Dusty Times - Issue 04

TOP DEAD CENTER

Poised for maximum ignition, a piston at top dead center embodies peak potential energy. Charged with anticipation, what’s next is inconsequential. It’s the act of “go” that we harness now. The combustion of fuel injection, a hulking lurch of machinery forward across the earth, a head-first dive into the abyss of an unknown new normal—these are what our ready eyes fixate on as we emerge from the tumult of 2020. We each had our experiences and we all have our shit. We now move forward with everything from battle scars to renewed appreciation for things we took for granted. Whatever our fuel, once top dead center is reached, there’s no turning back. Combustion will be unleashed. So strap in, hold on and enjoy the ride.

The 3/8-inch angle iron that rings his team’s reinforced truck is pushing up too far under the front bumper, into the engine. Kinnane seems more worried about chinks in the armor of the welded framework built into the 1977 Dodge Ram Charger than the 383 engine itself. Engines come and go. They’ve blown up four in five seasons spent racing the marquee Demo Cross event of the Perris Auto Speedway’s curious Night of Destruction race series.

To survive the 20 full-contact laps of one Demo Cross race—open to any vehicle and any 18-year-old racer with a driver’s license and helmet—let alone multiple seasons, you must prepare and adapt. The Kinnanes added heft with solid pneumatic forklift tires, and flipped over the exhaust system protruding up out of the hood to stop any leaks from catching fire, “plus they’re our Ram’s horns,” as Kinnane puts it. Still, the warped front end is worrisome.

“We hit one car and it bent good,” he says. “And the boats out there are really solid— that’s what it succumbed to at the last race.”

Wait, did you say boats?

Yes. The Demo Cross isn’t just about trying to avoid other cars in the counterclockwise dash around the quarter-mile clay oval. The race without rules also features a minefield of obstacles littered around the track, from 55-gallon drums of water and tractor tires to retired boats and decrepit Jet Skis.

“Every lap is a crapshoot,” says Scott McPhail, wrenching across the back pit area on his armored 1977 Buick Skylark. “You come around one time and the boat’ll be here, come around next time and it’s over here, there’s a car now—it’s not like you can find a good line and keep it because the track changes, every lap, every corner.

“If you can make it to the end,” he says. “You’ve got a shot.”

Some cars, however, don’t even make it to the start of the Demo Cross finale thanks to the Saturday evening festivities. In the leadup, a handful of drivers race and risk their destruction machines in other classes where survival is equally the point, from the chaotic open-class Figure 8 races to Trailer Figure 8s. Objective: Finish race with a minimum 10-foot-length trailer attached; attempt to separate trailers from competitor vehicles.

Both of Greg Schattilly’s sons, Michael and Douglass, are lining up for the trailer race. He watches the start from the edge of the general admission bleachers. But he doesn’t get a chance to join the hundreds of fans packed into the grandstands, eager for the racing that begins as dusk takes hold and the track lights up. The sun also seems to be setting on the pandemic: The concessions are finally open once again; masks are off, nacho cheese and cold beer is flowing; and the Fourth of July weekend fervor is buzzing as beach balls bounce through a restless crowd, eager for carnage. Schattlily can’t stick around for the outcome, his heat is up next in the Mini Stock event.

This “no rules” race is also a bit different—open to any 4-cylinder U.S. or foreign 2- or 4-door hardtop car, nothing turbo-charged or with all-wheel drive—racing a road course that wraps into the infield where spinning, pushing, blocking and hitting competitors is encouraged. The broad entry guidelines and $50 registration yield a lineup that’s all over the map, from cars like Schattilly’s Honda Civic that looks straight out of the impound lot, to resuscitated hearses and cars modified with custom shark fins.

It’s far from the most different, however. That mantle belongs to the Double Decker class, featuring one car bolted in at least three places to the roof of any front- or rear-wheel drive vehicle with a stock engine. The catch is that the steering stays connected, too: The driver in the top car does the steering, while the driver in the bottom car operates gas and brakes, without any communication between the two.

“For turns, he’ll let off the throttle for a bit, the minimum amount we need to get through a turn,” says Michael Berna, who steers a Godzilla-themed Pontiac Grand Am bolted atop a 2002 Cadillac Coupe de Ville controlled by his father Daryll. “Or if it’s slipping, I’ll counter-turn the other way, you just have to feel it.”

