Building Up To Break It Down: A Demolition Derby Saga

So I started this blog on the eve of the annual Bristol night race, and woke up Sunday or Monday morning with about three good subjects to write about. Of course, that all fell by the wayside. It's been a busy summer, no doubt. But the best excuse, of late, has been that motorsports itself has been keeping me from writing about motorsports.

My best friend Carmine and our friend (and my roommate) Adam have been dabbling in grassroots motorsports of one form or another for years. Adam has been a bit more serious about it; for years he's run autocrosses throughout New England, and when he had project cars that were up to the task, he'd put them through their paces in hillclimbs and rallycrosses or at the drag strip. This year's racing project, though, was almost a year in the making.

Last September, a bunch of friends and I went to the Hopkinton (NH) State Fair. Fairs are a little anachronistic these days; it seems they're less of a vehicle to show off livestock to the community, and more of a way to concoct this year's latest food that could kill you (this year, I think it's the donut-burger). I'd been to the Deerfield Fair a few times in my youth, but this was my first trip to the Hopkinton Fair. It was also my first demolition derby. Sure, I'd seen one on TNN's Friday-night racing program years ago, but I'd never seen one live. There's something about a demolition derby that appeals to our most basic desire for destruction and carnage. Needless to say, it caught Adam's attention. It might have been sometime after the first heat that Adam first said the all-important magic words:

"I'm doing this next year."

I think it was after the second or third heat, however, that he was actually reading the rulebook.

The Hopkinton State Fair actually runs two separate demolition derbies. When you think of a demo derby, your first thought is one of old Chevrolets and Chryslers, the twenty-seat behemoths they sang about in "Love Shack," slamming into each other. But this is 2010. Even the still-big-but-not-as-hulking Ford LTDs and Chevy Caprices are in shorter supply. In last year's derby, a few '80s relics held sway against a number of early-'90s Caprices and Crown Vics that had probably seen prior life as a taxi or police car (or both). For that reason, a number of demo derbies (Hopkinton among them) are now featuring a four-cylinder division. The more modern four-cylinder cars are a bit more plentiful and tend to move around the arena a little better than the bigger, heavier cars, particularly in a small arena like that at Hopkinton. Adam's mechanical prowess has been honed largely on smaller cars, so this caught his attention immediately. He would be racing in the four-cylinder derby, no question.

That was last September. Between then and now stood the tasks of finding a car, prepping a car, finding a place to prep a car, and finding a way to transport the car. Since all of that was likely to be a summer project, there was also the task of keeping the motivation running among the crowd that, on that fateful demo-derby eve in 2009, wanted to be a part of the derby run in 2010.

Finding a place to prep the car was pretty easy, and sort of by default. I work for a trucking company, which means that in theory, I have two garage bays and associated tools to offer up, plus a yard to store the car for a while. I say in theory, because at the end of the day, it's not my shop, it's my boss' shop. Fortunately, my boss is also the father of my friend Carmine and his brother Chris, both of whom highly endorsed this endeavor, so the shop was ours to use, as long as we didn't interfere with the mechanics and left everything like we found it when we were done.

Finding the car was contingent upon deciding on what car to use in the first place. The Hopkinton rulebook dictates that, outside of a rollcage around the driver's compartment, there is to be no reinforcing or strengthening the car or its bumpers. That meant we needed to find a car that was built rugged from the start, and with the unibody design of many smaller cars, there would only be a few options. One that stood out immediately was Volvo. The Swedish marque's reputation for safety is legendary, and indeed, several drivers ran Volvos in the derby in 2009. There was the question of mechanical reliability, but Adam opined that the Volvo engine could do no worse than the Chevy or Toyota four-bangers it would compete against. The benefit of the sheer amount of bodywork surrounding that engine would keep it alive.

And so the shopping began. Adam perused Craigslist looking for deals. We didn't need the car immediately, we needed it cheap, and $1500 to win didn't justify buying a well-cared-for car. Our friend Mark was perusing Craigslist on his own, and his fiancée forwarded us some alternatives he came across one Friday night. With those in our back pocket, we took off on a rainy Saturday in June with Carmine, Chris and our friend Isaac to check out Capital Auto Auction in Manchester. One lot in the auction stood out, a 1986 Volvo 740 sedan. Our hopes slipped a bit through the morning, as we watched shabby cars roll through the line with what seemed like sky-high starting bids. At last, the Volvo rolled up on the auction block, and Adam put in his offer, quickly getting outbid. The car went for something around $400, more than he wanted to spend on a car he would be crashing anyway.

