Saturday night’s TDA event was unusual for several reasons. Summer is starting to wind down—some kids are going back to school in less than three weeks—the temperatures have been more consistent with early October than mid-July and we’ve had one TDA event. One! That June rainout just threw everything off. I’m starting a petition to never have a June event rained out again; a kickstarter campaign will be forthcoming.
After nine long weeks of waiting, racing had returned. And it was amazing. There were seven races on the evening and all seven were competitive, energetic and entertaining. Man, it feels weird simply typing that. Granted, Full Throttle, Damage, Inc. and Seek-N-Destroy all lost again in the first round, but all three teams fought hard.
The biggest surprise of the night was unquestionably the race run by Seek-N-Destroy. First Night, Seek-N-Destroy looked abysmal. Two of their cars didn’t get off the starting line and one of those cars ended up getting posterized in the league’s hit-of-the-month. It wasn’t pretty.
Second Night* came around and Seek-N-Destroy turned in a performance 180. In their race against Real Steel, their drivers raced hard, their cars continued to run throughout the race and they looked fully capable of beating any team in the league… even if they did eventually succumb to Real Steel.
* Because June’s race—what should have been Second Night—was postponed until October, I am calling July’s race Second Night. August’s race will be Third Night and so forth. There is no earth on which my brain will be able to handle having the Fifth Night of racing take place before Second Night.
Seek-N-Destroy benefitted greatly from the addition of Art Scarbro to their lineup. Scarbro has a TDA Hall of Fame resume to his name and is one of the rare sports legends who doesn’t seem to have lost a step despite not racing full time for the last five plus years. The tandem of Dave Janjanin (Hi, #29!) and Scarbro was ferocious on the track and absolutely enthralling to watch. Scarbro’s all out, never-say-die attitude is what the demos are about and his presence on a given team, even in a cameo appearance, always seems to inspire the team to race faster, stronger and harder. Fortunately for the crowd, Scarbro didn’t simply limit himself to racing for Seek-N-Destroy; two races later, he showed up again on Damage, Inc. and helped them battle neck-and-neck with The Locomotives before ultimately being beaten.
If there’s one trait that both Seek-N-Destroy and Damage, Inc. have shared for the majority of the last few years, it’s a lack of fire. When really unusual bad things happen, they always seem to happen to one of those two teams. In 2012, one of Seek-N-Destroy’s drivers was pushed backwards, complete with turns, for more than three quarters of a lap. It remains the single most baffling thing I’ve seen happen on the track while writing about the TDA. And Scarbro’s presence on Seek-N-Destroy and Damage, Inc.’s roster changes this. There is suddenly fire again. Like a lot of other people, I wasn’t even aware that Scarbro was racing for Seek-N-Destroy until well after the race concluded.* I just made a note that his car was racing balls out and hitting everything that he could. Only later did I learn that it was Scarbro doing so. This is how a man can lose not one, but two first round races and get his name into the evening’s MVP conversation. Hopefully, Scarbro will return again in August. I’m starting a petition to have it become a rule that Scarbro needs to race; a kickstarter campaign will be forthcoming.
* This is a trait that is unique to Scarbro. I’m estimating that he’s raced in half a dozen races since 2010 and I haven’t ever been aware of this prior to the races taking place. I only learn that Scarbro has raced after the fact. Just once, I’d like to appreciate Scarbro’s racing while it’s happening.
As for the night’s most valuable driver, there are a lot of interesting choices and scenarios outside of Scarbro. Mean Green Machine’s Matt “Opie” Pierce won three races on the evening, Pierce’s teammate Ryan Decker was a wrecking ball on the track and The Junkyard Dogs’ rookie, Mike Leodoro, won two races on the night including one where he finished in reverse. All three are deserving candidates, however my pick for night MVP is The Junkyard Dogs’ Kyle Shearer.
First a word on Mean Green Machine: I think they are operating at such a high level this year and working in synch with one another to such a degree that they ultimately are going to get shut out of numerous individual awards that they might otherwise deserve. This night’s MVP is a case-in-point of this.
