One of the more unusual aspects of the Team Demolition Derby world is how the season’s first race is generally the most pressure filled race of the year.  Opening Day in baseball is a day to relax and get ready for the impending season; finally, it’s here!  Same with basketball and football.  In the world of the TDA, there is almost nothing worse that a quick, opening round loss First Night for a team in the championship hunt.  As such, it’s doubtful that anyone feels worse right now than Orange Crush.

First Night is the night where teams learn what they’re made of, how the off-season tweaks to their car building impacted things and whether they’re on the right track or not.  If you lose first round of First Night, it’s hard not to spend the next four or five weeks thinking that all of your off-season work was for nothing.

Prior to the first race, I thought that there was a pack of five teams that were all roughly equal, Mean Green Machine, Junkyard Dogs, Real Steel, Orange Crush and The Locomotives.  After First Night, I think two of those teams really separated themselves from the pack: Mean Green Machine and Real Steel.*

* The Locomotives would have been another good choice here, given that they made the finals their first night back, but when I looked at them, I saw that they beat an essentially two car Seek-N-Destroy, then beat Real Steel by an inch and a half and then lost in the finals.  If they come out strong Second Night, I will definitely be writing more about them.

Mean Green Machine is an extremely obvious choice; they won the night and handily defeated three top tier teams in the process, Orange Crush, Junkyard Dogs and The Locomotives.  It’s frankly hard to conceive of a way that Mean Green Machine could have looked better than they did.  Ryan Decker and Zac VanAllen were everywhere, hitting people and keeping their runners clean; Matt “Opie” Pierce and Andrew Sherman were the beneficiaries of this, with Pierce winning the first round race and Sherman the two thereafter.  As an aside, I almost didn’t recognize Pierce in the first round.  He was moving so fast, I had to double check his number to make sure it was him.  Green had such a good night that even when Sherman’s 70’s round car wouldn’t start, he simply hopped into an 80’s round car he’d raced earlier in the night and won the race with that.

Sure, it’s a small sample size—one night of racing—but Mean Green Machine looked like an absolute juggernaut out there.  If they can keep it up, it’s going to be next to impossible to beat them.  If.

The other team that distanced itself from the pack was Real Steel.  This might seem a curious choice given that they only beat Damage, Inc. and then lost to The Locomotives, but the style of selfless and smart driving that Real Steel displayed First Night will only help them going forward.  No other team that I saw raced with the awareness that Real Steel did.  At every given moment of the race, it seems at though every Real Steel driver knows where every opponent and teammate is on the track, how many laps they have and what they have to do in that situation.

In a way, this was almost boring.  Almost.  It’s like playing blackjack entirely by the book; Real Steel always does exactly what it is supposed to do.  However, since this is demolition derby and not blackjack, it was anything but boring.  The second round race between Real Steel and The Locomotives was not only the best race of the night, but one of the better races I can remember seeing in a while.

The situation was this: The Locomotives’ Mark Van Allen had been stopped about 20 yards short of the finish line.  Real Steel’s Nick Hartung had been stopped about 30 yards short of the finish line.  It looked like that’s where it would end.  Then Real Steel’s Wally Hartung did the smartest thing he could: he took a running start and crashed into Nick Hartung’s car, pushing it closer to the finish line.

It was genius.

Several years ago, when the Junkyard Dogs’ Gerritt “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt ended up about three feet from the finish line, critics asked why none of his teammates had tried to push his car to victory.  It was a valid question in hindsight, although not an option that would instantly come to mind on the track.  Using this memory, Wally Hartung began doing everything he could to push Nick Hartung’s car forward.  Again and again.

People in the pit bleachers who had no affiliation with either team began cheering for Wally Hartung.  We were witnessing one man doing everything he could to propel his team to the win… even if that meant crashing into his own son’s car repeatedly.  It was an inspiring sight.  And, even though Wally Hartung didn’t succeed—the best guess is that Real Steel lost by about a foot—Real Steel has nothing to hang their heads about.  They looked out for each other all race long—Wally Hartung and Anthony Hartung repeatedly got in between opponents’ crushers and their runners—and did everything they could to win.  Sometimes you just finish a little short.  Even in defeat though, it was apparent that Real Steel is a team that needs to be game planned for.

The most quizzical move/decision of the night came courtesy of a non-driver.   Prior to the first round Mean Green Machine/Orange Crush race, Orange Crush owner Kenny Kasper decided to sit last year’s Most Improved Driver and MVP runner up, Jason Ritacco, sending out a lineup of Ron Tyrakowski, Elmer Fandrey, Alex Tucker and John Clemmons.

Tyrakowski was taken out almost immediately in turn 2 of the first lap; Fandrey soon followed, breaking an axle after being hit by Mean Green’s Zac VanAllen.  Tucker ended up sitting for the majority of the race and might not have even gotten off the starting line.  Seemingly seconds into the race, Clemmons was all by his lonesome.

I can’t lay claim to understanding the logic behind sitting Ritacco.  He has been a beast on the track over the course of the last 7-8 nights of racing and has a lot more experience racing with Tyrakowski and Fandrey than do Clemmons or Tucker.  I get why Clemmons would be on the track to face his old team, I just don’t get why Tucker was as well.  If Ritacco is on the team, he should be racing first round of First Night.  If it’s a roster rotation thing, I consider this a sign that the roster rotation is dead.  Not only did Orange Crush lose with their five drivers, but the teams that raced multiples races, Mean Green Machine, The Locomotives, The Junkyard Dogs and Real Steel, only used one lineup throughout the night.