So, undaunted, Adam e-mailed one of Mark's Craigslist finds. That week, Adam and I (along with our neighbor Keith, who we greeted with "Hey Keith, want to go get a demo-derby car?") drove out to New Ipswich, NH to pick up a $200 Volvo 740GL sedan. I think the kid was a bit discouraged to know we would be destroying what seemed like his First Car, but hey, few First Cars get to die an honorable death like this.

Prepping the car was next on the agenda. The key was finding weekends where I could open up the shop, and Adam could gather some help to get working on the car. Finding qualified help was the key. Aside from unlocking the shop doors, I would be of little help; my skills under the hood make Jeremy Clarkson look like a world-class mechanic. Isaac had a baseline close to my own, but he was willing to learn and do whatever Adam needed him to do. Mark offered to help as much as he could, but his summer weekends promised to be busy. Carmine and Chris were committed with their own plans for much of the summer. We'd just have to do what we could.

August 14th was our first build day. Adam, Isaac and I tore into the Volvo, stripping it from front to back, inside and out. Every inch of trim, every seat and door panel was removed. Adam started poking under the hood to see what he could disconnect without crippling the car. Mark stopped by to see our progress at day's end, at which point we had created a much leaner, much more spartan Volvo. We had also identified some issues, namely, the stock rear bumper was fractured. If we could not find a replacement, it would have to go. We gathered again on August 22nd. While I tended to office work inside, Adam, Isaac and Mark mounted the driver's seat back in the car, removed the glass from the car and cut the exhaust system off. The car was running rougher now, partly due to the missing air intake, but Adam figured he would get things running smoothly before long.

Mark, Adam and I got together again on the 28th, with Isaac out of town. One of the guys from the shop cut off the remaining bumper support from the rear (Adam found that a replacement bumper would cost nearly what he'd paid for the car), while Adam, Mark and I worked on shedding the door handles and latches and all the wiring behind the driver's seat. Mark had to leave early and I wasn't feeling well, so while I tried to catch up on sleep (and deal with some last-minute work issues) Adam relocated the fuel pump and pulled the fuel tank from under the car. We wrapped our Saturday up with what felt like minor  things to take care of before race day, but with the Demo Derby on the 5th, time would fly. It already felt like we'd spent hours and hours working on a car that would be trashed in twenty minutes.

One thing we wanted to do was route the exhaust through the hood for a more dramatic look, particularly at night. Mark took the header home with him and sectioned the pipe, while Adam prepared some spacers on a CNC machine so we could fit the header on the head upside-down. I picked up the header on Thursday night, and on Friday, Adam came by the shop and installed it, along with a new battery. That evening, I stayed late at the office while Carmine, who offered to use one of our ramp trucks to transport the car Sunday, practiced with the ramp body so he could be ready. We were getting enthusiastic.

However, when Saturday came, we were short on help; Isaac had made plans for the day, and Mark and his fiancée had plans for the weekend, so not only would they miss the final build day but the derby as well. Adam's father Rick brought a friend of his, Paul, who would weld the doors and trunk shut for us. Carmine stopped by and picked the car up with a forklift so we could weld the rear axle, critical for traction in the mud. With welding complete, Adam installed his battery box, lap belt, and fuel tank. We washed the car down before a lunch break, and when we got back, I took to the body with a few cans of Krylon, shooting the driver's door white and then fluorescent orange (to discourage other drivers from taking a direct shot at it). I touched up the rest of the body with a few cans of black paint, while Adam shot the rusted exhaust stack and wheels with silver. Adam finished tweaking under the hood and purging the coolant while I masked and painted numbers on the car, and as dark fell, we forged plans for the morning for the few things that remained.

