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You can read yesterday’s column, the Introduction, 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.
The Honorable Mentions
I was originally going to do a top ten list of my favorite drivers but then whittled it down to five in the interest of saving a lot of people’s time. My tenth through sixth favorite drivers are included here as honorable mentions. There is one bonus honorable mention too.
Ronnie Johnston
I have made this comparison before, but I look at Full Throttle owner, Ronnie Johnston, as the TDA’s Greg Maddux. (That’s a Hall of Fame pitcher, for those of you who don’t know). Maddux was noted for his pinpoint control and his ability to succeed without overpowering velocity. I feel that this also describes Johnston to a ‘T’. His movements on the track are precise—the number of times I’ve seen him perfectly nail a cars back driver’s side door feels like it’s in the dozens—and he is always doing what he can to win… even if it means holding an opponent’s runner in place from turn 1 of the first lap on.
Johnston isn’t a super star. His car isn’t going to ever go the fastest nor is he ever going to obliterate someone against the front wall like Ron Tyrakowski did to Ryan Bleuer two years ago, but he makes his team go. He is involved in all the races in subtle ways and is committed to doing whatever he needs to do to win. Johnston is the grizzled veteran who knows a lot of tricks, I enjoy watching him race a lot.
Kyle Shearer
During Brian Urlacher’s rookie season with the Bears, he made a lot of highlight reels for hitting someone really, really hard and then popping up with a huge smile on his face. The cameras loved him. This is what current Junkyard Dog Kyle Shearer is like on the track. He loves hitting opponents. He loves hitting them a lot. On the off-chance he has to collect laps, you can almost feel his inner frustration at not being able to hit people.
A couple of years back, Shearer completed a handful of laps in a very unusual style. He wouldn’t steer around the cars in his path, he’d go through them. It was a race that caused me to coin the phrase “The Kyle Shearer Lap Running Experience”. It’s just like crushing, only he’s also running laps. It’s almost exactly like “The Brian Anderson Lap Running Experience” except Shearer hits other cars, not the walls.
That is not the only connection between Shearer and Anderson either. First Night 2012 (I think), Anderson was running laps for Reckoning and Shearer caught him against the wall in the front straight away. What made this hit so unique was that Shearer left his front bumper in the side of Anderson’s car, like an automotive Excalibur. When Shearer came by the Reckoning pits later in the evening to retrieve it, no one could dislodge the bumper from Anderson’s car. Anderson had to get it out a couple of days later while disassembling the car.
Zac VanAllen
The funny thing about athletes like Zac VanAllen is how boring sports would be without them. VanAllen is an out-spoken provocateur who excels at getting under his opponents’ skin. No one is more effusive with his celebrations—and with Mean Green Machine winning the 2014 TDA championship, VanAllen had a lot of celebrating to do—vocal with his beliefs or committed to finding new and creative loopholes to exploit when building his cars.
The first time I looked under the hood of a VanAllen made car, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It looked vaguely like the other engine compartments I’d seen in everyone else’s cars, but was outfitted with all kinds of things that I didn’t recognize. I have no idea whether any of VanAllen’s tinkering makes that much of a difference—it is hard to argue with a championship—but no matter what, he is always thinking of ways to improve or things to try that will help him on the track. No one attempts to get more legally creative with his car builds than VanAllen and it’s hard not to like that.
And, despite being in the minority on this one, I absolutely love his victory celebrations. Loud, over-the-top and ridiculously fun, I can’t wait to see what VanAllen pulls out of his hat this year.
Tom “Brickman” Lewis
I was first introduced to Tom “Brickman” Lewis in 2010 when he was attempting to build the most powerful engine the TDA had ever seen. It made one hell of an interesting psychological impact on the league. Time and time again, I heard that Lewis was putting a NASCAR engine into his demo car. One former driver told me, “It’s bad enough Orange has Brickman, but now he’s got that engine too? I was nervous about racing him before!”
First learning of Lewis because of his engine set me down the wrong path with him. Sure, that’s a great story, but the genius of Lewis is his versatility and his on-track problem solving ability. Sometimes—usually when it will most piss opponents off—Lewis will play bumper cars with the opposing team. He’ll get in front of the opponent’s runners and just sit there. And sometimes, he’ll deliver a screaming hit that will still be felt the Wednesday after race day.
It’s Lewis’ creativity though that stands out in my mind. The example I always use for this, one that people sometimes scoff at, is when Lewis power-slid into a head on collision. Maybe it’s something everyone can do, though, that said, it’s a move I haven’t ever seen accomplished by anyone other than Lewis.
