UPDATE: This article has been updated to include Mean Green Machine’s Zac VanAllen and John Clemmons’ five finals in twelve nights of racing.  It has also been updated to reflect that Nick and Wally Hartung have six finals appearances, not five.  Updated sections are bolded.

Prior to the TDA’s Fourth Night of racing, I was discussing how few upsets there’d been this year with a driver.  The driver looked at me curiously and said slowly, as if talking to a five-year old, “Real Steel won the night Second Night.”  I nodded and said, “But that’s not an upset, Real Steel is a good team.”  The driver rolled his eyes so hard that it got me wondering whether you could ever sprain an eye.  “We’ll see what happens tonight, then,” he smirked.

And then Real Steel went on and won Fourth Night.

At this point in time, it’s not even debatable that Real Steel is a good, if not great team.  They are tied for first place with Orange Crush and have won two of the four nights of racing so far this year, more than any other team.  But that belief does not appear to be anything close to a consensus amongst the other teams in the league.

The facts, however, show a different story.  Since Nick and Wally Hartung first paired together in July of 2011 on Stranglehold, their teams have gone to six of twelve race night finals, winning three of those six appearances.  That’s more than any other duo in the league save for the Carl Brouwer/Elmer Fandrey/Ron Tyrakowski trio.*  It’s more than Reckoning’s Brian Anderson and “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht have, it’s more than The Junkyard Dogs’ Ryan Bleuer and Gerritt “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt have, it’s more than Mean Green Machine’s Zac VanAllen and John Clemmons have, and it’s more than former Orange Crush teammates, Tom “Brickman” Lewis and Johnny Ryan had.  The Hartung boys have a crazy amount of wins between them.  And that’s not luck.  That’s talent.

* The stats surrounding Carl Brouwer’s string of finals appearances is the stuff legends are made of.  Since he rejoined the TDA world at the beginning of the 2012 season, every time he has driven for Orange Crush, the team has gone to the finals.  Every time.  Every single time.  Brouwer raced in three different race nights in 2012.  Orange Crush went to the finals in all three.  The two nights Brouwer didn’t race, Orange Crush lost in the first round.  Brouwer raced in three different race nights in 2013.  Orange Crush went to the finals in all three.  The one night Brouwer didn’t race this season, this last night, Orange Crush lost in the first round.  If precedent is any indication, it’s not looking good for Orange Crush in the first round in Fifth Night.

I am absolutely fascinated and enthralled by the season Real Steel is having. In recent years, the conventional wisdom has been that to win in the TDA you have to have 1) a lot of money, 2) go really fast, or 3) hit super hard.  This year, Real Steel is showing that this conventional wisdom isn’t the only way; it’s like Moneyball except in demos (Moneycrash?).  And anything that offers a new and legitimate perspective on how to do something is welcomed indeed.

The way that Real Steel is doing it is by, gulp, being smart.  They aren’t hitting just to hit, they aren’t making a game plan and then forgetting it the second the green flag drops and they aren’t half-assing their car builds.  It’s almost like a team of Tom “Brickman” Lewis’ out there.  Almost.

When the schedule for Fourth Night was revealed, it was like a something out of a bad Jean Claude Van Damme movie in the late 80s about death matches.  The top three teams in the standings were all on one side of the bracket.  Orange Crush and The Junkyard Dogs faced each other in one first round match up and Real Steel was paired up against 6th place Full Throttle.  Whichever team was going to emerge from that side of things was going to have truly accomplished something.  This was the exact opposite of a cream puff schedule.  Two hours later, Real Steel stood in victory lane, celebrating their second night win in three nights.

Fittingly though, what will be remembered about Fourth Night for years to come isn’t Real Steel’s three straight wins, but rather the truly amazing first round race between Orange Crush and The Junkyard Dogs that will actually spur debate about which team won in perpetuity.  The truth is that the Dogs won, I mean, Orange Crush did, I mean, the Dogs did.  Yeah, the Dogs did.

Orange Crush and The Junkyard Dogs are the TDA’s true power teams.  They have great owners, clean cars and they drive fast and hit hard (the latter designation, in the case of Orange Crush’s Pete Ryan, is one that isn’t simply limited to the opposing team).  The on track decibel level when the green flag drops is louder for the Orange Crush vs. Junkyard Dogs races than for any other match-up possible.  Whenever the two teams meet, fans know that they are going to be in for a treat and such was definitely the case on Saturday.

Tension between Orange Crush and JYD was already high prior to the announcement of the night’s schedule.  Orange Crush was in first place in the standings, followed in second by the Dogs.  The Junkyard Dogs’ only hope of over taking Orange Crush in the standings this year was to meet them in the first round, beat them and then go on to win the night.  That scenario manifested itself Fourth Night.  If Orange Crush won the race, JYD’s championship hopes would be dashed.  If JYD won, they would, at the very least, live to race another day.

Filling Brouwer’s empty roster spot with Pete Ryan, Orange Crush took the track and got off to a fairly rocky start.  By the time that JYD’s runner extraordinaire, Bleuer, finished his third lap, Orange Crush not only hadn’t managed to get a single number up on the board, but Ryan effectively took out teammate Elmer Fandrey in one of the more solid friendly fire hits that you’ll see.  And, as is his style, Bleuer just continued ticking off laps.

The only saving graces for Orange Crush were that Jason Ritacco was racing the race of his life and Ron Tyrakowski delivered the biggest and most timely hit I’ve ever seen on Bleuer just short of the flagstand.  First, Ritacco took out Tom “Brickman” Lewis in a hard head on hit in the middle of the track, badly damaging Lewis’ car and crippling his steering in the process.  Next Ritacco turned his sites on Joe Snow’s car in turn 2, severely damaging it, before smashing Gerritt “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt’s car against the wall in the back straight-away.

Nonetheless, the race would have been lost had it not have been for the other-worldly hit that Tyrakowski put on Bleuer a few feet short of the finish line.  Tyrakowski was Orange’s leading runner, but, upon seeing Bleuer rounding turn 4 of his last lap, he turned off in a last ditch effort to stop him.  Tyrakowski sped forward at top speed, doing everything he could to meet Bleuer before the finish line.  For his part, Bleuer was doing everything he could to simply get to the finish line.  Down his front passenger side tire, Bleuer knew that swerving to avoid Tyrakowski wasn’t an option.  He hoped that if he went fast enough, that he’d get the checkered flag.  It was his season on the line.

A split second later Tyrakowski obliterated Bleuer against the front wall, stopping him dead in his tracks, just a few feet short of the finish line.  Normally big hits are rewarded with cheers and applause (and high fives).  Tyrakowski’s hit on Bleuer received something different: gasps and a momentary stunned silence.  It was that big of a hit.

With every other car dead or missing steering, Ritacco went to work, collecting an amazing four plus laps with a hand throttle in a car that had already taken out three Junkyard Dogs.  Controversy erupted when Ritacco crossed the finish line on his white flag lap only to receive a second white flag.  When his car finally died in turn 1, the debate began: which which flag was correct?  It was initially the second, which gave the Dogs the win, then the first, which gave the victory back to Orange Crush, then finally (and correctly) determined that it was the second, giving JYD the win (as well as some major stress in the interim).

As the wreckage from the race was cleared, I realized that there was something better than an upset: a really, really good race.  And, sadly, while those have been about as scarce as upsets this year, Fourth Night was not a night missing them.  Thanks to Tyrakowski, Ritacco, Orange Crush, The Junkyard Dogs and the unprecedented success of Real Steel, Fourth Night stood out as the best night of racing of the year.

Special warm wishes go out to Tyrakowski.  Heal well, Iron Man.