TEAM 7: THE LOCOMOTIVES
The Locomotives are the team that rose from the ashes to replace Reckoning. The Locomotives were a power team back in the early days of team demo and it’s always nice to have a recognizable name and entity come back.
The Locomotives are “Sneaky” Pete Ryan’s team and look to be about as blunt an instrument as there is out there. Ryan hits hard. Tom “Brickman” Lewis hits hard. Dave “Repo” Swan goes fast. I don’t know anything about who Mark Van Allen is, but I’m going to assume he goes fast too. You know exactly what you’re going to get when you race them. And, like facing Randy Johnson in his heyday, it’s probably not going to be a ton of fun going up against them.
A lot of this sense comes from Ryan’s driving style (and to a lesser extend Lewis’). As far as I can see, Ryan is the last old school crusher still racing. He is not afraid to hit people and hit people hard. Neither is Lewis. As a runner racing against a team with Ryan on it, you’d better know where he is at all times… and generally hope that that’s on the opposite end of the track. It used to be that the league had a handful of crushers of this ilk, including Johnny Ryan and Art Scarbro to name but two, but that was then and this is now. For now, Pete Ryan is all we have left.
The beauty of having an old school crusher on a team is that he will inevitably draw an inordinate amount of attention from the other team. Probably more so than he actually deserves. That will free up lanes and opportunities for his teammates that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
No one will benefit from this moreso than Ryan’s crushing partner, Lewis. I thought Lewis was going to retire after 2013—frankly, so did Lewis—but the demo addiction rose its ugly head and pulled him back in for another season. As fans, we are much better off for it. Lewis is a true master on the track and capable of some next-level, Matrix type shit. Power slides into hits, fishtails into hits and racing on three wheels are just some of the things he has in his arsenal. 2014 might be the year he figures out how to use one of the lap tires to get his car standing on its bumper and then getting it to fall backwards on top of another car. I don’t put it beyond him and it wouldn’t surprise me if Lewis figured out how to do it.
The only question mark surrounding The Locomotives is whether they’ll all be racing for the team at the end of the season. Ryan and Swan have raced for a combined eight teams since the beginning of 2013. If they stick with The Locomotives, the new black is going to be a force.
Driver(s) to watch:
That would be Mark Van Allen. Who, you ask? Exactly. Van Allen (no relation to Trey, Jay or Zac) is a rookie in the TDA, but I believe has experience in other racing arenas. It will be very interesting to see how he asserts himself on a team filled with three other drivers all of whom have been racing in the TDA since the end of World War II.
Reasons to cheer for them:
• The Locomotives are really old school. They harken back to the old days of Santa Fe and elicit entertaining tales of yore. It’s hard not to want to see one of the oldest team names out there do well.
• If they do well First and/or Second Night, that will mark the best chance we have of seeing Johnny Ryan put on his helmet again and taking the track.
TEAM 8: DAMAGE, INC
I honestly don’t know a single driver that is on Damage, Inc. This is made extra weird because I know the team is owned by Dave “Repo” Swan. Swan is racing for The Locomotives though, so that leaves four open drivers’ slots on Damage, Inc. The TDA appeared to update their team and roster lineups on their website after I started previewing the teams, but there is absolutely no way that Damage, Inc.’s roster is what they have listed online. Suffice it to say, two of the drivers are on other teams, one has been (supposedly) banned from the league and another is actually working for the TDA this year.
This is nothing compared to the mess that is Seek-N-Destroy’s roster though. In an unbelievable twist, the TDA website has four different drivers on Seek-N-Destroy listed as #23. Four. That’s in addition to two #2s, two #21s and two #28s. Seek-N-Destroy has a whopping 14 different numbers listed for 10 different drivers, including one driver whom I believe is in prison at present. In the immortal words of the Cleveland Indians’ owner in Major League, “Well, cross him off then!”
But back to the topic at hand: Damage, Inc. So yeah, I have no idea who is on Damage, Inc. For that reason, I’m just going to say that they probably won’t do that well and spend my time here discussing Swan, or, as I am starting to think of him, the smartest man in the TDA.
While talking to numerous drivers this off-season, I heard one constant complaint: that Swan owned Damage, Inc. and raced for other teams. This is such a weird concept to wrap your head around that it doesn’t always makes sense to people who aren’t familiar with the league. There are two main questions that always go along with this: How? And Why?
However, my main question is: why aren’t other people trying to do this?
Damage, Inc. does not look to be very good this year—it’s hard for me to say for sure, given that I don’t know a single man racing on the team; it’s possible Art Scarbro, Robbie Stahulak, Steve Gursky Jr. and Johnny Ryan are on the team, I just don’t know—but this does not take away the genius of Swan. He has his own minor league team. He has a team that he owns, that allows him to try out new and inexperienced drivers, to get rid of cars that he races for The Locomotives that might have a kink in the frame that he wouldn’t necessarily want to race again but that still work, and gets a wad of extra cash for it. There is absolutely no downside to this for Swan. It is positively brilliant!
If I were a team owner, I would doing everything I could in my power to start racing for another team, while making sure to hold onto my current team.
Driver(s) to watch:
That would be Pete Ryan. Yes, The Locomotives’ Pete Ryan. If Ryan hops over to Damage, Inc. to race at any point this season, it will create an absolutely bizarre situation where the owner of Team 8 is racing for Team 7 and the owner of Team 7 is racing for Team 8.
Reasons to cheer for them:
• They have never won a night’s finals. If anyone is due, it’s Damage, Inc.
• You like yellow.
In the end, there are five teams that look like they’re in the hunt for the championship: Mean Green Machine, the Junkyard Dogs, Real Steel, Orange Crush and the Locomotives. The rash of parity that has struck the league this year is really unique. Every team, save for Mean Green Machine, seems to have taken a roster hit of some sort from last year. As currently constructed though, I feel as though all five of those teams are basically—basically!—equal in terms of talent and ability. If it’s true that Full Throttle has “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht on the team, something no one I know has ever mentioned, and he is engaged in the racing, they too will crash the championship hunt party.
The only thing that is certain is that there will be a lot of competitive races this year. I could easily see a scenario where prior to Fifth Night, Damage, Inc. and Seek-N-Destroy are both 0-4 and every other team is tied in the standings. And this will make for a great summer of racing.