In part one of my three part 2013 TDA preview, I covered the new point system. In part two of my three part 2013 TDA preview, I looked at the four teams that didn’t seem to have much of a chance of repeatedly getting to the finals. In part three, I’ll look at the four remaining teams that all will be in the championship hunt and write down my predictions for how the season standings will unfold. Hopefully my predictions will not all be dashed after the first round of First Night as was the case last year. Now, all that’s left to write about is, you know, the actual races. Bring them on!
THE TEAMS THAT SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET TO THE FINALS TWICE OR MORE
Mean Green Machine and Orange Crush
Mean Green Machine finished 2012 tied for second place with Orange Crush. They then lost their MVP crusher, Ryan Decker to Reckoning. And, interestingly, I think they’ll be better this year than last. Why? Because they brought over Dave Swan and Pete Ryan from Damage, Inc.* That makes the Mean Green Roster pretty damn stocked. Ryan and Zac VanAllen will instantly solidify the crushing side of things while Swan, John Clemmons and Matt “Please Stop Calling Me Opie” Pierce will hold down the running side of things.
* As I noted in Part 2 of this preview, this column is written under the assumption that Swan and Ryan spend the year racing for Mean Green Machine.
If Mean Green Machine starts out with Swan and Pierce as their runner combo, it will be the ultimate thunder/lightning duo. Both men are very good runners—no other driver won more races than Pierce in 2012—but employ styles as far from one another as can be. Swan is a speed demon and my grandmother has encouraged Pierce to go faster. Together, it seems like they could be a formidable tandem; the tortoise and the hare.
There are a lot of great driver stories on Mean Green Machine. Pierce had what I will conservatively call the most unexpected best season of any driver in 2012. He was a question mark coming into the season (he was coming off a season racing for Seek-N-Destroy; you may notice a trend forming), but solidified the lead runner position for Mean Green Machine and busted out several different styles of facial hair that would make different characters in The Hunger Games jealous.
Swan is a Brad Pitt look-a-like who made Damage, Inc. relevant again in 2012 (see above picture), leading the team to four straight first round wins and their first trip to the finals in the team’s long history. His cars go fast and his free-wheeling, balls-to-the-wall style of driving is an absolute joy to watch.
And for his part, VanAllen is the most crafty, progressive, out-of-the-box thinking driver in the league. He is the TDA’s Smokey Yunick.
For those not in the know, Yunick was a masterful mechanic and pit crew chief for NASCAR back in sixties. Every Yunick story I hear is another good one. You can read more about the man here and here. My favorite Yunick story (which is a lot different than my favorite eunuch story) involved his way of legally bypassing NASCAR’s fuel tank limits.
The rules at the time read that the racecars fuel tanks could only hold X amount of fuel. So Yunick created the world’s largest fuel line, 11 feet long and 2 inches in diameter that effectively added 5 gallons to the fuel capacity of the car. And I quote Wikipedia: “Before one race, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the [fuel] tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said, “Better make it ten,” and drove it back to the pits.”
That is the spirit with which VanAllen approaches everything. Peek your head into his car or under the hood and you are guaranteed to see something that no one else is doing. I first caught wind of this when I saw the system of non-glass mirrors he outfitted in his car. With this one addition, VanAllen can see almost the entire track without ever turning his head. And it begins there. There are several other completely legal innovations that I’ve seen that place his car building apart from the other drivers.
If I was a league official, I would go to bed every night hoping and praying that VanAllen never became another driver’s mentor. There is no telling the crazy, crafty and completely legal information that VanAllen would be passing along.
What will make or break Mean Green Machine’s season is whether they can, as a team, hang with the league’s power teams. If they come out First Night and beat The Junkyard Dogs or Reckoning in decisive fashion, it will give them a boost of confidence that they belong. Success will build more success. If I had to pick one team that would benefit the most from a strong First Night, Mean Green Machine comes instantly to mind.
I’m not going to lie, up until about a month ago, when people would ask me what team I was picking to win the 2013 season, I said Orange Crush. They have the league’s best owner, a winning culture, great equipment, access to great cars and experienced, talented drivers. Then I learned that they’d pick up Jason Ritacco and that changed.
