Pro Stock Motorcycle

Won the final round, reclaimed the category's points lead.

And in Pro Stock Motorcycle, Matt Smith used a brilliant .006 reaction time on his Denso Autoparts Buell to defeat points leader Richard Gadsden on a whole shot.

Now,

the one thing that I saw coming out of this weekend was this.

I'm your host, Kelly Crandall.

Our guest today is NHRA Pro Stock motorcycle rider, Richard Gadson.

He is the reigning defending world champion, has led the point standings all year, and is now three races away from closing out a second consecutive title in just three seasons in this class.

It's been pretty impressive.

...

but, you know, so I work for Vance & Hines.

When I got this opportunity, uh, to ride their Pro Stock motorcycle, I asked them for a job as well.

I was like, "Listen, I, I kinda need to be able to merge the two lifestyles," 'cause there's no way I could meet the demands of the NHRA schedule and still fend for myself off the racetrack.

Uh, I think we were at the, you know, some of the very first All Harley drags there ever was.

So, um, so I grew up in that, that environment, uh, the hardcore H- uh, Harley-Davidson high-performance shop life, uh, as a small kid, all the way through to being, um, national champion of, uh, Pro Mod Harley-Davidson in the AMRA- Um, two-time champion there, and then moved into the NHRA, where I've been for the last 10 years, uh, NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle.

And, uh, we've been competing at a high level there.

Um, we've been having our ups and downs, uh, as many racers will.

Um, he would work f- 60 hours on a, on some guy's chopper set of heads that was broke down the highway and charge him, you know, 200 bucks.

Yeah.

Um, so we, we definitely weren't money driven, but, you know, born in a trailer and moved all the way up to racing NHRA Pro Stock motorcycle, which talked about an expensive sport to be a part of.

Right.

Father Greg builds his points lead to 71 points over reigning world champion Dallas Glenn and by 81 points over Matt Hartford.

And in Pro Stock Motorcycle, it was Gage Herrera collecting his fourth straight win at Gateway, defeating teammate and reigning world champion Richard Gatson with a 671.0 at 200, at 200.98 miles per hour to defeat Gatson's 676.3 at 200.08 miles per hour.

Gatson still holds the points lead, but it's now down to just 32 points over Herrera with three races to go.

So could the Pro Stock Motorcycle World Championship come down to Pomona again? I mean, it was so tight entering the NHRA finals last year.

It was only, like, a one-point difference, or it might've been a little more than that.

But it, it was less than a round difference, and it was probably gonna come down to whoever went farthest, um, at Pomona.

But you want to talk about losing in the first two rounds.

Pro Stock Motorcycle had upsets top to bottom, sideways, upside down, everywhere.

The top four bikes...

In points, going into the countdown, they all went out in the first two rounds.

It's Hall's first win of the year, second straight win of the first race of the countdown.

He won Redding last year as well, and it's just his fifth career win.

Defending Pro Stock Motorcycle World Champion Richard Gatson still leads the points, but he leads Hall by just one point and Matt Smith by 25 points.

But yeah, what a wild way to start the countdown.