I’m not saying that Ritacco’s presence in the Orange Crush lineup would have guaranteed victory—they could well have still lost—I’m just saying that when you lose first round of First Night in a race where you chose to sit your MVP-runner up crusher in favor of a driver who may not have gotten off the starting line, it begs a number of questions in hindsight.

There were four things I found rather surprising on the night.  Three positive and one negative.  Let’s start with the good:

1) Full Throttle drove with a passion and heart that I can’t remember seeing from them previously.  Steve Schaefer’s car didn’t crock out and he ran a good race, even if it was in a losing effort.  The biggest difference maker though was the presence of the allegedly retired “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht.  After an initial hiccup at the starting line, Vollbrecht was everywhere on the track causing havoc.  Vollbrecht is a fierce competitor and his ‘kill everything’ attitude seemed to infuse the rest of the team with energy that has been missing from the team in recent races.  Let’s hope the talk of Vollbrecht going to another team higher up in the standings is just that.  It’d be a shame to see his attributes leave Full Throttle.

2) The Locomotives’ “Sneaky” Pete Ryan is a force.  I mean, I basically knew this.  He hits hard and drives fast, what else do you need?  What I’d forgotten about or hadn’t seen previously was the tenacity that he displayed on the track.  Ryan is basically a terminator.  He goes and goes and goes until there is no way for his car to move any more.  He has such an intensely focused drive to race, it wouldn’t surprise me if, after his car was stopped, that Ryan hopped out and began trying to punch passing vehicles.  He just won’t quit.

It doesn’t matter whether he’s racing the worst of the worse (which he was in the first round against Seek-N-Destroy) or in the night’s finals, he is always in go mode.  It was a pleasant change of pace to watch Ryan almost single handedly go after Seek-N-Destroy’s cars.  He wasn’t going to give them a pass for showing up woefully unprepared.  More on this in a bit.  He obliterated Greg Mesich at the starting line and just kept going, well after the race was in hand.  At this point, I can’t think of another crusher that I’d like to face less than Ryan.

3) Damage, Inc. looked okay.  Well, let me rephrase that: Damage, Inc. looked like they might be capable of winning a race or two this year.  Their drivers showed heart and courage… and more than just a little stupidity.  I have no idea who was in the #86 car (or any of the other cars, frankly), but someone needs to take him aside and explain that after the race is over, you don’t keep trying to re-fire your engine so you can drive off.  Especially after you’ve sat for the last lap or two.  I’m going to give #86 the benefit of the doubt on this and call it a rookie mistake, but it was indicative of the team’s need for a veteran mentor.  Same with the #82 driver who delayed the start of the season’s first race by not being in his car when the cars were waved out onto the track.

Second Night will be Damage, Inc.’s make-or-break night.  I could be mistaken, but I don’t think Damage, Inc. built one new car over the winter (and given that they raced a #82 car that didn’t seem to have any business being on the track, it seems like at least one new car would have been quite helpful).  If they come back with some new cars and the same go-get-‘em spirit, Damage, Inc. could surprise some teams.

Now the bad surprise.

4) Seek-N-Destroy is broken.  The funny thing is that before First Night, no one expected Seek-N-Destroy to be any good.  The easy money was on them going 0-5 again.  However, this classification isn’t particularly accurate.  At this point, it’s hard for me to even call Seek-N-Destroy a team.

I’m going to quickly mention that Seek-N-Destroy was only able to get three cars to the starting line and that only two of those made it’s beyond the starting line, and get to the real reason for my surprise: there was a moment in the latter half of their first round race where I found myself internally pleading with them to stop racing.

Let me set the scene.  The #29 car had gotten hit somewhere in the back straight away near turn 3.  For all intents and purposes, it was dead.  While it could technically move, it wasn’t going to accomplish anything.  A short while after the #29 car had been taken out, it became apparent that the driver was going to keep trying to “race”.  #29 was crawling forward along the wall between turns 3 and 4.  No one on Seek-N-Destroy had a single lap to their name; The Locomotives’ lead runner, Dave “Repo” Swan was cruising along and was just about to get the white flag.  The race was over.  People outside the track were yelling at #29 to shut his car down.  Nothing good could come from his actions.  Yet #29 continued to inch along the outside wall.  Ryan saw this from the opposite side of the track and made a beeline for it.

The #29 car was already mangled and there was absolutely no opposition to Ryan’s impending hit.  There were no blockers to deter him and the #29 car couldn’t accelerate or brake to maneuver away from Ryan.  I heard several, “Oh God’s,” near me.  In my head, I just thought, “Why the hell didn’t you stop racing, #29?”

And then Ryan hit.

When it became clear that #29 wasn’t gravely injured, a collective sigh was let out from the crowd.

At this point, the blame is no longer on Seek-N-Destroy owner Greg Mesich.  This is now on the league.  Mesich is the nicest guy you will ever meet and an ardent and lifelong racing and TDA driver.  This is his 30th consecutive year of racing, an accomplishment that truly deserves to be praised.  But driving out to the starting line, sitting there in a car that doesn’t work and then having an opponent knock you silly thirty seconds later is not racing.  Having observers in the stands helplessly and hopelessly pleading with drivers on the track to stop moving so they don’t get hurt is not racing.  No one wants to see any driver get hurt and hitting the race track in the fashion that Seek-N-Destroy did First Night is not the way to go about accomplishing that.

 

TDA News & Notes are coming shortly…