It's never that simple. Adam, Isaac and I got to the shop around 9am Sunday, with a punch list of final checks taped to the door and even more to complete. Vacuum the car. Cover the windshield with chicken wire to keep errant parts out. Paint some "sponsors" and thank-yous on the fenders and doors and trunk. Cut a hole in the hood in case of an engine fire. Air up the tires. Chain down the engine. Check for last-minute leaks. Adam hadn't had time to find an air filter, so he tried tying a rag on the air intake, but it choked the car up too much to start. When Carmine finally arrived at 12:30 to pick up the car, we were still scrambling to see if we had time for another run to AutoZone.

We didn't. The car was ready to go, or at least as ready as it would ever be. We started winching it onto the car carrier when we noticed a slick of black where the car had been parked, leading up to the bed of the carrier. Fearing the worst, we waited for Adam to make his diagnosis; it was the power steering fluid, not oil, that had drained out of the car. We winched the car the rest of the way, took off for a change of clothes, supplies and girlfriends, and regrouped at an Irving station in Hooksett, NH. It was just past 1:20 when we hit the road. Cars could enter the fairgrounds no earlier than 2pm, so we figured we would be at the back of the inspection line by the time we got there.

Even the drive was a bit eventful, as one of the safety chains came loose on the flatbed in transit. Carmine couldn't hear his cell phone ringing in the truck, so I finally pulled ahead of him to wave him down so we could resecure the chain. We got rolling again, got caught up again, and exit 7 loomed ahead of us just as the clock struck 2:00. All this time, my heart was pounding. The mad rush to get on the road, watching the truck head into a hard right-hand onramp with a dangling chain clinking off the pavement, standing on the side of I-89 while we resecured the chain, then trying to get a sluggish flatbed truck back into highway traffic...all this coupled with the fear that some tiny issue would keep the car from making the show. Maybe they didn't like the remaining piece of the dashboard. Or maybe they thought the door welds were too limited, or the fuel tank wasn't in the right place, or the lap belt alone wasn't satisfactory. A local Caterpillar dealership was the staging point for demo-derby entrants, and I watched as Carmine and Adam peeled off at the dealership, one lonely demo-derby car in the parking lot being looked over. I drove past and wondered.

When Carmine's girlfriend called me to tell me that not only were they only the third or fourth car to arrive, but that we had passed preliminary inspection, I felt a lot of weight lift off me.

(Yes, we were that early. Mark it down; it might be the first time we've ever been early to anything without trying.)

The battle wasn't over yet, though. My girlfriend and I arrived at the fair and met up with our friends, but when we went to see the demo cars lining up for their respective heats, Car #944 was nowhere to be found. At last, I saw it, with the hood up, surrounded by inspectors. Hadn't we passed inspection already? Adam reseated the hood and backed up to the truck, suggesting something was off. We took the next few minutes to peruse the cars that had already passed inspection and were lining up. A lot of front-wheel drive Chevrolets and Pontiacs, a few Ford Escorts, but several Volvos, older and slightly-less-older. Most of the cars were fitted with tractor tires for better grip in the mud. A few looked like they had been wrecked already, and one of them was an obvious survivor from last year's derby. Our car would look like the best in show, but in some ways, it felt like we were outclassed.

We went back to the pulling arena, where we finally met up with Carmine. Carmine had talked to Adam; he had to relocate the fuel pump (again) and cover the fuel tank with rubber mats, but he would be able to race. Adam's father would be arriving a little later; since none of us were adequate mechanics, his dad would be his pit man for the evening. Sure enough, when we left the pulling arena, Adam had lined his car up for the third heat. He was drilling holes into the hood, wiring it down more than the four hood pins we installed would support it. But with that minor adjustment, he would be ready to go.

Chris, his girlfriend and her family had locked up a section of the grandstands for us, so we had time to peruse the fairgrounds a bit while we were killing time before the derby. We ran into Adam while getting some food; he was getting some fried dough before the race. Isaac thought he looked a bit nervous. I wasn't sure at the time, but I could understand if he was. I know I was.

Here's the thing. Through most of this, I've fallen back on the pronoun "we." In some ways, I feel a bit like I'm using it without deserving it. After all, I didn't drive the car. Adam drove it. Adam did most of the actual productive work on it. My monetary investment on the deal was some stencils and a few cans of Krylon; I painted some numbers on the doors, so what? But in the end, we all invested some kind of blood, sweat and/or tears in this project. It was Adam's car, but we were along for the ride, too. I don't think we had any delusions of winning it all, but we could all come away with the pride of having had a little part of getting Car #944 on the track. Adam and I talked Saturday about how, in these kinds of events, he looks forward to being asked if this is actually his first time in the competition, because it shows that he's done his research and came prepared. For Adam's sake, I wanted him to be able to walk away, win or lose, with that pride of knowing that he'd done his homework, that he'd come prepared, and that his hard work had been recognized. We were just a little responsible for that.

