The 2013 TDA season is 80% finished, with just one race (unfortunately) remaining.  For a change of pace, absolutely nothing is settled going into Fifth Night.  Unlike recent seasons where the championship has been effectively clinched Fourth Night or some really weird scenario has to occur for a team to come out on top (“We have to win the night, have _____ lose in the first round, have someone arrested for fighting and someone else be caught in the pits with alcohol and be docked two points in order to tie for first.”); the race for first place is on.

There are obviously several interesting ties that will be broken Fifth Night, but the one I’m most interested in is the one between two teams that have seemingly been doing everything they can to go down in the record books.  Currently tied in the standings, the two teams have been going neck-and-neck with one another all year.  One team is owned by a racing stalwart who has been around for as long as anyone can remember, his bearded presence at the track a reminder of older days when his teams were always in the championship hunt.  The other team owner doesn’t drive for his team.  In an unfortunate twist of fate this year, he has been dealing with numerous roster holes on his team, plugging them with drivers like “Sneaky” Pete Ryan and Brice Martin amongst others.  Yes, Fifth Night will answer all of these questions and fans will finally learn whether Seek-N-Destroy and Damage, Inc. will be able to avoid the ignominy of going 0 for 2013.

The hardest season-long accomplishment in the TDA is, fairly obviously, going 15-0 on the season.  That means winning every race you race, every night.  Five night championships in five nights.  The Junkyard Dogs came close to achieving this in 2008, going 14-1 on the season, but no one else has been able to come closer than that since.  Orange Crush lost two races in 2010, Reckoning lost two races in 2011 and even more than that in 2012.  However, on the other side of things, judging from the numbers, it’s also pretty damned hard for teams to go 0 for a season.  For the five years that I’ve been writing about the demolition derby, only one team has ever managed the feat: Phil Matlak’s otherworldly train wreck, Smash, Bash & Crash, in 2009.

I was constantly entertained by Smash, Bash & Crash.  They didn’t just find new ways to lose, they were inventing them.  Their drivers (whoever they were) took the concept of not caring to new, heretofore only theoretical levels.  Smash, Bash & Crash not only ran brakes, they didn’t cut the cords to their brake lights.  Their drivers would occasionally pull out onto the track with their car radios on, the team changed its color scheme just about every race, Matlak would wear a hockey helmet complete with facemask on the track and once attempted to start multiple cars with a single battery.  A single borrowed battery.  Say what you will about Smash, Bash & Crash, but they were a bunch of characters.  Characters who seemed to only care about getting four cars on the track, thus confirming their paycheck for the night.

Smash, Bash & Crash lasted for a total of 8 races—five in 2009 and three in 2010—before they were kicked out by then TDA owner Teresa Gabriel.  They were 0-8.  The closest they ever came to winning was when they almost—almost!—went to a countdown with Seek-N-Destroy in 2010.

So, in the last five years, only one team has gone 0-5 on a season.  And that team sometimes raced in cars with street tires.

I’m not going to argue that it’s anywhere near as hard to go 0-5 as it is 15-0, quite the contrary, but it is a fantastic accomplishment all the same.  The last ‘real’ teams to go 0-5 were 2008’s Mean Green Machine and, yes, Damage, Inc.

Seek-N-Destroy and Damage, Inc. have yet to face each other in 2013 and there is a 1 in 3 chance that they will pull each other Fifth Night.  In that case, we’d be guaranteed one 0-5 team and one team that finishes 1-5 or better.  As an aside, if either Seek-N-Destroy or Damage, Inc. wins the night Fifth Night they could easily leap frog into fifth place on the season… which is every bit as awesome as it seems.

The funny thing about Seek-N-Destroy and Damage, Inc. is that while their records are exactly the same, 0-4, the teams that they’ve raced this year are categorically not.  Damage, Inc. has somehow managed to race the top four teams in the standings this year.  In an absolute murderer’s row of first round opponents, Damage, Inc. has gone up against The Junkyard Dogs, Real Steel, Orange Crush and Mean Green Machine.  Seek-N-Destroy, on the other hand, has faced about as advantageous a set of first round opponents as can be, ultimately matching up against the fourth, fifth and sixth place teams as well as Real Steel.

What this means for Fifth Night is that if Seek-N-Destroy doesn’t pull Damage, Inc. in the first round, they’re going to get Orange Crush or The Junkyard Dogs.  Talk about an all or nothing outcome.

If Damage, Inc. doesn’t get Seek-N-Destroy, they’ll be matched up against Reckoning or Full Throttle.  Both of those teams are veteran teams with a cavalcade of talented drivers, but both have also been having very disappointing years, hence their fifth and sixth place positions in the standings.  How disappointing?  In Full Throttle’s case, the only win that they have this year is against Seek-N-Destroy.  Gulp.

However, while the prospect of an 0-5 season is daunting, Seek-N-Destroy is actually facing something significantly worse if they lose Fifth Night: they will eclipse Smash, Bash & Crash’s record of eight straight losses that they tied in their loss to Reckoning Fourth Night.  If there’s a silver lining to this cloud though, it’s that Seek-N-Destroy did beat Mean Green Machine in 2012’s Second Night.  What does that have to do with anything, you ask?  If Seek-N-Destroy had lost that race, they’d be looking at a string of 14 losses in a row.

I realize it’s probably a pipe dream, but I’d love to see Seek-N-Destroy and Damage, Inc. meet in the finals Fifth Night.  It’d be the greatest night of upsets ever and would send the season out with a nuclear explosion.  Step one is not pulling each other in the first round.  My fingers are crossed…