Wait, that sounds bad. Let me try again.
Then I learned that they’d added a sixth driver to their team (who happened to be Jason Ritacco) and that changed. I just couldn’t pull the trigger on a team with six drivers winning the championship.*
* In the weeks prior to my writing this, I’ve heard numerous reports that the Orange Crush roster has been in a state of flux. Certain drivers are on, certain drivers are off. As with everything else in this preview column, I’m going by the official rosters that are listed on the teamdemo.com website. And that includes six drivers.
Orange Crush tried in 2011 and didn’t do it. The Junkyard Dogs tried in 2012 and really didn’t do it. And now Orange Crush is trying it again.
Now that I’ve said that, I completely understand why Orange Crush picked up Ritacco; prior to signing him, they had five drivers on their roster and only one who excelled at crushing, Chris McGuire. (And prior to signing McGuire, they had four / five drivers, none of whom were known as crushers, Ron Tyrakowski, Elmer Fandrey, Carl Brouwer, Kenny Kasper and Bill Mcmahen).
I think the McGuire/Ritacco pairing is a good one. Not as good as the best crushing duo of all time that Orange Crush had in 2010-2012, Johnny Ryan and Tom “Brickman” Lewis, but certainly quite serviceable. I also think that both men, but especially McGuire, will benefit enormously from the culture surrounding Orange Crush. If there could be more of a stark change from driving for Seek-and-Destroy one season to then driving for Orange Crush the next, I’m not sure what it is; it probably involves Phil Matlak in some way and being hit in the head with a mallet. As an aside, I believe this also means that McGuire has now raced for every team number in existence; before signing with Orange Crush, he only needed to get Team 6 under his belt and he has now accomplished this.
As for the running side of things, I’m going to turn my preview over to a teenage girl: OMG, cant b-leve how fast they r and that Carl Brouwer is so dreamy. They are like the total best. #YOLO.
Okay, I’m back.
I could have written another 800 words on how fast the Orange Crush runners are—Fandrey and Tyrakowski have been running fast and kicking ass since you were knee high—but the teenage girl about summed everything up.
In 2012, Brouwer seemed to be the catalyst for good things for Orange Crush. When he raced, they won, when he didn’t race, they didn’t. Their record with Brouwer? 7-1. Their record without Brouwer? 0-2. He also pulled off the impressive feat of winning three straight races in 2012’s Fifth Night. If he had raced for more than just three nights, he would have been my pick for the MVP.
So it will be interesting to see how Orange Crush handles its six drivers, especially given that Brouwer is basically Lebron James at this point and that they don’t have many noted crushers on the team. I’m not sure if anyone’s ever tried a four runner strategy before, but I’d be curious to see the results here; Orange Crush definitely has the personnel for it.
TEAMS THAT ARE VERY LIKELY TO GET TO THE FINAL TWICE OR MORE THIS SEASON
Junkyard Dogs and Reckoning
The 2008 Junkyard Dogs were an absolute juggernaut. They went 14-1 and obliterated the supreme majority of their competition. Slowly but surely, team owner Mark Ziesmer has been putting that team back together. In 2012, he got Ryan Bleuer and Gerritt “No Matter How Many Times I Write It I Always Have To Look Up How To Spell His First Name” Vanderbilt. This last off-season he put Tom “Brickman” Lewis back into the fold. The only driver that the Junkyard Dogs are missing from that year is Johnny Ryan… who, and rather conveniently for them might I add, isn’t on any team’s roster at present.
JYD as constructed is a powerhouse of a team. There are a few footnotes and asterisks that I will get to in a minute, but Bleuer and Vanderbilt are the best running tandem in the league and Lewis and Kyle Shearer in the mix for the title of best crushing tandem with Reckoning’s “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht and Ryan Decker. It’s hard to argue with that.
