… And then there were the teams gunning for the championship.
If you rewind to last off-season, you’ll remember that the TDA officials tweaked the points system for the first time in ages. Possibly ever. Gone were the days when all wins were equal. First round wins were now worth one point, while second and third round wins were worth two points apiece.* The whole idea in changing the points system was to avoid the ties that could occur at the end of every season. Well, the first year of the new point system, we enter Fifth Night’s races with the potential of an amazing four-way tie for first. (Cue Ron Burgundy). Ah, sweet irony!
* Forget the extra six points that are tacked on. When every team gets six points for showing up, those six points don’t matter. Just imagine what would happen if Bud Selig announced that every baseball game was now going to start with a 6-6 tie. Same thing here.
The potential four-way tie for first place is something of a pipe dream though because one of the four teams, Mean Green Machine, cannot possibly come in first, even if they do tie for it. It’s an impressive accomplishment no matter how you look at it. (The first tiebreaker is the number of night wins, a category Real Steel has locked up with two already in the books; Mean Green Machine has none so far and is not trumping that. Period).
On another level, it’s interesting to ponder, with this in mind, whether it could be said that Mean Green Machine is still technically alive. It’s almost a zen-like question: if a team can still finish in first but not win the championship, has it been eliminated? And, to be honest, I’m not sure where my beliefs on this fall.
Either way, Mean Green Machine is not ending the night with a trophy… you know, unless Matt “Opie” Pierce meets one of the champions in the parking lot and decide to give him a good once over and steals his hardware.
The three teams who are still in the trophy hunt (and whose drivers might need to be on the look out for the aforementioned Pierce in the parking lot) are The Junkyard Dogs, Orange Crush and Real Steel.
Of the three, The Junkyard Dogs and Orange Crush seem to have the biggest hurdles to overcome to win the championship; JYD is behind in points and Orange Crush is going to be racing with two drivers that weren’t on the team in July, Pete Ryan and a mystery runner who has asked to remain nameless for the time being.
For obvious reasons, JYD’s hurdle is far greater than Orange Crush’s. Needing to make up three points in one race, there is only one way to accomplish this: win the night and not have Real Steel or Orange Crush get in the finals.* And that’s a tough goal. Any time your route to the championship involves you having to win the night and other teams not winning, the picture doesn’t look the brightest.
* If JYD lost in the finals and Real Steel and Orange Crush lost in the first round, JYD would tie with them… where they would promptly lose the tiebreaker to Real Steel, so that’s not technically an option to win the season.
What makes teams in this position doubly unlucky is the fact that they not only have to hope other teams lose in early rounds, but they have to hope that the best other teams lose in early rounds.
In 2010, Reckoning went into Fifth Night trailing Orange Crush in points. In order to win the season, Reckoning would have needed to win the night and had Orange Crush lose in the first round, two rounds earlier than they had all season.
In 2011, the situations were reversed with Orange Crush needing to win the night and have Reckoning lose first round, something they hadn’t done in nine nights of racing.
Neither of those situations worked out well for the trailing teams. In both cases, the first place teams did as they should have (and should have been expected to) and won in the first round, dashing any and all hope the second place teams had. We won’t go into the story of 2012, where Mean Green Machine and Reckoning both lost their way to first and second place. There were a lot of impressive things about Reckoning’s 2012 season, but I still find it fascinating that they ended their championship season with two straight losses.
Orange Crush is presently tied with Real Steel for first place and, as mentioned previously, Real Steel has the tiebreaker.
The differences between Orange Crush and Real Steel are many. They are about as far a field from one another as possible. Orange Crush is a power team. They have huge engines and drivers who use every last bit of horsepower. They hit hard and don’t always race as precisely as they might otherwise draw up, as evidenced by Pete Ryan taking out his teammate, Elmer Fandrey, in Fourth Night’s epic race against the Junkyard Dogs. They have an owner in Kenny Kasper who spares no expense in making sure his guys have what they need to win. Kasper has created a true winning environment in the Team 6 pits and is always on the look out for ways to improve the on track product.
