By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
They came, they saw, they smashed fenders, bumpers and radiators.
Doors and grills, too.
Fear not, it was for a good time.
“It’s all about having fun,” said Will Zak, a Concord driver who participated Wednesday evening in the first-ever Figure 8 race at the Rowan County Agricultural Fair.
Zak was driving a ’68 Chrysler that resembled hardly one iota the big American monolith it was when it rolled off a Detroit assembly line more than 40 years ago. Fenders, doors and hood were virtually nonexistent.
So was paint.
Zak grinned as he surveyed his competition, a collection of equally demolished foreign and domestic models that had ó to put it in polite terms ó seen better days.
“You can’t take this but just so seriously,” Zak announced, standing at attention in his car’s floorboard as the national anthem blared through a distant loudspeaker. As he stood, Zak’s body protruded through a space once reserved for the vehicle’s windshield.
Steam, mud and barely-running junkers were the order of the evening as 29 cars ó divided almost equally between eight- and four-cylinder varieties ó took to the fairground’s racetrack.
The track measured about 50 yards long and another 50 yards wide, all of which was surrounded by big concrete barricades. At each end of the track was a huge truck tire around which racers had to navigate.
Before the affair began, the track was soaked by members of the South Salisbury Fire Department.
The end result was … well, let’s put it this way … any pigs being shown as part of the fair’s livestock competition would have had the time of their lives if they’d been turned loose on the track.
Salisbury’s Kevin Yates drove his ’77 Chevrolet Caprice station wagon in the competition. He’d painted ó fear not, Macco, your business is not in danger ó the car a flat black. Across the hood Yates lettered in white, “The Beast.”
“Until two weeks ago, this thing hadn’t been cranked since 1993,” Yates said, leaning proudly against his Figure 8 ride.
Still, Yates maintained that preparing a car for the competition wasn’t as easy as some might imagine.
“Anybody who thinks it’s just knock the glass out, they’re wrong,” he said, referring to the racers, none of which included anything more than windshields. “The more you do to get your car ready, the longer it’s going to last.”
Heat races were divided between four- and eight-cylinder classes. Cars had to loop the northern-most tire, then make a figure-eight return around the truck tire on the south end of the track. Heat races consisted of 10 laps. Drivers wore helmets. Speeds were not excessive.
Collisions brought enthusiastic cheers from the hundreds of spectators. Churning through the mud only added to the spirit of a good time.
Prize money wasn’t going to encourage drivers to retire. The winner in the eight-cylinder competition took home $400. The four-cylinder winner fetched $300.
When speaking to drivers prior to the start of the races, Matt Groeschi, one of the organizers, encouraged everyone involved to keep the spirit of the event in perspective.
“You’re allowed to bump, grind and bump into the back of the car in front of you,” he said. “Still, we don’t want a (demolition) derby to break out. This is fun. If you want to keep doing it, you can’t get hurt.”
Drivers seemed to take the advice to heart.
Del Stewart, the uncle of NASCAR great Tony Stewart and likely the biggest name in Wednesday’s competition, acknowledged as much.
“I’m 65 years old,” he said. “If I was worried about getting hurt, I wouldn’t be out here.”
The evening’s first race involved V-8 models. For the most part, the cars spewed and bellowed like a Tyrannosaurus Rex must have sounded when it wandered accidentally into a tar pit.
By race’s end, three of the eight cars were corpses, mired helplessly in mud, their tires spinning, engines steaming.
The four-cylinder racers seemed to navigate the track more efficiently, scurrying about like so many hyperactive lightning bugs on a warm summer night.
“We just came out to play in the mud,” said Theresa Hunkapiller, who accompanied her boyfriend, one of the racers.
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A film crew from The Versus Channel was on hand to film Wednesday’s races. Crew members said the episode may be aired at 11 p.m. Monday on Time-Warner Cable as part of “Quest for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.”