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!
The June 2015 TDA race is in the books and the winner was… drumroll, please… the track! The Junkyard Dogs came in second by winning the night’s trophy.
For a second night of racing in a row, track conditions are all anyone can talk about, and for good reason. There were three competing forces during the races: the two teams and the mud. It wasn’t enough that drivers would have to avoid their opponents’ crushers, they also had to figure out a way to traverse the track without getting stuck. Frankly, unless Art Scarbro was on the track, the mud should have been the drivers’ main priority.
It was absolutely impossible not to notice this.
In the second round race between Mean Green Machine and Team Hartung*, Mean Green runner, Andrew Sherman, was spun out by his own teammate in turn 1 of the first lap and was stuck in the mud for almost the remainder of the race. When Sherman finally got free, it was weird to see a completely clean, green car driving amongst the mud spattered vehicles that had been on the track and moving for the last five minutes.
* I have no idea whether they were racing as The Crazy 8s or Real Steel.
What’s more, when the Mean Green Machine/Team Hartung race ended, all of Mean Green’s cars were still running; they just weren’t necessarily able to move.
In the first round matchup between The Locomotives and The Junkyard Dogs, The Locomotives’ #79 car was just about to enter Turn 3 and lost its front, driver’s side tire. This will often happen because the wrong sized screws or lug nuts are used on the tire, a phenomenon that is exacerbated when the car ends up driving through a huge pile of mud that acts as an extra grip on the the wheel. To be fair, the #79 car was not built especially well—at one point, half its door bar appeared to just fall off—but it’s hard not to cite the mud’s influence on the tire as well.
Probably the worst example of the mud’s impact came in the finals when, less than half a lap into the race, 6 of the 8 cars racing got tied up in the back straight away. (The mud was so bad there that, after the race concluded, the end-loader was spinning its wheels while trying to remove the cars from the track. It ultimately ended up needing to approach the cluster of cars from the north to pick them up; it couldn’t do it from the south or west). Just like that, it was Junkyard Dogs’ Ryan Riley vs. Team Hartung’s Nick Hartung. The two men raced neck-and-neck with one another for a lap before Hartung caught the turn 2 tire in his second lap, spinning him out. He drove in reverse down the back straight away and tried to power slide into forward in turn 3. And promptly got stuck in the mud there. After attempting to rock his way out and failing, Hartung saw that Riley had picked up about ¾’s of a lap on him while he was stuck and decided to try to take him out.
That was the difference in the race.
Hartung’s decision to turn around and go after Riley is an interesting one that, unfortunately, may mark a major turning point for the sport.
As Hartung stopped running and turned his focus on taking out Riley, a lot of people in the stands immediately questioned what he was doing. I did too. The second Hartung stopped trying to right himself and (literally) retraced his steps out of the mud, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he was doing. But that’s because I’m not a demo driver. The minute I put myself in Hartung’s work boots, I instantly understood his mindset and was 100% okay with what he did.
Hartung’s decision to try and stop Riley was based upon being around the sport of team demolition derby for his entire life. Team Demo is the most aggressive, confrontational sport on the planet. You don’t win by being passive; you don’t win by having your four cars out drive the other teams four cars. You win by stopping the other team’s cars and not allowing the other team stop you. Well, the mud took care of stopping Hartung, so he shifted priorities. He was going to stop Riley.
Hartung is, at his core, a demo driver and a damn good one at that. When he saw that the mud had put him more than ¾’s of a lap behind Riley, he didn’t rationalize that he’d just keep driving around the track and hope that the mud got Riley at some point too. Nope, he thought, “I’m going to get this motherfucker and I’m going to take him out. Then I’m going to run the laps myself and win this thing.”
Because Nick Hartung is a demo driver and this is the way that good demo drivers think.
What’s more, as a fan, this is the way that I want the demo drivers to think! I don’t want the demos to turn into something where contact is incidental, I want to see cars hitting each other. Judging from the complaints of the fans I spoke to, the drivers and the comments on the TDA facebook page, I am nowhere close to alone on this belief. People don’t come out to the Dirty Oval (which shall henceforth be referred to as The Swamp) to watch cars NOT hit each other, it’s quite the contrary. I’m just not sure that the league feels the same way about this. If the track conditions continue to stay slow and muddy, hitting your opponents is not going to be the best way to win… as Hartung found out the hard way. Just ignore them and hope the mud gets them!
When I arrived at The Swamp, the track had pools of standing water just about everywhere in Turn 2 and 3. What’s more, the water truck was outside the cement wall of the track and TDA officials were watering the track down even more. It was the first time I’d ever seen The Swamp watered in this way. I asked someone why they were watering the track in this fashion and he told me it was because the water truck had gotten stuck on the track while watering it. I paused for a second and then asked, “Isn’t having the water truck get stuck while watering the track a good indicator that it shouldn’t be watered any more?” The guy laughed and said, “You’d think so…”
What made the decision to keep watering the track after the water truck had gotten stuck and after almost every race so curious was that absolutely no one thought it was a good idea. To a man, the drivers and support staff in the pits were disgusted by the constant watering. Things got so bad that I heard numerous people suggesting that the Figure 8 trucks race first to push some of the mud out of the way. You know things are bad when people are embracing the things that they normally complain about as a solution to the new problems they’re dealing with.