When Orange Crush lost Carl Brouwer to an inadvertent driver’s door hit Third Night, they brought their 2011-2012 driver, Ryan, back into the fold. When they lost Ron Tyrakowski to the most mammoth hit the league has ever seen, they went out and got the best available driver on the market.
Going into Fifth Night, Orange Crush will be racing with two drivers who weren’t on the team Third Night, bringing their season total up to eight drivers (Brouwer, Jason Ritacco, Fandrey, Tyrakowski, the flamboyant Mystery Man, Ryan, Brice Martin and Bill Mcmahen). It’s not normally something that you associate with a great team—lots of drivers—but here we are. Given that Orange Crush hasn’t been to the finals in two years without Brouwer on the track, I’m curious to see whether they will be able to break this trend, but history isn’t on their side.
Real Steel is something of a semantic enigma. They are a good team with more night wins than any other team that doesn’t especially impress anyone. They have good engines, but don’t ever really test out the upper limits of their capability. They hit hard enough to stop cars, but will never make the highlight reels. The two qualities that have propelled Real Steel to the top of the standings are their teamwork and their smarts. They build incredibly well so that their cars don’t ever crock out, they always, always, always stick to their game plan and they never put personal glory ahead of the greater good of the team. Real Steel’s roster also hasn’t changed a lick since First Night. Nick, Wally, Anthony Hartung and Shaun Elder. raced then and the same four men will race Fifth Night.
As I was speculating about which team would come out on top at the end of the season—my gut instantly went to Orange Crush, they’re a power team who goes fast!—I realized that it was next to impossible to game plan for Real Steel. I mean, everyone on the team can run and crush. From race to race, there’s no telling who will be running and who will be crushing; they can, and do, mix it up at any given moment. You also know that you’re not going to beat Real Steel by outlasting them or having their cars fail; their cars don’t die and they don’t ever really seem to have any build errors.
Pondering this, I called Real Steel’s Nick Hartung and asked him about it. (When I get stuck writing about a given team, the ability to call a member of the team and ask them to figure things out for me is insanely nice). After insulting Hartung’s team for a few minutes, “You don’t hit hard, you don’t go fast,” I got to the good part, “You guys are super smart,” and then asked, “What I want to know is: how do you game plan for smart?”
Hartung chuckled—it isn’t his problem to figure this out—and explained that the team was just committed to doing what it took to win. Normally, this answer is an athlete’s platitude of the Nth degree. Everyone gives 110% percent and everyone is just doing what it takes to win. However, in Hartung’s case, it seems believable. Everyone on Real Steel is doing what it takes to win. This isn’t to imply that Orange Crush or JYD aren’t, but I’m starting to suspect that Real Steel understands that they cannot out speed Orange Crush or out hit JYD and have turned to other elements of racing where they feel that they might be able to out perform other teams. This is why I’m starting to figure out a way to work “Moneyball” into some sort of nickname for them.
Hartung and I continued speaking and, whenever possible, Hartung used the word ‘same’. Real Steel is prepping for Fifth Night the same way they have every other night. They are trying to use the same cars as they’ve used all season, they’re using the same build style and, hopefully for them, it will result in the same outcome as Second and Fourth Nights.
At this point in time, I’ve spent the better part of the last year underestimating the Hartungs. I couldn’t understand how they won with Reckoning in 2012 and I didn’t think they’d do very well this year (I picked them to finish sixth in the standings in my season preview). This stops here. Going into Fifth Night, it’s hard for me to like any team for the championship more than Real Steel. They have had all their drivers together for the year,* are building stronger than ever, stick to their game plan and somehow, even now, seem to be flying under the radar in first place.
* minus a handful of races where Dave “Cheeseburger” Hauschild filled in for Anthony Hartung