We watched the first and second heats of the demo derby with nervous anticipation. Partly, we were looking to see how the competition fared, and how to improve the car for next year. Two of the other Volvos went out early, one due to engine problems and one after a few repeated hits against the Jersey barriers. The second heat was dominated by three teammates who laid waste to the field, working together to take down each car in their way. After a car ruptured its fuel tank in the second heat, though, they had to regroom the course, leaving it a wet, muddy mess that spelled trouble for Adam's street tires.

At last, the cars filed onto the course for the third heat, Adam's heat. Our group chattered in anticipation, wondering what to yell in support of Adam. At last, the shiny, pristine-looking Car #944 rolled into view. For my money, it was the most striking car on the track. The driver's door was bright neon orange, brighter than any other car, the numbers sharply painted on each door and on the roof. Adam's dad's building company was stenciled onto one rear fender, Carmine's dad's company (and my employer) stenciled on the other, and the rear doors and hood were emblazoned with the name of The Stig, Adam's racing identity (lifted shamelessly from the "tame racing driver" who drives cars on BBC's "Top Gear," our favorite car TV show). When everyone in our group noticed that Adam had suited up in a white Alpinestars firesuit and full-face helmet (like the real Stig), they went wild.

And then Adam lined up against the wall, right where they'd had to patch up the track after the gas leak.

And then it started.

Early on, it was just survival. Adam's tires were no match for the recently-soaked mud, but after a while they found grip and got him moving. The other cars with tractor tires were moving around with ease, while Adam tried to get a few hits in and do some damage of his own. A couple hard shots to the front popped the wire on the right-front corner of the hood, and another shot to the nose left Adam's car steaming. The pessimist in me just knew it was all over, but with nothing to lose, Adam gave it hell, gave chase to another car, and did a little more damage, smoke pouring from the exhaust stack and filling the cockpit. A few more hits, and finally, #944 came to a stop with its back against the frontstretch wall, Adam reaching for the stick taped to his B-pillar to break it off. He was out. Car #944 was done.

The heat, however, wasn't, and so we watched as the last few cars cleaned up the field, a few of them bouncing into Adam's stalled car. Compared to some, the Volvo wasn't nearly as wrecked as it could have been, though if the drivetrain had held on, maybe it would have been. When the heat was over, Adam climbed from the car, walking Stig-like from the track (and saluting a few fans who apparently caught the Stig references).

We couldn't see Adam until after the feature was over, so when the feature wrapped up, we made our way to the back gate to sneak into the pits, where we greeted our champion with a slow clap. It turns out that something in the transmission had given out. That's all. The car had a little more fight left, but no way to put that power to the track. We went out, but given the circumstances, it was a good first effort. Plus, Adam was smiling, we were all smiling, and at the end of the day, that's all that really counts.

So that's our story. I could tell you the part about bringing the car home and cleaning the shop, but the calm after the storm is never as fun as the storm itself. What I can say is that it was a blast for everyone involved. Not just those of us who worked on the car, but those who got to watch from the stands, knowing that one of our own was out there giving his all to put on a show. Being involved in itself was an experience, one Isaac described as one of the craziest and yet most amazing things he's ever done. He's thinking about doing it himself next year, and his girlfriend's mulling it over, too. Adam...well, was there ever any question he'd be back next year? We all learned a lot about what has to be done, what can be done a little differently, and what it takes to win. Hopefully, we can put those lessons to good use.

I guess that means that next spring, we'll have to find a few more cars to build up to break them down again.

Pace Laps...

I feel as though, in order to kick this blog off in style, I'm obligated to write some kind of expository piece that sets a sort of baseline to the blog, something to tell the readers what to expect. Of course, this is a challenge, because frankly, I don't have any readers at this point, nor do I know what kind of audience is going to come along with time. This is the kind of entry that might only ever be read by my best friend and a really bored reader looking at past entries to see how far back this thing goes. But that's no reason to go about it halfheartedly, is it?

