SELINSGROVE — It took longer than most, but Mark Smith was born to race sprint cars.
The son of a legendary mechanic — the late Ree “Smitty” Smith — Mark says racing “is all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever done.”
The Sunbury resident, one of the most successful sprint car drivers in the east this season, has also made a living in the sport, building sprint car chassis in Mach One Chassis, Mechanicsburg (formerly in Sunbury), a shop he co-owns with his car owner, Brian Scandle, also of Sunbury.
After parking his 360 sprint car in victory lane on July 3, in Selinsgrove Speedway’s annual Firecracker Classic 30-lapper, Smith had 10 wins in 2018.
As he has done since he was a toddler, Smith started the season in Florida in February, winning three features before heading back up north.
Growing up, he recalls his parents (Ree and Nora) took the family to Florida every winter as his dad worked on cars driven by some of the best drivers.
“I’ve been going to Florida since I was born, to go to races, kind of like the birds fly south for the winter,” the 46-year-old driver joked.
Nevertheless, Smith got a later start than most of today’s top drivers.
The reason: “Money,” he said.
He said that is what led him to become a chassis builder. “I could never get anybody to take a chance on me, so you start building your own stuff and go out and show people what I you can do,” he said.
He started in go-karts, then moved to small-block and then big-block modified cars before getting the chance to race a super sportsman for Dale Henry and Steve and Billy McNair to fill in for driver Dwight Leib at the now defunct Silver Spring Speedway in Mechanicsburg.
After racing 358s, he finally got his first shot in a 410 when legendary car owners John and PeeWee Zemaitis, of Tower City, put him in their car to run regularly on the Central Pennsylvania circuit as well as nationally.
In recent years, he has been a regular at Selinsgrove Speedway, winning the track’s 360 sprint car championship in 2016. However, running for titles is not Smith’s style.
“I just think (championships) kind of happen, but I never run for points. Then you race different. I always just race to win. I don’t care about points. We just happen to win them once in a while,” he said.
Smith has won twice at in limited appearances at Selinsgrove this year, but they were two of the track’s marquis events. He won the Kramer Cup (honoring the late former track champion Kramer Williamson) for the fourth time in the five years of the race, and the Firecracker 30, his first in that event.
But, with two wins, he is only eighth in the point standings.
“We’re out of any kind of points title run because we miss races here and there, but I don’t chase points,” he said. “I’m not into that stuff. I just want to go to the race track and help customers, hopefully help them win races,” he said.
Smith has built chassis for some of the drivers who have beaten him on the track, and that’s fine with him. He also wants to win, because that also helps him keep customers and gain new ones.
Noting the old saying for NASCAR owners, “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday, “Smith said. “It holds true for us. When I go out and do some traveling and we win races, that helps bring in new customers.”
He said, “I try to win every week, but if my customers are winning races and beating me, I’m doing my job,” he said. “That’s the way I look at it.”
Smith was one of the hottest drivers in the East in the first part of the season. He won three races in Florida, then picked up wins in four consecutive weeks: at Bedford; Dundee (N.Y.); Big Diamond (Minersville); and Selinsgrove. Before that, he also won an American Sprint Car Series feature in Tennessee.
“It’s probably one of the better starts to a season and I think we can definitely get quite a few more wins, but you never know how it goes,” he said. “You can drop off the face of the earth quick. Hopefully, we don’t.”
Smith’s crew consists of Gerry Burkett, of Middletown; Tommy Vogelsong, of Carlisle; Walter Laudermilch, of Hummelstown; Kevin Mowery, of Paxinos; Dave Campbell, of Sunbury; and Rusty Kerchner, of Dalmatia.
Smith, who lives in Sunbury with his wife, Lynne, and their children Tristan and Indy, began running 410s full-time in 2000 when he was 28, but eventually switched primarily to 358s (now 360s) because of the cost.
“If I could afford it, I would run a 410 all the time and do the special stuff with the 360,” said Smith, who builds all types of sprint cars.
“Silver Crown, non-wing cars, I’ve built just about everything that has to do with a sprint car,” he said.
“I still have a 410 (he won one race this season), we just can’t afford to run them weekly,” he said.
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