The Netherlands, 30-07-2024: The Netherlands has many quarter-mile racers, ranging from street classes to the fastest categories. Several racers compete also at the European level (FIA/FIM championship). A category represented by a Dutch competitor is Super Street Bike. Like the American Pro Street Bike, the Super Street Bike is a “Heads Up” race where riders compete on motorcycles that look stock using street tires (slicks are not allowed). In this interview, we look into the life of the only Dutch female rider in the Super Street Bike, Margot Schmidt! Let us take you through the story of Schmidt’s racing team, their dreams, achievements, and their passion for bikes.

Text: Benjamin Wefer
Pictures: Benjamin Wefer, Jeroen Meetings, Remco Scheelings.

So, who is Margot Schmidt? Margot was born and raised in The Netherlands and has worked in health care for most of her life. She currently owns, together with another partner, a mediation agency for self-employed professionals in healthcare. Margot is married to Stefan Schmidt, and they form a solid team on and off the track. She and Stefan met at a very young age and have been married now for 31 years. Whenever she is not at the racetrack or working on the bike, she can be found in the gym, building stamina for the races. Margot also enjoys traveling to the United States (USA) for drag race events. Whenever time permits, she goes out with her friends or has dinner at restaurants.

The Schmidt’s story started long ago when some friends introduced them to the bike lifestyle. They both liked it; however, Margot never thought she would be racing on a bike one day. In the same period, Stefan started assisting in a local bike shop. Here is where Margot got in touch with the bike technique. In the middle of the summer of nineteen ninety-something, Margot, Stefan, and her cousin went out looking for some adrenaline kick. They found it at a bike festival in a Belgian town called Lommel. The event was dedicated to the motorcycle community and included heads-up races. Margot got a glimpse of the Drag Racing world and told herself; This is a great sport!

But Schmidt Racing didn’t happen overnight. It started with Stefan and her cousin competing while Margot enjoyed racing from the sidelines. For several years, Margot fulfilled the coordinator position and helped maintain the bikes. Over time, her cousin stopped, while Stefan continued to compete in the Funny Bike category, with the Best E.T. of 7.8 seconds.
It wasn’t until 2010 that Hensley Eugenia (a good friend of the Schmidts) came up with the idea to build a street bike (Suzuki GS1150ES) out of spare parts. By 2011, Margot’s dream came true; she got to race for the first time! But that went differently than planned. She clocked 24 seconds on a quarter mile, and the whole racing community told her to get another hobby.

But this fueled her motivation even more, and she continued to compete in Street Legal Bikes before moving to the 9.50 Bike Category with a 2001 Suzuki Hayabusa on Nitrous Oxide. They chose the Hayabusa for its strong engine performance. Over the years, they replaced the nitrous system with a turbo system to get more power out of the engine. After several seasons, she continued climbing the ladder to competition bike. Her Best E.T. in competition bike was 7.350 sec at 310 km/hrs. In 2018, she won the SPRC and the ACU competition bike championship in the United Kingdom (Santapod Raceway). After being in the top three for several years, she was up for a new challenge!

In 2017, they decided to sign up for Super Street Bike! The transition was challenging, but they embraced the change. In 2019, they significantly upgraded the bike with a standalone ECU, a new swingarm, and Penske shock absorbers, lowered the front fork, added magnesium rear wheels, and rebuilt the engine. Stefan and Margot did all the engineering and engine rebuild themselves with help from their drag race family members, Erik Jennes and Rudolfo Maduro. Erik and Rudolfo helped them when the bike needed to be on the dyno for fine-tuning. The bike was rebuilt again during the pandemic, using a methanol system to stay on top of the competition. Finding the proper setup for that took a lot of work, but the Schmidts succeeded again. But they were still hungry for more!

In 2022, the Schmidts joined Team Brother drag racing from Hungary. Daniel Lencses offers them the opportunity to share the brother’s knowledge, experience, and techniques to bring Margot’s bike to the next level, and they jump on board immediately. Since then, the bike has been going back and forth and getting upgrades. Last year, Margot clocked 7.05 seconds at 327 km/hr at Hockenheim and broke the 200-mph barrier for the first time. This year, she broke the six-second barrier by running a 6.91 second at 341  km/hr. At Tierp Arena, Sweden!  I want to thank The Brothers Racing Team for this opportunity, especially Daniel Lencses, for all the technical and mental support, thus Margot. Of course, I took the opportunity to ask her a series of direct questions.

Now that you have been racing Super Street Bike (SSB), would you be interested in racing any other class? No, for now, this is where I am supposed to be! But I dream about competing one day in the Pro Street Bike category in the USA!

What would be the most remarkable moment you experienced in your racing career? My most precious moment in my racing career was the moment when I broke the six-second barrier.

Who usually builds the engine, and how much power does it produce? Daniel (and his team) is currently our engine builder. Our engines produce around 600 horsepower (estimated). Stefan and I maintain the engines and the bike between races, and Daniel and his team help us tune the motorcycle on the track.

How did you experience 2023, and what can we expect for the remaining 2024 season? The 2024 goal was to break into six seconds, and now we aim to be more competitive than in previous years.  

Also, a special thank you to our sponsors, who believed in us and made all this possible. Vanson Leathers for keeping us safe and looking good, Orient Express Racing for helping us out with parts from the USA, APE Race Parts for all the parts we need, HELLO Reclame for providing us with a stunning bike design, Motorhuis Seppe for their support and parts, Jan Reijnbergen for pushing me to my physical and mental limits and Webcam Camshafts and ACL race bearings.

So, what does drag racing mean to Margot Schmidt and the Schmidt Racing Team? I can’t imagine my life without Drag Racing. It is a lifestyle! ‘My husband and I work on these bikes off-season, then go to the track and have the time of our lives. Being on the track and meeting our big race family is like a vacation to us (so much joy, fun, and adrenaline). It’s Amazing!