Second Night Thoughts

Two things to note before getting to my thoughts on Second Night:

1)    I live-tweeted Second Night’s races.  You can read this at www.twitter.com/truedestruction  It’s great if you like things 140 characters at a time.  I want to again mention that you do NOT need to have a twitter account to read this; you do, however, need to have a twitter account to follow the Behind the Destruction twitter feed, which I, of course, recommend all of you do.  Special thanks to Robin Zimmerman for not asking me why I was playing video games this time.

2)  The Behind the Destruction podcast recapping the Second Night of TDA action has been recorded and will be available for downloading in a day or two.  My normal podcasting partner, Steve Gursky Jr., was not at Route 66 on Saturday–he was out at a car show winning yet another Best-in-Class trophy for his work on a 1949 Chevy pickup; read more here–and we were lucky enough to have Johnny Ryan fill in for him.  So that podcast will be heading into the Internet tubes shortly.

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Prior to the start of the season, the story of the 2012 TDA season was one of parity.  It seemed like 6 of the league’s 8 teams had a legitimate shot at the championship.

After two races, that narrative needs to be changed somewhat: the story of the 2012 TDA season is one of extreme parity.  Turbo parity.  Like OMG, LOL parity.  The top four teams are currently separated by just four points.

There is also a very entertaining and somewhat unsettling sense that everything had been turned upside down this year.  Up is down, clocks are going backwards and hamburgers are eating people.  I mean, Damage, Inc. is in second place and in the thick of the championship hunt and The Junkyard Dogs are 0-2 and have not caught a single break this year; First Night’s two finalists, Mean Green Machine and Full Throttle both lost in the first round of Second Night; and Orange Crush is the meanest, hittingest, holy-shit-stay-in-your-seats-because-we’re-racing-next team in the league.*

* One element of the 2010 and 2011 Orange Crush teams that I’ve always respected was the way their crushers, Tom “Brickman” Lewis and Johnny Ryan, knew exactly when to hit someone and when to dink someone.  Lewis and Ryan were exceptional at getting in opponents’ ways to protect their then runner, Ryan Bleuer, from harm.  This year, with Bleuer gone, Lewis and Ryan (and Carl Brouwer) have changed this approach slightly and seem out for destruction.  Ryan’s hit on Reckoning’s Wally Hartung (#75) in the back straight away was so hard and so violent it made me genuinely fear that Hartung had hurt himself badly.

Interestingly though, one thing that hasn’t changed: Reckoning is still atop the standings.

Coming into the 2012 season, Reckoning lost two of their four core drivers, Steve Gursky Jr. and Chris McGuire.  Gursky Jr. was that rare runner who was a force of nature.  He accelerated into hits, knocked cars out of his way (occasionally including some of his teammates’), flew around the track at a speed normally reserved for express trains at rush hour and rarely ever used the tires as shields.  While there was finesse and subtlety in his driving, his style was unrepentantly smash-mouthed.  McGuire was a veteran crusher who was (and remains) quietly underrated.  He understood how his teammates drove, protected them and often acted as a facilitator for them.  He didn’t shy away from enormous hits and was almost always a reliable and trustworthy presence on the track.

Replacing the two men was going to be extremely hard.  Reckoning’s best plan was to sign two new drivers, move forward and try not to look back.  And they did.  They brought on father/son combo, Wally and Nick Hartung, and began building.

Prior to the season, it didn’t seem like Reckoning was going to be in the same class as Full Throttle and The Junkyard Dogs.  There were questions about how they’d fit together and do and, as such, they didn’t get the same respect that some of the other teams were getting (When The Junkyard Dogs pulled Reckoning in the first round First Night, they didn’t even bother to send out their best lineup to race).

And Reckoning won.

They got to the second round where they lost to Full Throttle.

Second Night, they pulled Full Throttle in the first round and won again.  Then they matched up against Orange Crush in the second round and won again.  Then they faced the upstart Damage, Inc. in the finals and won again.

They are 4-1 and are 4-1 having faced the most difficult schedule of any team in the league so far.

There are still question marks about the team—I cringe every time I see Wally Hartung slow down to an almost standstill to navigate the corners—but they are all extremely minor as the biggest question of all has been answered and answered loudly.  Reckoning can keep on winning with the Hartungs.

The thing that has changed the most this year has to be Damage, Inc.’s position in the standings.

In 2011, Damage Inc. was something of a joke.  Drivers on other teams raced more for Damage, Inc. than some of Damage, Inc.’s own drivers did, a fact that is as true as it is unusual.  The only race Damage, Inc. won in 2011 was against an almost equally inept Sranglehold team on the last night of the season.

When Damage, Inc. came out First Night of 2012 and defeated Orange Crush, people took notice.  Not just because of the win, but because Damage, Inc. looked like a real team.  Dave “Repo” Swan was tearing around the track, Pete Ryan was hitting people and the team’s other drivers were complimenting Swan and Ryan beautifully.

Second Night came and with it people-in-the-know were curious to see how both Mean Green Machine and Damage, Inc. would respond to their seemingly out-of-nowhere first night successes.  Mean Green Machine lost in the first round to Seek-N-Destroy.  Damage, Inc. went to the finals.

The funny thing about Damage, Inc. is that in spite of their current second place standing and a Second Night performance that dwarfed their First Night triumphs, there are still—still!—questions about them going forward.  And, while I understand this logic—Damage, Inc. did borrow two cars from Mean Green Machine and Stranglehold for their 3^rd round race, they used a whopping 6 drivers on the night, Swan, Ryan, Kyle “Danger” Thompson, Anthony Sherman, Rich Wilson and Ryan Decker, and asked even more drivers to race for them who ultimately turned them down—it’s hard to argue with it because they’re winning.  They are plugging all their holes with a mish-mosh of pieces, coming out on top and doing so against quality opponents like Orange Crush and The Junkyard Dogs.

One of the elements of the racing season that I enjoy the most is the way that teams’ momentums change from night to night.  Seek-N-Destroy started off the year, uh, flat, regrouped and returned to beat Mean Green Machine in the first round.  Despite losing to Damage, Inc. in the second round, Seek-N-Destroy is a team on the upswing now.

I mention this point because there is one team that seemed to pick up an immense amount of momentum Second Night that I can’t wait to see race in July: Orange Crush.

While most people may only remember Orange Crush’s Tom “Brickman” Lewis chewing out his teammate, Elmer Fandrey, after their loss to Reckoning (and Lewis then wonderfully, artfully and delightfully kicking the back of Fandrey’s car, before exiting stage left), there was a lot more to Orange Crush’s Second Night races that should have been observed and appreciated.

As I mentioned before, Orange Crush raced hard, they raced angry and they did what they could to deliver a hurting to their opponents.  Their attitude seemed to be a cross between the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons and Slapshot’s the Hanson Brothers… to make two pop culture references that are both more than 25 years old.  Lewis was hitting people hard and Johnny Ryan returned to the track and hit Wally Hartung so hard, I was worried the pain might transfer down a generation to his son, Nick.  Even Orange Crush’s runner, Fandrey, turned off running to deliver a few blows (which was what angered Lewis in the first place).

Orange Crush came close to beating Reckoning and demolished Stranglehold in the first round, but they raced incredibly tough and, for the most part, incredibly smart.  If they can iron out their lap collecting issues, they are going to be a team that absolutely nobody will want to face.

From my perspective, Second Night was one of the more enjoyable nights of racing I’ve seen in a while.  Replete with upsets, fire, hard hits, fire, more hard hits and more fire, it’s hard to see how the June races could have been improved upon.