Truth be told, it's my best friend Carmine who steered me in this direction. I've been blogging for years, on and off, as inspiration (and a lack of censorship) allowed. I'd just never tailored a blog to one particular subject. Then Carmine asked why, with my love of auto racing, I hadn't started a NASCAR-related blog by now. He mentioned it more as the kind of thing that would start as a labor of love, and maybe progress to something with a following, an audience, maybe even actual media relevance. Now there's a dream I could buy into.

The name is something I'm sure readers will eventually try to read into, much as people guess that the "3" on my license plate is a Dale Earnhardt homage (which it isn't). It's actually an old name. Back in the late 1990s, I was part of a relatively active and closely-knit community of people playing "NASCAR Racing" for Macintosh. While the Windows gaming world got all the iterations of NASCAR games from Sierra and later EA Sports, the Mac community got a port of the original circa-1994 "NASCAR Racing," and that was it. The result was an active fan community that released converted tracks, designed current car sets to replicate the modern-era NASCAR teams, and even managed Mac-only league racing. I was part of that scene, designing cars and helping to share tracks people had converted. One of my antecedents had started a site called The Tri-Oval, and others shared similar names related to the track metaphor, so I called mine Turn Three. When it came to naming this blog, a quick search on Google turned up nothing for a motorsports blog named Turn Three, and so I borrowed from my own past. Back then, I actually did kind of pen some timely commentaries on NASCAR from my own rather naïve perspective, so you could say I was blogging on the subject of NASCAR way back then.

Yes, I've used the acronym NASCAR a lot. It's a trend that will continue through this blog. As far as motorsports are concerned, NASCAR is my primary interest. Ever since my dad talked me into buying that NASCAR plastic model in 1995, ever since we turned on the TV as I glued it together and watched a team trying to correct a pit-road blunder (I would later learn it was the 1995 Daytona 500), NASCAR has been the one sport that I actually care about. I follow the NASCAR news and the rumor mills and the insider chatter, and so most of my entries will be relative to the world of NASCAR. But, as a car lover, I can't exclude other forms of motorsports from my blog. If something amazing happens in the world of WRC or Formula 1 that deserves commentary, I'll write about it. Besides, we can learn so much from what happens outside of our own sphere of relevance. For instance, the Ferrari F1 debacle of a few weeks' ago (a team-orders gaffe that cast a temporary black eye on Ferrari) should make us talk about the notion of team orders in team-driven motorsports. And with my friends participating in grassroots motorsports of all sorts, I'd be remiss if their adventures didn't make their way to my blog, too.

So, who am I? In short, I'm a fan and nothing more. But, as those of you who don't already know me will surely find out, "in short" is not my style. I grew up in New Hampshire, and outside of four years spent in upstate New York getting an education, I've lived here all my life. I started following NASCAR in 1995, when building a plastic model of Geoff Bodine's #15 Ford led me to watch a few races on TV. I'd never been a fan of any sport, so for the first time, my father and I had a sport we could enjoy together. That summer marked my first trip to the race track, a rain-shortened afternoon at New Hampshire International Speedway, but despite the rain and the lightning, I was hooked. And as with most subjects that intrigue me, I sought an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport. It wasn't enough to know who won the Daytona 500 in 1995. I wanted to know who won it for ten years prior. And I wanted to know everything about the minor leagues of auto racing, the divisions where tomorrow's stars cut their teeth and where today's hopefuls made their careers while hoping for that big break. Over the years, NASCAR has remained my true love in motorsports, but as my best friends have introduced me to new forms of motorsports, I've come to appreciate each form for the special challenges they offer.

At times, I'll call myself an "outsider." I read a fair number of message forums, some of which are frequented by men and women who are clearly "in the know." They're track announcers, crew members, media liaisons, and so forth, people who know what's happening because they make it happen. I'm just a fan. So when the conversation calls for it, I'll present myself as an outsider, to make it clearer that all I can offer is opinion or observation. I'm content with that, though. There are plenty of people to report the news; I'd rather analyze it.

But enough said on the who and the why. It's time for commentary. As a real motoring journalist, Jeremy Clarkson, has said ad nauseam, "How hard can it be?"