If you like what you’re reading and want to support this site, click on an ad to the right. You don’t even have to wait for the ad page to fully load, just the clicks help!
You can read the 2015 TDA Preview Introduction, here.
You can read my Honorable Mention Favorite Drivers here.
You can read about Four of my Top Five Favorite Drivers here.
I’m going to preview the 2015 season by counting down my five favorite drivers that I’ve seen and written about since I became involved with the TDA. A couple of notes:
1) This is NOT a list of the best drivers—oh my God, is it not a list of the best drivers—but rather a list of my favorite drivers. Some of the drivers are exceptionally good—first ballot Hall of Famers—one could well be the worst driver the league has ever seen, but all are wildly worth writing about.
2) I never saw Steven Scarbro race. Technically, I guess I did see him race, but I never was able to put his name and car number together in order to appreciate his inimitable style.
3) I removed all of the drivers who raced for Reckoning in 2010 from this list. I hung out with them all season and love all of those guys, Chris McGuire, Steve Gursky Jr., Brian Anderson, Nick Ritter and “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht. In the interest of fairness, I excluded them from this list. But, suffice it to say, all of them are scholars and gentlemen and favorite drivers of mine.
And now for #1…
1) Johnny Ryan
If I was creating my perfect demo driver from the ground up, I could pick and choose different elements from a number of people or I could save myself a lot of trouble and just pick Johnny Ryan.
I mentioned to a handful of people that Ryan held the top spot in my list of favorite drivers. “Johnny Ryan, huh?” people would ask. I’d nod and explain that it had to be Ryan. No one else possessed (or possesses) the same combination of showmanship, skill, passion, anger, vengeance and reputation as Ryan. And with that statement, the people would always start nodding in agreement.
I first came in contact with Ryan First Night of 2010. That was the night when Reckoning’s Nick Ritter made the curious and inartful decision to draw a picture of Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) peeing on an Orange Crush logo on the side of his cars. Reckoning was gunning for Orange Crush; Orange Crush was bracing for the onslaught of teams that had them in their crosshairs. An incredibly talented veteran driver in his prime, Ryan didn’t need any extra motivation to rise to the occasion or to fuel his fire, but Ritter’s Calvin got under his and Orange Crush’s skin.
At the driver’s meeting, Ryan was called to come up and pick out the night’s schedule. On his way to the front of the crowd, he walked by Reckoning’s drivers and support staff and purposefully whacked his shoulder and arm into one of them. “Gotta find out who I’m going to piss on,” Ryan growled as he delivered the surprisingly strong forearm shiver.
I know this because I was the person that Ryan hit.
My background was in interviewing actors and hanging out with directors on set and writing about it. There was no toughness, no physicality or brusqueness to anything I did. The minute Ryan whacked my shoulder on his way to get the schedule, I thought, Arrested Development-style, “I’ve made a horrible mistake.” Exactly what the hell had I gotten myself into?
With his omnipresent black, wrap-around sunglasses, goatee, commandingly gravelly voice and no nonsense attitude, Ryan is quite an imposing figure at the track. Off the track, it’s a much different story. Off the track, he’s an incredibly nice guy who not only didn’t try ducking TDA events where he’d have to deal with kids, but looked forward to them. He also helped me out immeasurably during the time I was doing the Behind the Destruction podcast by filling in whenever I needed him to. But this is not why Ryan is my favorite driver.
Ryan is my favorite driver because he is one of the most successful and feared drivers in TDA history. While on the track, runners will make a mental note of where Ryan Decker and Jason Ritacco are, but they make good god damn sure they know where Ryan is. If Decker or Ritacco hit you, they will stop you and you’re going to feel it, but if Ryan hits you, there’s a small part of you in the back of your head that worries that you’re also going to die. Because Johnny Ryan doesn’t let up. He doesn’t let things go, he doesn’t show mercy and he will try to drive through your car as fast as he humanly can. It wasn’t that he was out of control—far from it—it’s that he had somehow harnessed his recklessness at his core and channeled it into his driving style. It was like he had learned some ancient Chinese practice on how to kick as much ass as possible by funneling his feelings into his car. The end result was that he went insanely fast and did not know fear.
One downside to this style of driving was that Ryan occasionally hit a driver’s door he shouldn’t have. In a weird way though, this aided him immensely. It added to his reputation as a driver to be feared. This reputation grew so quickly that it actually colored the way the TDA officials viewed him.
By the time I got involved with the sport, I was told on-the-record by an official that Ryan had “ten to fifteen” driver’s doors in the last few years. If we take this at face value and use the standard metric of ‘a few’ meaning three, that means that Ryan was averaging—AVERAGING!—one driver’s door per night of racing! And no one did anything about it.
This always seemed odd to me, given the safety concerns and insurance issues that arise with illegal hits. But then it dawned on me that Ryan wasn’t doing all the things that people said he was; people were merely projecting their fears about him onto real life situations. I can’t quite call Ryan a well-scrubbed choirboy, but it was truly amazing to see the way his reputation impacted everyone’s opinion of what he did. I’m not aware of another driver who has been able to get into the heads of so many people associated with the league as Ryan has. It’s a very impressive accomplishment, all things considered.
But here’s the most important thing: when Ryan’s on the track, I know I’m up for some good, entertaining racing. 100% of the time. He is one of the best drivers in league history who owns multiple championships with multiple teams and, as a cherry on top of his awesome sundae, has a bigger psychological impact on racing than anyone else I’m familiar with. Ryan sadly retired at the end of 2013.
By way of conclusion, I only have one thing to say: Please, Johnny, come back!