The Team Demolition Association awards banquet was held this last weekend and the event provided quite the pleasant evening.  Pete Millette Jr. and Levi Turnbaugh gave a tag team acceptance speech for the ages rivaling even the Three6 Mafia’s Oscar acceptance speech, “Papa” John Millette earned a well-deserved ‘Legends’ award, Reckoning’s championship trophies were taller than each member of the team save for Steve Gursky Jr., and every driver I knew who ventured into the casino won money on the night.  The food was surprisingly good, Bad Company’s Brice Martin learned that there was a silver lining to having his car crock out on the starting line for the first two races of the year and won the year’s Hard Luck Award, and Mean Green Machines’ Ryan Decker pulled off the season’s biggest upset by nabbing the year’s MVP award over Reckoning’s Gursky Jr.

However, what stands out the most to me was the presentation of the Mechanic of the Year award to Reckoning’s Steve Gursky Sr.  Never has there been a more fitting award given to greater man.

Gursky Sr. is a soft-spoken and quiet man with limited access to facebook.  As such, it’s doubtful that many casual fans of the demos or even newer drivers know who he. is or what he did to deserve such a prestigious award as Mechanic of the Year.  The latter point becomes magnified when you consider that he only drove in two races during the entirety of the 2011 season.  But rest assured, no man is more deserving of a behind-the-scenes award than Gursky Sr.

While Gursky Sr. is a good mechanic and solid car-builder, to see the man simply in these terms would be a supreme disservice to him; the true genius of the man lies not with the X’s and O’s of building or on-the-field strategizing but with his Obi-won Kenobi like mentoring abilities and unflappable demeanor.

I first became involved with the TDA in 2010 when I followed Reckoning for my forthcoming, year-in-the-life book, Year of Reckoning.  During that time, I had the honor and pleasure of getting to know Gursky Sr.  It took me a number of months to realize what an important role he played for Reckoning.  The trouble with being soft-spoken and content without getting any credit is that occasionally it takes a while for people to realize how important you are.  To the TDA’s credit, they realized this far more quickly than did I.

Yes, Gursky Sr. assisted all of the drivers on Reckoning with the assorted issues that would pop up on their cars and yes, after thirty plus years in the team demo world, he had previous personal experience with just about almost every problem or issue that could pop up, but his most valuable talent came with his ability to keep everyone around him calm and/or on target.  He knew exactly when to give people space (and to tell others to give people space), when to offer advice and when to bring the team together to discuss different issues.  He knew precisely how to critique his oldest son, Chris McGuire, and he took completely different approaches to critiquing his other son, Steve Gursky Jr. as well as Brian Anderson, “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht and Nick Ritter.

As I noted time and again, Gursky Sr. was very much akin to the demo world’s Phil Jackson.  It wasn’t just that he had different methods of dealing with all of the drivers on Reckoning, it was that the different methods almost always were the correct methods.  When he needed to be loud, he was (and for him, this consisted of talking in a normal speaking voice), when he needed to disappear, he did and when he needed to step up and help build the cars or attend to problems that arose, he did that as well.

In 2010, I had been following Reckoning for a solid six months before the first race of the season took place.  Going into that first night of racing, I had no idea what to expect.  The team was generally good-natured and talkative, but that was before any racing had taken place.  Reckoning was gunning hard for the championship—anything less than that would have been seen as a disappointment—and I was curious to see how they would react if they hit any rough patches.  I kept my fingers crossed that it didn’t result in them clamming up or banning me from attending any more races as a guest of the team.

I got my chance to see just such a rough patch that first night.  Reckoning pulled the year’s pre-season championship favorite, Orange Crush, in the first round and went out and lost rather convincingly.  No one on Reckoning raced well.  As the cars came off the track, one man stood tall in the Reckoning pits waiting for the team to return: Gursky Sr.  He greeted each driver with a positive statement about the race and continued to reinforce the notion that this was simply one race on the year.

The lasting image of that night for me is something that took place between Gursky Sr. and McGuire.  McGuire was extremely upset at the way the race against Orange Crush had gone down and, once he’d returned to the pits, he began taking off every bit of racing equipment he’d been wearing and angrily throwing it to the ground punctuating each step of the process with a near constant stream of expletives.  When McGuire’d finished removing all of his gear, he stood silently and looked at the pile of things on the ground, head hanging down.  Gursky Sr. walked over, patted his son on the shoulder, assured him that he had raced hard and then began to pull some flecks of mud out of McGuire’s goatee.

The message was clear: Gursky Sr. was getting McGuire ready for whatever came next, even if that was simply going and watching the rest of the night’s racing.  Dwelling on the past was not an option.  It was a simple act that conveyed more to McGuire (and outside observers) than any words ever could have.

The morning of the July race this last year, Reckoning’s Brian Anderson was attempting to and failing miserably at getting the brakes in his first round car to work.  He’d tried several times to get them to work, but kept running into a problem he couldn’t understand.  Anderson finally threw up his hands and announced he was simply going to run the car without brakes.  And with that, he stomped inside him house to change into his racing clothes, very frustrated at what he perceived to be an insurmountable problem with his brakes.  Before the screen door had finished closing behind Anderson, Gursky Sr. sidled over to Anderson’s car, opened the hood, poked around a little, spotted where the issue with the brakes was coming from and, a few short minutes later, had fixed it.  Anderson now had brakes.

“That was quick,” I said to Gursky Sr.

Gursky Sr. shrugged and stated that he guessed it was one of two things causing the issue and it, indeed, turned out to be one of those two things.

“Why didn’t you do that earlier?” I questioned him.

Gursky Sr. looked me straight in the eye and said as honestly as possible, “Because Brian didn’t ask me to.”  He was not going to overstep any boundaries by inserting himself into a situation he wasn’t asked into.  To do so, he reasoned, would have shown up Anderson.

True to form, Gursky Sr. never mentioned to Anderson that he fixed his brakes either.  Anderson only learned about Gursky Sr.’s handiwork when he began backing the car off his trailer at the track, instinctively hit the brake pedal and stopped.  At this point, a confused and elated Anderson let out an excited, “Holy shit!  I have brakes!” and began beaming.

Anderson didn’t even have to ask what had happened.  He knew.  There was only one man who had the knowledge and skill to fix the problem and not crow about it: Gursky Sr.

When things were darkest for Reckoning, Gursky Sr. was around to make them light, when the team’s problems seemed overwhelming, Gursky Sr. stepped up to let the drivers know they weren’t alone and win or lose, he was always the first person that Reckoning’s drivers would see upon returning to the pits.  He was always the first to offer help and to cheer the team on.  Gursky Sr. may have only raced two races in 2011, but his handiwork, advice and car-building skills were on display in every car that Reckoning brought to the track.  And for that, I can think of no man more deserving of a behind-the-scenes award than Steve Gursky Sr.