While thinking about MVP candidates, Pierce’s name was the first that came to mind. He won all three races that Mean Green raced. However, as I contemplated Pierce’s valuableness, I quickly waved it off, because his teammate, Andrew Sherman, was always a couple of yards behind him. In order to win three races, a driver needs to complete 15 total laps. Pierce did that. And Sherman almost did. Sherman completed roughly 14 laps on the night. If one is going to reward Pierce with an award for valuableness, then Sherman has to get credit too; their accomplishments were almost identical. The end result of that logic is that neither man is going to get the MVP… even though both raced incredibly well. In short, if everyone on one team races at an A+ level, then no one stands out as the singular MVP.
Now, on to Shearer…
When I first started covering the demos, I loved watching Shearer race. He wasn’t afraid of anything and he wanted to hit everything. On the very rare occasions where Shearer would be called upon to run laps (always out of necessity), it seemed like he couldn’t help himself; he’d still stick his car’s front bumper into people. You could almost hear the Devil/Angel dialogue in his head:
GOOD KYLE: Go straight! You’re running laps!
BAD KYLE: Fuck that. Hit that guy. Smash right into him. It’s his fault that he died out right there where you’re going.
GOOD KYLE: C’mon, Kyle. Go around him! You can do it!
BAD KYLE: Don’t listen to that jackass. Hit him, hit him hard!
Five seconds later, Shearer would smack into an opponent’s car to get it out of his way. And it was poetry… you know, if your pen was a car and your prose was crashing into other people.
This year, I feel Shearer has added another level to his racing. He is still crushing and he is still hitting people, but he’s doing it from a more purposeful angle. He is obliterating his opponents as he clears a path for his runners and he is delivering highlight reel hits while knocking opponents’ cars off his runners. Numerous times on Saturday, I’d see a JYD runner in a tight spot, either held against the wall or being lined up for a hit by an opponent’s crusher and Shearer would come through and help his runners out. One of the beneficiaries of this is none other than Leodoro.
Two and a half races into his career so far, Leodoro is proving to be a bright spot not just for JYD, but for TDA owner Sherri Heckenhast’s CNBC stated business model. He is a new driver who is thus far doing extremely well on the track. Like anyone else, he’s had a hiccup here or there—turn 2 is not Leodoro’s friend—but for a rookie driver, Leodoro is racing spectacularly well. Teammates like Shearer, Garrett “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt and Kyle Thompson are helping him, but Leodoro has shown a lot of promise in just two nights of racing.
On the other side of things, Full Throttle, Damage, Inc. and Seek-N-Destroy have all continued their losing ways. While all three appeared competitive on Saturday, their losing streaks are beginning to border on the amazing. Damage, Inc. has lost 8 races in a row. Seek-N-Destroy has lost 11 races in a row. Full Throttle has only lost six races in a row, but even that is misleading as their only 2013 win came against, you guessed it, Seek-N-Destroy. That’s a total of 25 losses in a row for the three!
Seek-N-Destroy is leading the charge in this respect, having won just one race since May of 2011. To put this in perspective, there have been more Thor movies in theaters during that time than Seek-N-Destroy wins. Yeah. Think about that.
What is most baffling to me is that these three teams never seem to pull each other. The way the scheduling ostensibly works is that seven different brackets are made prior to the season, one with each team facing a new first round opponent, and then five of the schedules are used over the course of the year. This means that there is about a 15% chance that one team will not face another given team. In other words, there’s an 85% chance that Seek-N-Destroy will pull either Damage, Inc. or Full Throttle in the first round at some point during the season. The same holds true for both Damage, Inc. and Full Throttle. And yet despite these rather amazing odds, the three teams have only faced off against one another twice in the last 12 races. In both of those times it was Full Throttle vs. Seek-N-Destroy.
Damage, Inc.’s schedule the last couple years is downright bizarre to look at. Since the beginning of the 2012 season, they have faced Mean Green Machine, The Junkyard Dogs and Orange Crush two times apiece in the first round and Real Steel/Stranglehold (team 5) and Reckoning/The Locomotives (team 7) three times. They have not faced Full Throttle or Seek-N-Destroy once. That could certainly help explain how that 8-race losing streak has continued for as long as it has. We’ll see what happens Third Night. Sooner or later these teams have to face each other and the losing streak(s) will come to an end.