Sammy Smith heads to one of his best race tracks in the historic Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway with just a two-point advantage over Taylor Gray in the ARCA Menards Series East standings. If there was any place on the schedule where Smith can pull away and set himself up for a second straight championship, it’s the legendary Nashville Fairgrounds.

Smith scored three victories in 2021, which helped lead him to his championship. One of those wins came in a dominating performance at Nashville where he led 103 of the 200 laps. Smith believes that a repeat of that performance is in store on Saturday night in the Music City 200.

“It’s probably one of my favorite tracks,” said the Iowa native. “With running the Super (Late Model) throughout the years before going with the ARCA cars, I had a lot of experience.”

Last year, Smith ran both the ARCA race and the Super Late Model race in the same day. He credited that to his success in the ARCA race. This year, Smith will be pulling double-duty once again.

“I think that definitely helped me get track time,” said Smith. “If you get track time in anything I think that’ll help. I’ll be doing the same thing this weekend running the ARCA car and the Super so hopefully we can get two guitars.”

Smith has two wins in three races this season, with his worst finish being a fifth-place run this past weekend at Dover Motor Speedway. He said that the left side truck arm was bent, which made his No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota very difficult to handle around the high-banked one-mile concrete oval.

However, Smith said he believes they’ll be just fine on the high-banked half-mile in Nashville.

“We’ve had a really good short track program anywhere we’ve gone,” said Smith, which is backed up by wins at the half-mile New Smyrna Speedway and half-mile Five Flags Speedway this season.

“We kind of struggled at Dover, but we found out what happened when we got back. But I’m feeling really confident for this weekend in Nashville.”

Smith said the goal this weekend is to take home two guitars, one for the Super Late Model race and one for the ARCA race. If he can do that, he said it’ll be a successful weekend. But, don’t expect Smith to be serenading anyone with his guitars any time soon.

“It’s sitting on the wall,” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t really have much time to learn how to play guitar with all the racing I’m doing. I’d really like to get two more and put them right next to the other one. The guitar is one of the coolest trophies you can get and I’m pretty hungry to get two more.”