Well, the first night of the 2012 TDA season is in the books.  After an entertaining evening of racing, one thing is clear: it’s hard to know much about any given team.  Thank God I didn’t write up any predictions last week that placed the winner of the night, Mean Green Machine, in sixth or that had Seek-N-Destroy ranked above anyone in the standings.  Phew.

First Night was filled with good stories (Reckoning had two new drivers and looked like a cohesive unit), feel good stories (a lot of Santa Fe drivers are back), bad stories (Seek-N-Destroy is in complete shambles), great stories (Mean Green Machine overcame a lot of internal adversity and won the night) and truly exceptional stories (Dave “Repo” Swan raced like a man possessed and Damage, Inc is now ahead of both Orange Crush and The Junkyard Dogs in the standings).

Let’s start with the latter.

Since I’ve been writing about the demos, I haven’t written a lot of positive things about Damage, Inc.  I feared that 2012 would be yet another disappointing season for them, a notion that wasn’t helped by the fact that four of the first five Damage, Inc cars that were pulled into the pits didn’t have any numbers, lettering or markings on them at all.*  But then the racing started.  And Damage, Inc blew the doors off Orange Crush in their first round match up.

* I am now starting to wonder whether this was a brilliant ploy to get teams to underestimate them.  It’s certainly something worth considering.

When the green flag dropped, Swan flew off the starting line from his first position and rounded Turns 1 and 2 with a sense of purpose and energy that set him apart from any other driver I saw on the evening.  More impressively still, this continued throughout the race.  Though Swan was hit numerous times by Orange Crush’s crushers, his car held up exceedingly well and a few minutes later, he crossed the finish line delivering the most unexpected race result of the night.

Damage, Inc went back to their pits and quickly began working on their second round cars.  And when I say working, I mean working; the guys were inside Pete Ryan’s 87 car torching something.  It was an unusual sight to be sure.  But the cars were in place at the start of the race and Damage, Inc, again, looked like the belle of the ball.  Swan almost single-handedly grabbed a second checkered flag.  He took an enormous hit from Mean Green Machine’s Ryan Decker in the back straight away and yet remained resolute.  A few moments later, he escaped and continued running strong.

Damage, Inc looked like it had an angry disposition and furious attitude that was lacking in 2011.  Swan especially embodied this new mental state and it was great to see.  It was even better to see them beat a quality team in Orange Crush in a decisive manner.  This was most certainly not 2011’s Fifth Night countdown win against Stranglehold.

Mean Green Machine had their own struggles to deal with too.  In the days up to the race, the team’s newest driver, Matt Pierce, fell behind with his car building.  His teammates helped him finish and he vowed to redeem himself on the track.  And he did, winning the first race of the night and running strong in the final race as well.

I spoke to 2011 MVP Ryan Decker after the final and he said two telling things: 1) That no one on the team expected to win the night last night, and 2) winning the night was going to light a spark under everybody on the team going forward.

These were both interesting things to hear.  It showed the team was realistic in its expectations and they realized that the First Night win was something to be built upon.

This is an important step for Mean Green Machine (and Damage, Inc): capitalizing on the good racing and good fortune they had First Night.  It’s incredibly easy for underrated teams to do well and then rest on the unexpected successes that they had.  I sincerely hope that is not the case here.  Watching Swan tear around the track, Decker run into anything moving and Rich Wilson holding cars against the wall was fun and I truly hope, as Decker suggested, that both teams work to build on their First Night triumphs.

The team that has the most work to do though is unquestionably Seek-N-Destroy.  Seek-N-Destroy turned out a performance First Night that was so bad, it brought back memories of Smash, Bash & Crash.

Prior to the season, Seek-N-Destroy looked poised to be genuinely competitive.  They had Chris McGuire, Steve Gursky Sr., Steve Schaefer and long time driver Greg Mesich as their starting four, with Chad Young and Freddie Knight running backup.

Well, First Night, McGuire wasn’t present, so Knight stepped up in his place.  After towing more than 10 cars to the track in 90-degree heat, Mesich removed himself from the lineup.  For whatever reason, Young chose not to fill in for Mesich and, as such, Seek-N-Destroy literally pulled a fan out of the infield bleachers to be their fourth driver.*

* The fan did have county fair demo experience, but that doesn’t make the above statement any less true.

When the actual race started, Knight quickly broke his drive shaft and Mesich’s car crocked out at the starting line thanks to an incredibly poor building decision: the hot wire wasn’t actually attached to the car’s batteries, it was just pushed down next to it.

I chastised Seek-N-Destroy in my predictions column for going with six drivers; I suggested that Mesich look to find a fourth full-time driver and go with him, whoever he was.  Little did I know that six drivers wasn’t even going to be enough to make it through the first night of racing.

McGuire is going to be present for Second Night’s races, as will Gursky Sr., Schaefer and Mesich.  Hopefully, the team will be able to come together more in the next few weeks, work on their car builds so that there isn’t another putrid performance like the one they turned in against Full Throttle.

The lone bright spot for Seek-N-Destroy was Gursky Sr.  He remained active and as much of a fly-in-the-ointment of Full Throttle as was possible given the conditions.  What was most amazing about this was that First Night marked Gursky Sr.’s return to full time racing.  Having raced previously at Santa Fe, Gursky Sr. was just one of a number of veteran drivers returning to the TDA grind.  Along with him were Orange Crush’s Art Scarbro, Reckoning’s Dave “Cheeseburger” Hauschild and Wally Hartung,  Scarbro’s driving is legendary amongst the TDA circles and it was nice to actually be able to see him on the track and racing again.

At the end of the night, one thing was clear: 2012’s championship is up for almost anyone’s taking, a designation that even includes Damage, Inc…  Now there’s a statement I didn’t think I’d be making this year.