A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to stumble upon Car Wars, a “contact encouraged” racing event held every Friday night in August at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough, Maine. Living on the other side of the country, I suddenly found myself very envious of Maine’s residents. That’s when I came to the realization that I’d never been to a demolition derby.
Looking to remedy this chasm in my soul, I started researching local demo derby events around Los Angeles and came across Irwindale Speedway’s Night of Destruction events. As luck would have it, there was one coming up in just a few days. After corralling some friends and family, we nabbed tickets online and headed out to the track.
Thrills and Mayhem
Although the demolition derby is what drew me to the Night of Destruction, the proceedings proved to have a substantially wider scope. The theme stays consistent, though: automotive thrills, competition, and mayhem.
Six different events comprised this particular Night of Destruction. Things got underway in the late afternoon with a 30-lap NASCAR Super Stocks race around Irwindale’s half-mile oval. Although Super Stocks is a traditional stock car racing division (i.e. contact is discouraged), the close quarters of Irwindale’s oval meant that the racing was intense, rife with competitors trading paint and testing the limits of grip through the corners—making for some of the most exciting oval racing I’ve seen.
The second event of the night was the Enduro race. Run in a third-mile configuration that takes cars through the infield of Irwindale’s track, Enduro proved to be a cross between traditional racing and demolition derby. With more than 30 competitors fighting for position, while contending with the course’s various bottlenecks—which are purposely configured to encourage chaos—Enduro was perhaps my favorite events of the night.
Enduro races are run in two heats of 15 laps, with one driver change. The noble racing machines of this event are essentially $500 compact cars plucked off eBay, that are then gutted out and have a basic roll cage welded in. If you find yourself thinking “Whoa, I could totally do that,” you’re not alone. Here’s hoping I get a chance to shunt you in a few years.
Check out this awesome in-car video from the race-winning No.32 Dodge Neon of Dean Ekas:
Next up was NASCAR Late Models. Similar to Super Stocks, Late Model runs on the half-mile oval at high speeds. These beasts feature 600+ horsepower V8s in cars that weigh about 2,700 pounds. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly as much power as a Dodge Challenger Hellcat in a car that weights about as much as a Mazda Miata. These cars are no joke.
When you combine high speeds, close quarters, and that kind of power-to-weight ratio, you can bet there’s going to be some destruction, as Jeff Williams illustrates here on the 8th lap of the main event. Two other cars would DNF from the incident along with Williams:
Here is the in car video of last nights wreck.
Posted by Jeff Williams on Sunday, September 6, 2015
Skid Plate racing was up next, and this is where the night really began to shift into wall-to-wall destructive mania. Many of the competitors from the Enduro race also ran in the Skid Plate event.
Much like Enduro, the event is run in a traditional race format, but here’s the key difference: the rear tires on these front-wheel drive cars are replaced with metal plates that cause the back ends of these cars to slide all over the track, while shooting a stream of sparks out behind them. Since the racers are essentially ice skating on asphalt, there was no lack of spinouts, bumping, and crashing to keep the drivers (and crowd) on their toes.
Now, Finally the Demolition
Then came time the demolition derby. Since Irwindale’s track doesn’t have the space required for an additional dirt arena for the derby, the havoc unfolds in the infield of the oval, which is hosed down with water to reduce traction. The types of cars used for the demolition derbies varies depending on the particular night, and tonight the vehicles of choice were another group of compacts.
Since these cars don’t have the dimensions of 1970s domestics, there isn’t as much empty space in them to absorb the impacts. But their FWD layout has an inherent advantage in that they can remain functional without the back end of the car—there’s nothing back there that makes the vehicle go or turn. So as long as the front of the car stays protected, these cars can take quite a beating.
While the demolition derby was a blast, and certainly scratched that itch for sheer automotive carnage, the night’s final event was the one that took things over the top.
Trailer Racing pits competitors of various sizes and shapes against one another—some towing boats, others with full trailers behind them—in a Thunderdome of racing lunacy. As if the addition of the trailers didn’t add enough craziness to the mix, the carcasses of the cars from the demo derby are strewn around the infield of the track, and as the racing unfolded, these cars quickly became strategic blockades for the competitors to use against one another.
It wasn’t long before the majority of the towed cargo was reduced to tinder and strewn all across the track. A Ford pickup did at least half a dozen laps cocooned in half of a shredded camper shell. We still have no idea how he could see where he was going. Other cars showered the course with sparks as their tires disintegrated into ash. By the end—it’s no wonder this is the final event of the night—the race course looked like it had been bombed. A tremendous way to bookend an awesome night.
Tickets to the Night of Destruction are $10—and sure as hell beats sitting in a movie theater for two hours. The beer is cheap. The food is surprisingly good. The people are nice. All of these things play against established norms of life in Los Angeles in the best possible way.
But if you want to check out Irwindale Speedway’s Night of Destruction, you better act fast. There are only two more Night of Destruction events scheduled for 2015, and once the race season is over, it’s over: Irwindale Speedway is being torn down in 2016 to make way for an outlet mall.
