’s going to play out.”
Smith said he thought they were doing good last year, until they got caught in a late race incident at Mid-Ohio. Then they followed that up with a parts failure, which resulted in another bad finish. Rather than rebounding from it, it changed Smith’s view on the year.
He began thinking that he should start winning races to get back in front – when in reality, he wasn’t in that desperate of a situation.
“We had the spiral in the middle of the season that was tough to get over and tough to understand what was taking place,” Smith said. “We still had the same race cars, the same speed, but we started doing things a little more desperately than early in the year and probably didn’t need to, myself as a driver and other things along the way. And then we had a couple other hiccups here and there, which are going to happen throughout the course of a season, and just I think we got too desperate too early to be blunt about it.”
Smith said the process taught him many lessons – including the need to play it smart and stick to what they know, rather than grasp for straws. Take that set-up that works well and use it, rather than trying something else and finishing 15th.
“I think the experience from that last year is going to play a big part this year in understanding that until we really get down to a certain part of the season, you don’t have to panic,” he said. “You don’t have to get desperate. You have to be smart and do the things that you know how to do. As I said, I had probably 90 people tell me that, and until you sit back at the end of the year and you look at it, you don’t realize it.”
Smith will start his championship chase with the season opener at Daytona International Speedway. Last year, Smith was in the thick for the win until he got taken out in the last lap wreck. With tandems being banned for this year, Smith is excited to see the style of racing that happens on track.
