Track Side #2 (May 24, 2011)

In 2010, Bad Company was a new team and they won two races during their inaugural season.  In 2009, Smash, Bash and Crash was new and didn’t win a race.  Ever. In short, totally new teams don’t usually start out white hot and challenge for the night’s title in their first ever night of demo.  So, getting to the finals and beating the last year’s national champions in the process is an incredibly remarkable achievement, no matter what the pedigree of the drivers on the team.

Johnston smiles when I bring this up to him.  “C’mon,” he says, waving a hand at me.  “You know I have championship experience.”  The gist of this remark is clear: Full Throttle might have beaten Orange Crush, but in Johnston’s eyes, it wasn’t an upset.

“Jay [Van Allen] is a great driver,” Johnston states, “Pete [Milette Jr.] and I raced together last year and he’s tough and Andy [Fleischman] did great.  He took the checkered flag in the second round!”

There is obvious enthusiasm and excitement in Johnston’s voice.  No one can possibly and believably lay claim to being happy about pulling the consensus pre-season favorite in the first round of the first night of racing, but Full Throttle did and proved up to the task of not only competing with Orange Crush, but beating them.

“Orange was a good race,” Johnston says, but is quick to put a tempered spin on the accomplishment.  “But,” he begins, “They weren’t racing their usual drivers.  They had Pete [Ryan] out there with them.”  He breaks into a big grin, “Still, it felt really good to beat them.”

Johnston noticed his team improving throughout the night and, even though Full Throttle didn’t win in the finals, Johnston knows that he and his drivers have something to really hang their hats on.  They took on the defending national champions, the defending second place finishers and a scrappy team on the rise and held their own with each of them.  Johnston nods at this and says, “Orange was a good race, but [Reckoning] gave us our toughest fight of the night.  They are a really good team.”

After the display that Full Throttle put on Saturday night, the one thing Johnston doesn’t say is the only thing he doesn’t have to say: Full Throttle is pretty damn good too.

Race of the Night: Full Throttle vs. Orange Crush

On paper, it looked like an enormous mismatch: the defending National Champions, Orange Crush, were going up against a new team, Full Throttle, with a rookie runner, Andy Fleischman.  Orange Crush had an All-Star lineup in 2010 featuring Ryan Bleuer, Tom “Brickman” Lewis, Johnny Ryan, Ron Tyrakowski and Elmer Fandery.  In 2011, they added former Locomotive’s power driver, Peter Ryan, to their team.  The good were only getting better.

Full Throttle refused to believe the hype though and went out on the track convinced that they could beat Orange Crush.  And then they did just that.

Full Throttle caught a lucky break on the first lap when Orange Crush’s runner, Bleuer, lost a tire between turn 1 and 2 (more on this in a minute).  Full Throttle’s Ron Johnston put an end to Bleuer’s night a few laps later,  At that point Tyrakowski and Peter Ryan found themselves next to one another on the wall in between Turn 1 and 2, unable to move.  With this backdrop in place, Jay Van Allen circled the track five times and Full Throttle became the first team in two seasons to beat Orange Crush without the benefit of a countdown.

One element of this race that is being lost in the big news that Orange Crush lost in the first round for the first time since the Abraham Lincoln was president and demolition derbies were held on horseback is that this ‘upset’ is not as much of an upset as one might originally think.

Yes, Orange Crush was the presumptive favorite going into the season, but Full Throttle was a good team with a very solid veteran core.  Orange Crush shouldn’t be happy about the result, but they shouldn’t be distraught either.  This wasn’t a victory by some scrub team; Full Throttle might be Team 4, but this isn’t last year’s Team 4.  This was a good team that beat a very good, if not a great team.  By the end of the season, it’s entirely possible that we will be looking back at this opening round victory by Full Throttle and saying, “Who ever thought that was an upset?”

Upset of the Night: Full Throttle vs. Orange Crush

See Above.

Minor Point #1: Ryan Bleuer completed 2 plus laps missing a tire

Over the course of the last four seasons, Ryan Bleuer has been the best runner in the league.  It’s not simply his multiple championships that belie this fact, but the skill and tenacity he shows on the track.

In Orange Crush’s first round lose to Full Throttle, Bleuer lost a tire between turn 1 and 2 during the first lap.  “It fell off right away,” Bleuer states.  “I got into the thick mud back there and it fell off.  It’s weird because I know it was tight, I tightened it right before the race.  I felt the car drop and that was it.”

Most of the time when you lose a wheel, your car is done for.  Maybe you’ll be able to take out an opponent’s car when it drives right in front of you, but, basically, you’re done.  Bleuer, however, lost a tire and then somehow managed to complete another two and a half laps.

The issue with this is, as Bleuer puts it: “The car digs the whole time.”  Not only did his front-end dip significantly toward the side missing the tire, but driving on a rim is physically taxing.  There isn’t much grip and turning becomes an exercise in strength rather.  “It’s hardest around the turns,” Bleuer says.  “When I turned, I just had to slow down and tried to hold on as best I could.”