For the so-dubbed Team Cadzilla, it’s all about balance: Turn tight enough so they can’t pass on the inside; but not wide enough to turn over. For their chief rival competitors, the Green Machine, the strategy is less nuanced.

“Go fast and don’t let anyone pass,” says JD Abbott, who drives in the hollowed-out, top-side “deathtrap” of the Green Machine. His gas-and-brakes racing partner, Ryan Harrison, notes that staying in front as long as possible is necessary when you’re racing an inline 4-cylinder in a field of V8s.

Staying scrapy is a necessity—the car...err cars...belong to the speedway, where Race Director Rick ‘Coach’ Fulton is tasked with assembling a handful of entries in the Franken-fleet, some more top-heavy than others.

“Donnie [Kazarian, track owner] had a dream and he told me I was building ’em,” explains Coach, the gray-bearded elder at the track, responsible for everything from dirt track prep, facilities maintenance to officiating the races. “I said, ‘What?’ Because I can weld, and I’ve also raced, but I will not race something that I weld.”

For that, the track put out a Facebook post that they had car-topped cars but needed some double-drivers. Abbott and Harrison, a pair of friends in the early 20s from nearby Hemet, answered the call. And their primary M.O.— staying rowdy—has yielded a last-man-standing win, plus a couple spectacular crashes during this series that runs roughly once a month throughout the summer and fall.

Tonight is no different. In the fight for second place on the final lap, the Caddy noses Green Machine, causing its front to drift, topple and flip it once over, ending Abbott and Harrison’s night, despite the “Green Ma-chine!” crowd cheers for the obvious underdogs.

The word is out on the Double Deckers, and another father-and-son duo from other distant points around inland Southern California has shown up with a build of their own. Eric Evans and his son Chris found out about this quirky event five days ago and moved quickly to mount a Honda Civic with a smashed front end onto a police interceptor Crown Victoria—scrambling to strip out parts and figure out the intricacies of the DIY steering linkage.

“I had no idea what to expect—we’re kind’ve winging it,” he says. For the Double Decker race’s 12 reverse, clockwise laps, however, the Evans crew looked on the same page, controlling the race from beginning to end. “I put my faith in my son and hope he steers out of it,” Evans says. “And he’s trusting I’m going to go when he expects I’m going to go. It’s a lot of trust but nobody I’d rather do it with than my son.”

Once the dust finally settles on the 16 racers (only about half of which finish the full 20 laps) it’s family ties that James Kinnane’s little brother, 25-year-old Austin, credits for his big win driving the fortified No. 17 truck. Returning in victory, he revs the Ram’s horns through the darkened pits, looking like a post-apocalyptic mess of parts, cigarette smoke and gas fumes wafting as the impromptu firework shows pop off in the distance. Kinnane emerges from the window with a fist pump, pointing out the luck in wearing his grandfather Tom’s race suit.

“I won my last race in this suit, so I was like ‘let’s put it back on and see if I can win another,’” he says, also pointing out the luck in finding a proper race line, and jumping a couple boats and tires he didn’t see coming. “I launched off of it, it didn’t spin me out.”

He also credits the fortifications of the truck, learning lessons and working with his family to make the tweaks to sustain the hits that would’ve broken it a couple years ago. The $500 prize is an afterthought. Around the pit, there’s few hard feelings in the crashes, mainly collective breaths of relief in surviving whatever that was that just happened. They show the unified binds to take risks and to come out the other side in one piece—or in many. Amidst the piles of ripped metal, twisted tires, and seemingly senseless destruction, there’s a much thicker binding agent at play.

In the grand scheme of things the purse is small, there are no team sponsors, and little to no concept of planning too far ahead. Families and friends find fellowship in building and breaking and building again. It’s about throwing out the rule book and celebrating the community of shared tools and clouds of dust.

Even Matt Burrows knows it. The Santa Ana handyman first showed up to the race series in “his daily driver,” kicked out the window at the track and with minimal protection, competed in the Demo Cross. Though he’s since made a few upgrades (mesh windshield; fortified bumper), his Demo Cross race ended with a snapped driveshaft and a tow off the track. He’ll be back with a few lessons learned next month.

“This is the best bad decision I’ve ever made,” he says.