The scenario was this: the opponent’s runner was head down the front straight away. Lewis was speeding across the infield in an attempt to hit the runner somewhere on the far side of the turn 1 tire. As the runner began to make his turn around the tire, Lewis realized that the way things were looking one of two things would happen: 1) Lewis could place his car in front of the runner, his driver’s door wildly exposed, or 2) Lewis could adjust his trajectory and crash into the runner’s side, possibly slowing him, possibly missing him. Liking neither of those options, Lewis chose option 3. He began a power slide and managed to hit the runner with a full head on collision, stopping him completely and not damaging his own car much at all. It was an utterly brilliant move.
From Lewis’ steely glare, to his intense spirit of competition to his take-no-prisoners attitude on the track, the man has always cut a very imposing figure at Route 66. On race day, he doesn’t walk anywhere… he stomps; he doesn’t let anything go… even if it means kicking a teammates bumper in disgust after a race; and he’s not going to let an opponent finish if his car can still move. Lost in all this is the fact that Lewis is one of the best drivers ever to race in the TDA.
Wally Hartung
I maintain that the most difficult tasks in life are often not doing things. Sure it’s hard to compete in the decathalon, be consistently punctual and to ace your geometry test, but I’d argue it might be harder to turn down a night of drinking with your friends in favor of studying or to not call that woman back immediately, or to not punch that guy for insulting your mom. Knowing when to not do things and how to not do things is a unique art form. Wally Hartung has mastered this in respect to racing. The man is precise, methodical and smart, but, in a weird way his knowledge of when not to do things is one of his strongest qualities.
Wally Hartung is nicknamed The Professor. This is partly because he wears glasses and partly because he knows everything. Hartung has been racing demos since the 70s and, during that time, has accrued an amazing breadth of knowledge about almost every topic even remotely associated with racing. He puts this knowledge to use building cars and racing. However, as I touched upon earlier, his ability to know when not to do things was amazing.
When Hartung and his clan formed Real Steel in 2013, few people thought the team had much chance to succeed. Sadly, I was one of these mistaken people. I had watched Hartung and his son, Nick Hartung, race for Reckoning in 2012 and given that they didn’t drive super fast or hit super hard, I made the mistake of thinking that they wouldn’t be super good. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Bringing a Moneyball type of vibe to the league, the Hartungs seemed to put a premium on cars that would keep running. They built their cars to last and raced so that they could keep going. This translated to no gratuitous hits. If there were a statistic for blocking crushers, Hartung would have led the league by a landslide. It was downright freaky the way that he would always manage to get his car between the opponent’s crushers and his team’s runners. It was like watching Charles Tillman punching footballs out of people’s hands; you saw it happen time and time again and wondered, “Why doesn’t everyone just do that?”
Hartung knew when not to hit, when not to interfere, when not to refire his engine and how to comport himself at all times. The saddest part of it all is that just as I began to appreciate what Hartung brought to the track, he retired. Here’s hoping that he makes at least a cameo appearance this year sometime.
Bonus Honorable Mention:
That guy on Smash, Bash & Crash in the Monte Carlo.
I have no idea who this is. All I know is that he raced for Smash, Bash & Crash Third Night in 2010 in their opening round loss to Orange Crush.
First some history. In 2010, Orange Crush was an absolute juggernaut. They won the championship that year, had a murderer’s row of drivers (Ryan Bleuer, Ron Tyrakowski, Elmer Fandrey, Tom “Brickman” Lewis and Johnny Ryan) and only lost two races on the season… both of which came in countdowns. They wanted to win badly and they were going to put the hurt on any team they faced, regardless of whether they were facing Reckoning, Damage, Inc. or, gulp, Smash, Bash & Crash.
Third night, they pulled Smash, Bash & Crash in the opening round. It was a flip-flop night and it marked the last race that Smash, Bash & Crash would ever race. After ten seconds of racing, one Smash, Bash & Crash car was still moving: a tiny, 80s Monte Carlo. That little Monte Carlo kept going the entire race, desperately trying to complete laps, weaving in and out of the tires to avoid the Orange Crush crushers, Lewis and Ryan. The Monte Carlo may have only completed 2 or 3 laps during the race, but he must have traveled a total distance of five miles, veering all the way into the front straight away while driving down the back straight away and vice versa.
It was the funniest race I’ve ever watched. It felt like watching two big Cadillacs trying to hit a Smart Car… and they never did!
It was hard not to see the driver of the Monte Carlo doing his thing and not hear the Benny Hill music playing in your head. I have no idea who that driver was, but he provided the audience with some much needed entertainment and humor that night.
Tomorrow: The Top Five!