Two plus laps on three wheels.  Pretty impressive.

MVP: Reckoning’s Steve Gursky Jr.

Steve Gursky Jr. is one of the more unheralded drivers in the TDA.  He is usually a runner, but occasionally dusts off his crushing shoes.  When he runs, he is fast, but doesn’t seem to have that lightening quick speed that Orange Crush’s Ryan Bleuer has almost trademarked.  The reason for this is that Gursky Jr. is also the rare runner who relishes hits.  He will often square up against on-coming cars (or attempt to) and let the opposing team’s crushers go head-to-head with him in a battle of car-building skills.

In the First Night of racing in the 2011 season, Gursky Jr.’s myriad of skills was on display.  In the first round match up against Bad Company, Gursky Jr. tried to go head on with Jason Ritacco, didn’t quite getting squared away and Ritacco ended his race after half a lap.

In the second round against Seek-and-Destroy, Gursky Jr. was a tick behind the leaders getting off the line and pulled an impressive maneuver: He cut inside on turn 1 and 2 and managed to pass 3 or 4 cars to emerge in the back straightaway in the lead, a position he would never relinquish.

In the third round against Full Throttle, Gursky Jr. again took the checkered flag and did so while banging through tight squeezes in turn 3, deftly avoiding numerous hits and racing with mismatched tires.  (If you remember Gursky Jr. doing a couple of donuts while going around the turns, it was courtesy of the mismatched tires.  As he explained, “I would obviously have liked to run matching tires, but one of them popped in the pits and I had no choice but to run different ones.”)

Reckoning ran three races and won all three.  Gursky Jr. took the checkered flag in two of them, including in their victory in the finals.  It’s hard to top that.

Gnarls Barkley/Seal/Patsy Cline/Aerosmith/Snoop Dogg present the Crazy: Mel Noble Jr.’s helmetless hit

If you were watching the Mean Green Machine vs. Stranglehold race, you’d have been confused by the number of different helmets you saw popping off the heads of the Stranglehold drivers.  Cirk Lindemuth broke his chinstrap and his helmet came off.  A few seconds later, Mel Noble Jr. collided with a Mean Green Machine driver and Noble Jr.’s helmet flew up onto the field through the sunroof.

The TDA officials saw this and were desperately trying to red flag the race—an act that serves to essentially push the ‘pause’ button on the race until all the drivers are safe, at which point it’s restarted—but they weren’t fast enough.  Before the race could be stopped, Noble Jr. careened across the track, helmetless, and crashed into another Mean Green Machine car.

I always thought the bar for TDA crazy was racing without a functioning seat belt, but I am now changing my opinion: it’s crashing into another car at 40 miles per hour without a helmet.

Mel Noble Jr., damn, you crazy!

Minor Point #2: Speedy Steve Vollbrecht starts running laps against Bad Company

In Reckoning’s first round match up against Bad Company, Bad Company’s crushers, Jason Ritacco and Kyle Shearer, managed to take out Reckoning’s two runners, Steve Gursky Jr. and Brian Anderson, in the first lap.  Ritacco annihilated Gursky Jr. in turn 3 that stood out as the hit of the night for approximately six seconds before Shearer blasted Anderson against the wall in the front straightaway (more on this in a minute).

Steve Vollbrecht started the race crushing for Reckoning.  He saw his two runners get taken out and immediately switched into runner mode and began collecting laps while Reckoning’s other crusher, Chris McGuire, began blocking for him.  Vollbrecht went on to win the race for Reckoning.

It is a minor point, but had Vollbrecht not immediately switched out of crusher mode and done something to damage his car, he wouldn’t have been able to start completing laps and Reckoning’s night would have ended in the first round.

Hit of the Night: Kyle Shearer on Brian Anderson

In their first round match up, Bad Company’s Kyle Shearer obliterated Reckoning’s lap runner, Brian Anderson in the front straight away.  Shearer walks over to the Reckoning pit area after the race to make sure Anderson is okay (he is) and to look at his handiwork.  Starring at Anderson’s car, Shearer sees that his car’s bumper is stuck into Anderson’s passenger side door.  “Brian, I’m not 100% sure on this,” he begins, “But I’m pretty sure that welding bumpers onto the side of your car is illegal.”

It’s a great line.

Shearer has been racing for a few years and is most known for being on the receiving end of hits.  In 2010, one of the year’s most memorable hits was when Orange Crush double-teamed Shearer and nearly tipped his car over.  It was such a violent 1-2 punch that people in the pits were actually able to see the numbers on Shearer’s roof.

Shearer thinks about it for a second and states, “I think my hit on Brian was a little harder than that Orange hit from last year.  I didn’t bend my distributor plate and after that hit, I could still drive that car.”

Anderson’s car, while still running, was incapacitated after his collision with Shearer.

