Minor Point #1: Junkyard Dogs’ Owner Mark Ziesmer Did Not Lose His Mind
When The Junkyard Dogs trotted out both Gerritt “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt and Brice Martin as their runners Second Night, I experienced a combination of emotions that ranged from utter confusion to anger to depression to absolute joy; the latter coming when my head didn’t actually explode upon learning of this development. It was unfathomable to me how, on the heels of their First Night loss to Reckoning, The Junkyard Dogs could again trot out a lineup not featuring that still mythical beast known as VanderBleuer.
I was sitting near several family members of The Junkyard Dogs’ drivers in the infield bleachers and they were having an equally hard time understanding the logic behind this decision-making.
Well, the truth is that there was no decision-making behind it; The Junkyard Dogs’ lineup hand was forced by fate. VanderBleuer was supposed to race, but Bleuer experienced car trouble in the staging area, prompting (that race’s) backup driver, Brice Martin, into action.
When I was under the impression that JYD was, again, racing a non-VanderBleuer tandem, I thought that team owner Mark Ziesmer had lost his mind. When the truth came out—Bleuer was supposed to race—it put everything in stark perspective. Such stark perspective, I lead off this section of Minor Points by assuring everyone that Ziesmer is still a competent and crafty demo team owner and that VanderBleuer should be released, much like the Kraken, Third Night.
Minor Point #2: Seek-N-Destory’s Greg Mesich Just Went Mel Noble Jr. On Us
I love the crazy of the demos. When Tom “Brickman” Lewis climbed out onto his hood and attempted to try to blow out his engine fire? I loved it. When Mel Noble Jr. lost his helmet and kept racing? I loved it. When “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht broke his back in the August 2011 race and came back and raced in September of 2011? I loved it. When Dave “Repo” Swan cut off the cast from his broken wrist so that he could race? I loved it.
So, in short, I love the crazy of the demos.
In Second Night, Seek-N-Destroy’s Greg Mesich joined the Mel Noble Jr. ‘Crazy’ Club. Driving down the back straight away, he lost the use of his throttle. His foot pedals no longer worked and he hadn’t connected a hand throttle cable. So, in an effort to keep running, Mesich tried using a hand throttle. Literally.
He leaned as far forward as he could go, positioning himself much higher in his seat than normal—the back of his head actually resting against the top front of the car’s roof—and stuck his hand underneath his hood to manually pull his throttle. Yes, with his fingers.
Mesich only made a quarter of a lap or so while using his fingers to hold the throttle open, but what a quarter lap it was. With this one maneuver, Messich has set the bar for 2012’s ‘crazy’ . Mel Noble Jr., the ball is in your court. What have you got for us now?
Minor Point #3: The Cadillac Gap
There’s only one thing I hate more than being wrong and that’s being right. Nothing bothers me more than seeing a potential problem lurking on the horizon, pointing it out to people who could do something to fix it, getting shot down and then suffering through the exact scenario that I mentioned that I didn’t want to happen in the first place. That is the worst. And Mean Green Machine’s Zac VanAllen knows my pain.
Prior to the second night of racing, VanAllen and his green teammates noticed that, for some reason, the league had started to stagger the concrete barriers of the outer wall of the track near Turn 4. There would be a barrier, then a roughly 12-foot gap of space, then another barrier, then another 12-foot gap. It seemed unusual given, as VanAllen stated in the drivers’ meeting, that someone could easily get stuck in one of the gaps. League officials waved off VanAllen’s concerns and then VanAllen went out to race… and almost immediately got stuck in the very same, very stupid gap he had mentioned that someone could easily get stuck in earlier.
And Mean Green Machine went on to lose, VanAllen helpless to do anything but watch from his position in the wall.
If you heard rumors about VanAllen being ejected from the stadium, threatening any number of people with any number of different types of beat downs or getting into a bare knuckles deathmatch with TDA president Sherri Heckenast this was the source of those.
From my perspective, it’s hard to see what the point of the spaces between the concrete barriers was for. Any lack of continuity and uniform texture in the outside walls has always seemed to add an extra element of danger to the races.
I remember an instance in 2010 where Reckoning’s Nick Ritter was driving across the infield to hit an opponent’s runner in the back straight away. The runner was skating along the surface of the back wall with his car when his front end snagged the side of one of the concrete barriers that was sticking out a little more than in should have been and stopped cold in his tracks. Ritter careened into the wall several feet ahead of the runner at full force, where the runner should have been. It was startling for the runner and absolutely jarring for Ritter.
I heard a number of drivers opine that VanAllen shouldn’t have made such a big deal about getting stuck because he could have just avoided the space between barriers and/or that everyone had to drive with the same track conditions. But these two points both miss the mark here. A) I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that I’m guessing VanAllen was trying to avoid getting stuck in the wall and B) while all the drivers did have to contend with these track conditions, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should have had to… and VanAllen pointed this out (for the benefit of all drivers) prior to the night’s first races.
It will be interesting to see whether the space between the barriers remains for Third Night. If it does, that desolate region of the track will forever be known as Cadillac Gap, a trapper of men and crusher of first round dreams.
Minor Point #4: The Levi Strap
While it might not be apparent from the grandstand, the drivers are forever tinkering with their car builds and attempting to devise new innovations. Whether it’s new ways to protect their engines or distributors or different things they do for added safety, it’s rare that someone’s build stays exactly the same from month to month. One feature that I’ve started to see on a number of cars that I find rather amusing is something that the drivers I’ve spoken to refer to as The Levi Strap.
For those not in-the-know, the TDA drivers often seat belt their hoods down. This is a not-so-technical term that simply refers to the process of tying several seatbelts through both the front quarter panels and the hoods so that if the deck lid is jarred loose it doesn’t end up flying onto the track. The Levi Strap is a seatbelt that the drivers have begun to utilize on the side of the deck lid closest to the cab. Some drivers will cut a hole in the firewall and then run The Levi Strap through there.
The namesake of this strap is Full Throttle’s Levi Turnbaugh. Turnbaugh did not come up with the idea for the backside seat belting and frankly, I’m not even sure if he uses one now. No, that particular belt is referred to as such precisely because Turnbaugh didn’t use one. Turnbaugh took a vicious head on in one race and when he smashed into the other car, his deck lid came backwards and popped him in the face. Had he had a seat belt on the back end of the hood, it’s doubtful (though not guaranteed) that this wouldn’t have happened.
And a new innovation was born.