“All the watering is just making it worse!” numerous drivers told me.
And, you know what? That was exactly the point.
Over the course of the last two years, the TDA has had some very serious driver injuries; Carl Brouwer and Matt “Opie” Pierce’s injuries being the worst of the bunch. I’ve mentioned before that Brouwer’s medical bills would have bought you a good sized island in the Caribbean and I believe Pierce’s topped that. I am not privy to the structure of the TDA contracts or the exact figures Brouwer’s or Pierce’s bills, but I do know that a large chunk of their medical bills was paid out by the TDA’s insurance company.
When Teresa Gabriel owned the TDA in 2010, she told me that she paid $5,000 per night in insurance costs. Even if that figure has multiplied tenfold in the years since, up to $50,000 per night, a figure that is downright ridiculous, the insurance company is still out money because of Brouwer and Pierce’s injuries alone.
Since the TDA needs insurance to continue to operate, it’s not hard to imagine that the new track conditions are a result of, albeit misguided, safety concerns. This fact was confirmed by the TDA on its facebook page. The Sunday after Second Night, the TDA wrote: “Our goal is [to] provide a service to fans and [drivers] that is not only an exhilarating experience but a safe experience as well.”
One thing that can definitely be said about the excess mud and water is that it kept the drivers safe. It’s hard to get injured when you’re sitting in the corner, completely unable to move your car.
Time and time again, we watched cars lightly bump into one another. It was almost sad watching Junkyard Dogs’ Kyle Shearer in the first round flooring his accelerator to gain enough speed to move forward enough to hit one of The Locomotives’ cars outside turn 3. The only driver who didn’t seem to have that much trouble gaining speed to hit people was Mean Green Machine’s Ryan Decker. However, the operative word in that last sentence is ‘seem’.
Decker’s hit on Team Hartung’s Nick Hartung at the finish line was probably the hit of the night. And it happened because Decker was driving up hill across the middle of the track. That’s where the best traction is. It’s the same reason that The Sting’s driver, Stretch, picked up so much speed when he hit Team Hartung’s Dave Hauschild in the back straight away. The middle of the track is where it’s at!
Decker’s other major hit, a posterization of Team Hartung’s Tony Hartung in Turn 2, was a good hit that was made even better by, you guessed it, the mud. Without getting into the physics of the matter too much, large piles of mud can and, in this case, do act like small walls on the track. While Decker’s hit on Hartung would normally have sent Hartung’s car backwards to some degree, this wasn’t possible in this case. Hartung’s car was pushed sideways into the mud (wall) and then stopped moving. Because the force of the hit delivered by Decker’s car needed to go somewhere, Hartung’s car started tipping over. That’s what made the hit great! That’s what made Jason Twite’s photo (above) so wonderful! It showed Hartung’s car on its way over!
And it was only possible because of the mud.
In the original Jurassic Park, the character of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has a fantastic line of dialogue where he states that, “Life will find a way.” The solutions to old problems will inevitably give rise to their own set of new problems to need to be dealt with. In an attempt to control the drivers’ speed, the track now has more mud than anyone knows how to handle and has created a veritable swamp in turns 2 and 3. This certainly has had the intended effect on speed, but the Decker/Hartung hit is a preview of one new issue that the extra mud can cause. I’m not suggesting that roll overs will be a common thing, but with deeper mud, the odds of this happening are going to go up exponentially.
The only thing to do is wait and see and hope for the best. If you absolutely need a silver lining to the matter, just think of how many races the drivers will be able to get out of their cars! On the night as a whole, it seemed like more cars self-destructed than were actually taken out.
The one element of Second Night that I haven’t really discussed yet is the actual racing. You know, the reason that everyone goes to The Swamp in the first place?
The reason for this is simple: there isn’t much racing to actually discuss. I can’t remember anyone really doing that much. Who was the most valuable driver? First Night it was unquestionably #50 (That’s Dave Janjanin!). Second Night? Uh…
My default position on all MVD awards is that the driver who wins has to be on one of the top two teams. Really, how valuable can you really be if your team finishes last? Do you give the award to Ryan Riley for completing five laps against (basically) no competition in the first round and finals? Do you give it to Nick Hartung for winning the second round race against Mean Green Machine and then not stopping Riley in the finals? No, you don’t.
The answer is, instead, that you give the MVD award of the night to the Junkyard Dogs’ Mike Leodoro. Because he was on the night’s winning team and displayed, by far, the best half lap of racing in all seven races. Against Orange Crush in the second round, Leodoro and Orange Crush’s John Clemmons were racing down the back straight away. Clemmons came out of Turn 2 well ahead of Leodoro, who was in his last lap. Leodoro caught up to Clemmons by Turn 3, took an inside track and essentially rubbed Clemmons off on the Turn 4 tire, finishing ahead of him by an eighth of a lap. It would have been an even more thrilling finish if Clemmons had been racing for the checker too, but he only had completed three laps at that point. Leodoro’s last lap was probably the prettiest lap of the evening. And, coupled with him being on the winning team, that’s enough for me to give him the MVD.
The runner up MVD goes to the entire Team Hartung. They brought out their old cars, got paid for them, reportedly had the league buy their final round cars for them and will now get to scrap the cars they brought. It’s hard to argue with that!