“I went to hit Brian between 1 and 2 and missed him there,” Shearer states.  “I knew I couldn’t get Gursky at that point, so I turned back around and saw Brian coming down the straightaway.  I didn’t think I was going to hit him, but wow…  I don’t think I’ve ever hit someone this hard.”

After Shearer blasted Anderson, Anderson broke an axle, lost a wheel and had his steering column, uh, sheered off.  When Anderson’s car is delivered back into the pits, the steering wheel is sitting on the roof.  There are two equally impressive parts of the wreckage: 1) the first is obviously the fact that Shearer’s bumper is now part of Anderson’s car.  People take turns yanking on the bumper to see if they can get it out and no one comes close.  2) The second is that, if you were to climb into the driver’s seat, you could actually rest both of your arms on the windowsills at the same time.  The passenger side door of the car is pushed in that far.

“That one hurt,” Anderson exclaims about the hit.  “He got me good.”

How good?  TDA Emcee Freak claims that he could feel the hit all the way up in the press box.

Team(s) on the Rise: Full Throttle, Mean Green Machine and Bad Company

Prior to the season, there were six teams that looked to be in competition for the title.  Orange Crush and Reckoning were the favorites and Seek-N-Destroy, Mean Green Machine, Full Throttle and Bad Company were the dark horses.  It seemed apparent that at least one of those last four would separate themselves from the crowd.  In the first night of racing, Full Throttle truly made a name for itself, beating Orange Crush and getting to the finals in it’s very first night of racing.  However, Mean Green Machine and Bad Company also stood out on the evening in a very impressive fashion.

Mean Green Machine featured two rookies, Kenny Prinner and Ryan Decker, one second year man, John Clemmons, and one veteran, Zac Van Allen, and they beat Stranglehold and gave Full Throttle a battle in the second round.  Their lineup is young, fast, aggressive and definitely one to watch going forward.

Bad Company added Jason Ritacco to their lineup in the off-season and went head-to-head with Reckoning in one of the hardest hitting races of the last few years.  More interestingly still?  All of those hard hits were delivered by Bad Company.  Ritacco killed Steve Gursky Jr.’s car in turn 3, Shearer hit Anderson so hard, it registered as the second largest earthquake in the United States this year and, not quite finished, later blasted Speedy Steve Vollbrecht as Vollbrecht was crossing the finish line.  Had Brice Martin’s car not crocked out at the starting line, Bad Company would have probably taken the race from Reckoning and moved on to do battle with Seek-N-Destroy in the second round.

After the first night of racing, it appears that there are five very good teams in the league this year.  On the heels of a 2010 season that only featured two very good teams, Orange Crush and Reckoning, this is a welcome change of pace.

Team on the Fall: Seek-N-Destroy

When I looked at Seek-N-Destroy before the season, I saw several good parts—Levi Turnbaugh and Matt “Opie” Pierce are truly talented drivers who both possess an on-field mean streak that can’t be taught—and I saw the potential for some considerable inconsistency. Seek-N-Destroy’s 2010 season wasn’t just up and down, it was sometimes up and down multiple times on the same night!

I thought an off-season of working on things could smooth that out.  With an extremely veteran driver contingent of Levi Turnbaugh, Pierce, Mesich and Sarge Turnbaugh, Seek-N-Destroy’s was one team that definitely didn’t have to worry about whether their drivers were up to the task.

Sadly, though Seek-N-Destroy did beat Damage, Inc in the first round, as it is, they don’t seem particularly poised to make a run at anything.  In their second round match up against Reckoning, Seek-N-Destroy needed Damage, Inc’s owner, Dave “Repo” Swan, to supply a car and race for them.  I’m not sure what the earliest is that a non-Phil Matlak owned team has ever needed to buy a car from another team, but the second round of the first night seems like it would take the crown.  I’m hoping that there were, in fact, extenuating circumstances surrounding Seek-N-Destroy’s car building.

I’m also keeping my fingers crossed that Seek-N-Destroy uses the next four weeks to build a dozen tough cars and comes out Second Night with their normal purpose and ferocity.  Their drivers, especially Turnbaugh and Pierce, are too good and too entertaining to watch to be kept in the pits because of mechanical and build problems.

Minor Point #3: There was no rain.  Anywhere.

On Thursday before race day, the weather channel was reporting a 178% chance of severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and hurricanes Saturday afternoon and evening.  The rapture was near and Chicago’s weather forecast was consistent with that.

Saturday morning, the area was bracing again with severe weather warnings and, depending on your source, a 40-50% chance of rain.

And I didn’t feel a single drop of rain the entire evening.  The wind kept what few bugs there were away and the evening couldn’t have been more pleasant, especially for Reckoning and Full Throttle fans.

Remind me again why we listen to weather people?

If you have any questions, ideas or comments, feel free to e-mail me at TrackSideat66@gmail.com or friend me on facebook at facebook.com/chrisneumer