Smith’s decision to race looks wise after winning Pro Open Shifter championship

QUINCY — Phillip Smith had to scratch the itch. In doing so, he showed he still has the chops to win.

Smith, a Quincy native who works at Smith Brothers Powersports, woke up Saturday morning with no intentions of racing in the Quincy Grand Prix of Karting.

“I had kind of wanted to, but it just wasn’t working out,” Smith said.

Then Smith, who had not raced a go-kart in three years, told himself, “Why not?”

“Saturday morning at 9 o’clock, I decided to throw a go-kart together and see if I could come out and do it,” Smith said.

He could still do it alright. Smith won Saturday night’s feature in the Pro Open Shifter class by nearly eight seconds then one-upped himself by winning Sunday’s championship race by 13.3 seconds.

“The more laps you do, the more it comes back to you,” Smith said. “I finally just got the confidence again, I guess. It takes a bit to get it to where you can push and feel comfortable.”

With the help of a fellow racer, Smith built his winning kart from basically scratch. All he had was the chassis, and he scrounged up some other parts from previous karts to piece together the new one.

“We finished it about 1 (p.m.),” Smith said. “I had to run home and put air in my daughter’s swimming pool so she could swim with one of her friends, then we busted butt down here and got here just in time for qualifying. We had to skip all the practices and everything.”

That lack of practice did not seem to matter for Smith, who also won the Pro Open Shifters feature and championship races in 2022 before taking a hiatus from racing.

“I just decided I probably don’t need to do this anymore and did some other things, and here I am again,” Smith said. “I got the itch.”

It did not take long for Smith to get reacclimated to a familiar, although difficult, track.

“The park is a bit unpredictable at times,” Smith said. “It’s gotten me before. In ‘21, I put one in the barriers pretty good. It’s a fickle beast, but it’s an amazing place to race a go-kart.”

In true shifter fashion, Smith treated fans to a lengthy burnout after his cool-down lap. Only a near-four-hour weather delay resulting in a race against darkness kept Smith from tearing apart the machine he built the previous morning.

“If we had more time, I probably would have kept going until the tires popped, but we were on kind of a time limit, and I didn’t want to be that selfish guy out there having too much fun,” Smith said.

Now, Smith feels inclined to defend his title next year.

“I don’t know. You know how that goes,” Smith said. “I thought in ‘22 that I was officially done, but here we are, so I would imagine I’ll probably be back next year.” 

He will probably decide sooner than the morning of that event, though.

“Maybe a little more preparation next time would be a good idea,” Smith said.