Footnote #1: Bleuer and Vanderbilt should be the best running tandem in the league. Should be. The issue is that Bleuer’s last two years have been an absolutely abysmal two years. He’s had axels break, cars sabotaged, wheels fall off and multiple mechanical failures, occasionally on the same night. Like Full Throttle, Bleuer has been the recipient of some other-worldly bad luck. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue; bad luck comes and, more importantly, goes. However, in Bleuer’s case, he’s had a solid two years of bad races and bad luck. Everyone I’ve spoken to expects 2013 to be a bounce back year for Bleuer—he’s too talented a driver and a car builder to keep down—but bounce back years are not guaranteed. No driver has had a weirder set of good/bad splits over the last six years than Bleuer.
Footnote #2: 2012’s season needs to stay in the past. JYD’s 2012 season was arguably worse than that Chris Kattan movie where he plays identical twins. Oh yes, such a thing exists. They started out the season with three straight losses and were literally the last team in the league to win a race. They also managed to enter Fifth Night tied with Seek-N-Destroy, which should speak volumes about things. And there wasn’t really a single reason why they were losing. With a couple of very minor tweaks and a couple of extras inches, they could have easily challenged for the title; Third Night, they lost when Vanderbilt’s leading car died out about 18 inches from the finish line. It’s easy to let the feelings of one season carry over to the next, especially if the same type of things start happening again. And that won’t be helpful to anyone.
If there was a second team that could use a good start to the 2012 season, it’d be the Junkyard Dogs. Naturally, with the way things go, Mean Green Machine and Junkyard Dogs will face each other in the first round and begin a round of panicking for the loser.
JYD is a fantastically strong team that will benefit greatly from the added presence of Lewis—he is a true artist on the track and I am selfishly glad that he chose not to retire after 2012—if they aren’t in the championship hunt this year, it’s time to start figuring out who put what kind of a curse on Ziesmer and then scoring some lamb’s blood to remove it. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
Somehow, possibly by using the same shaman that may or may not have put a curse on Mark Ziesmer, Reckoning won the 2012 championship. I still feel like it’s a mistake or there’s a notation missing or something that would explain how the decidedly non-power team of Brian Anderson, “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht and Nick and Wally Hartung took home the top prize. But there isn’t and, in a weird way, that was Reckoning’s greatest accomplishment: they won when (it seemed like) they absolutely shouldn’t have.
Having swapped out the Hartungs for Ryan Decker and Andrew Sherman, Reckoning finds themselves in the exact opposite position that they were in prior to the 2012 season: expected to win and in the crosshairs of every team in the league, especially Mean Green Machine.
Fortunately for Reckoning, this isn’t a new situation for them (to a certain extent, it was where they were in 2011 too) and Anderson and Vollbrecht know what it takes to win… just ask Anderson! Reckoning is probably the only team that could come out, lose two straight first round races and still not be down on themselves, second guessing things or getting flustered. Anderson and Vollbrecht have been racing on Reckoning for four years now and have finished first or second all four years; there haven’t been any down years, blips on the radar or reasons to ever question what they’re doing, so confidence is not in short supply.
I was looking for reasons not to pick Reckoning as my favorite to win and, after dissecting just about every feature of every team, can’t come up with enough to do so. I mean, last year’s champions added a solid #2 runner in Sherman who is building his cars stronger than ever and spending the necessary time to improve and the league’s 2011 MVP, Decker, to pair with Vollbrecht in the crushing backfield. Couple that with Anderson’s unique wall-based style of running and the experimental nature of their game-planning—from race to race, you never know who is going to be doing what, Anderson might crush, Decker might run, the toolbox is open—and you’re looking at a team that is primed for a great run in 2013. (As an aside, I want to point out that Reckoning is also probably the only team in the league that might actually get better if their backup driver, Steve Gursky Jr., gets on the track).
There aren’t a whole lot of question marks surrounding this team which is precisely why I have them atop my list.
Now for that list. After 6,000 words of preview, these are my picks for how I see the season standings shaping up:
8. Seek-N-Destroy
7. Damage, Inc.
6. Real Steel
5. Full Throttle
4. Orange Crush
3. Junkyard Dogs
2. Mean Green Machine
1. Reckoning