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First things first: Congratulations go out to the 2015 Team Demo Association (TDA) champions, Orange Crush! Interestingly and uniquely, this championship news could actually be considered breaking news given that the league has not announced this tidbit of information anywhere. It seems a tad odd to be breaking news of a team taking a year’s title three weeks after the race, but here we are! But it is 100% official: Orange Crush is your 2015 TDA champion!
Orange Crush has been flying somewhat under the radar this year because of something I’ll call the ‘Wally Hartung effect’.
When Hartung returned to the TDA after a multi-year absence in 2011, everyone doubted him. People had so many doubts about him—completely unfounded doubts, by the way—that they tended to overlook him, ignore him or simply rationalize that his team and his individual successes were more a product of luck than success. Surely, the logic went, as Hartung got more races under his belt the ‘luck’ would disappear and people would be able to get a real glimpse at his skill level. Then a funny thing happened: the more Hartung raced, the better he got. It confused the hell out of a lot of people because, in their minds, this meant that Hartung was getting luckier. The truth is that Hartung is one of the most talented drivers ever to race in the TDA, but this fact was obscured in the eyes of people because Hartung wasn’t one of the flashier, mouthier, hardest-hitting drivers. While it might not be human instinct to put more belief in someone’s (or some team’s) perceived flaws than their strengths, it is demo instinct.
The main complaint that I have heard about Orange Crush this year is that they’ve only won by beating bad teams. “How can you respect a team that just beats up on fill ins?” someone asked me during Fourth Night. It’s actually a good question, just not one that applies to Orange Crush.
At this point in time, after four nights of racing, Orange Crush is in first place and Mean Green Machine is in second place. Let’s compare the two teams’ schedules. The two faced off against each other once (Fourth Night in the finals… which Mean Green won). They also both raced Sting once and Full Throttle twice. The two teams pushed on the remaining ‘fill in’ teams; Orange Crush faced The Locomotives twice and Mean Green Machine faced The Crazy 8s twice.
The main difference in the two teams’ schedules comes with their races against The Junkyard Dogs and The Chicagoland Hitmen, two formidable teams; JYD won Second Night and The Hitmen made it to the finals First Night. Orange Crush raced The Junkyard Dogs twice; Mean Green raced them once. Orange Crush raced The Hitmen three times, Mean Green raced them once. So all that talk about a weak schedule? Nonsense. The only difference between the first place finisher’s schedule and the second place finisher’s schedule (so far) is one additional race against JYD and two against The Chicagoland Hitmen… all of which Orange Crush won.
Mean Green and Orange Crush also both had cakewalks to the finals, Orange Crush First Night, Mean Green Fourth Night.
What Orange Crush owes their success to is a team wide effort to do better and to do better than their opponents. When the track was like thick molasses First Night, Orange Crush (with Johnny Ryan, #68, filling in for “Sneaky” Pete Ryan, #65) held people in place and just tried to do more laps than the teams they were facing. Their finals race against The Chicagoland Hitmen ended in a countdown with Ron Tyrakowski (#66) completing just three and a half laps. Their second round race against The Locomotives also ended in countdown, with Tyrakowski completing four and a half laps. As I’ve noted many times, winning ugly is still winning.
And nothing sounded uglier than John Clemmons’ (#6) engine in the finals against Full Throttle. “It sounds like he’s down three cylinders,” someone commented in the pits. “And he won the race!” I pointed out. That seems to encapsulate Orange Crush this year: winning however they could, with whatever equipment they had at their disposal.
I think that Clemmons deserves a lot of credit for his performance(s) in 2015. In previous seasons, Clemmons has been the on the receiving end of so many negative comments that it probably could be argued that his first name went from ‘John’ to ‘The Much Maligned’. Clemmons has noticeably stepped up his game this season, especially in the last few races. On Fourth Night, he won the first round race for Orange Crush and, in the second round, his car survived three enormous hits in the opening lap.
There has never been any question that Tyrakowski is a good, if not great, lap runner. He’s fast, he knows how to push the accelerator to the floor and he’s not afraid of anything. With Clemmons as the team’s second lap runner, opponents have been doing whatever they can to take out Tyrakowski, effectively daring Clemmons to beat them… and god dammit, Clemmons has been rising to the challenge. When Orange has needed Clemmons the most, he has been right there.
At the start of this season, no one had any questions about the talents of Tyrakowski, Ryan (Johnny or Pete) or Elmer Fandrey (#67). Clemmons, however, had a question mark next to his name. Four nights of racing later, he has erased that.
A team simply cannot win a championship—and clinch said championship on Fourth Night—with a below average driver on the team. Looking back at the last five years of champions, the rosters are stocked with a who’s who of TDA demo drivers. Ryan Bleuer, Steve Gursky Jr., Zac VanAllen, Johnny and Pete Ryan, Ryan Decker, Tyrakowski, Wally and Nick Hartung and Carl Brouwer to name but a few. There isn’t a question mark anywhere. And with Orange’s title, Clemmons has put himself in some great company. Obviously, we have no idea what will happen Fifth Night, but regardless of what transpires, I think Clemmons is the Most Improved Driver for the year.
The other factor that occasionally goes overlooked in regards to Orange Crush is the steading hand of its owner, Kenny Kasper. Kasper took over the team midway through the 2009 season and since then, save for 2014, has always had his guys in the thick of the championship hunt, winning in 2010, 2013 and now 2015. Kasper is in the garage helping wherever possible and in the staging area, standing between his drivers and the opposing drivers who are egging them on. I’ve said it several times before and I’ll say it again, if I were ever to race demos, I’d want to do it for Kasper. Between him, Tyrakowski and Fandrey, the course is always set straight: directly at the championship. This marks three in six years. And that’s nothing to sneeze at!