NC State Fair demolition derby draws gluttons for punishment

The annual demolition derby at the N.C. State Fair next weekend will bring catharsis for those who have ever been tempted to rear-end another car in traffic. For the drivers themselves, though, the events will only slake their thirst for a spell.

Meager prize money doesn’t come close to explaining why regular entrants drive hours each weekend to engage in a dirty dance that almost always ends in physical pain and financial plunder. For them, demo derby is a fix that must be fed, and the only antidote is more impact.

Adrian “Streaker” Lasater, a 41-year-old facility manager with Wake County schools who has been driving demo since he was 14, knows the feeling all too well.

A few years ago, Lasater put a new engine and transmission into a ’74 Chevy Impala and took it for a test run around the perimeter of his 3-acre property in Garner. There wasn’t another soul in the yard. Cruising along the perimeter, he spotted a ’92 Lincoln Town Car he had just acquired. It was so fresh the windows were still in it. The temptation was just too much. He turned the wheel.

“I hit it wide open, and I destroyed it,” Lasater said, adding that the Town Car probably would have sold for $2,000 before the hit. “But I was tickled to death about what I’d built – it was good.”

The origins of demolition derby are the subject of debate, with most accounts tracing the first events back to county fairs in the 1950s. But people have been smashing machines together as long as there have been machines. The bigger, the better. At the 1913 California State Fair, two steam locomotives were famously pitted against each other in a staged head-on collision.

Over the years, the vehicles have gotten lighter and less defensible because of fuel efficiency mandates, but the basic objective has stayed the same: Outlast everyone else.

“Demolition derby comes down to two things: the right vehicle and experience,” said Lasater, who won last year’s eight-cylinder heat at the fair against nearly two dozen other drivers. Lasater, a Raleigh native, said his vehicle of choice – a ’97 Toyota Camry – factored heavily.

“I’ve seen them hold up before,” he said. “The motor runs good, and the axles hold up.” The car was a donor from a local auto dealer. Lasater invested about $250 for a new battery and a fuel pump. He won $600 for his effort; this year, he’s passing on the State Fair to go after a richer purse at a derby in Virginia.

For the 21 other drivers in the event, it was a lose-lose proposition. Few sports boast a worse return on investment. Demolition derby is depreciation at speed. You can sink a couple thousand dollars into a used car to get it derby-ready, only to watch it get hauled off for scrap.

At the very least, every entrant must remove the windows, carpets, and any airbags and exterior chrome, and wire the hood shut. Many will go beyond this by welding an interior steel cage to the frame for protection, relocating the battery to the back seat and rerouting the exhaust pipe through the floor or the roof. Some will even add a new engine and tires. You can spend a fortune and still get knocked out if a single piece of equipment falters. Lasater said he saw a car with $20,000 in it last only eight minutes when its steering box broke at a recent event in Kentucky.

Even with the right car, you can run yourself out of it. That’s where experience comes in. Possessed by the urge to merge, many drivers push the pedal to the floor and leave it there. They either burn out their engines or burn out themselves.

To win at demolition derby, you have to be aggressive, but selectively so. The rules dictate that you have to make a hit every 60 seconds – most drivers mount a timer on their dashboard to keep track – and some derbies can last an hour. Given this, the smart play is to avoid the veterans, tangle with the rookies, and bide your time waiting for the big hit. The kill shot.

“Every car has a weakness,” Ken Harvey, 40, likes to say. A union iron worker, Harvey spends his weekdays constructing buildings and bridges. But come every weekend, it’s his turn to take things apart.

When he’s not driving, Harvey watches hours of videotape from his past events, taking notes on how certain car models are taken out. “It’s kind of an obsession,” he said.

Harvey brought a pink Chevy Lumina to Raleigh last year from his home in Cattaraugus, N.Y., “COME AT ME, BRO” playfully spray-painted on the hood by his daughter, who is also a demolition derby driver. She donated the car to the cause after the fuel pump broke at another derby.

“She gave it to me on one condition,” he said. “I leave it pink.” Harvey went on to win the preliminary six-cylinder passenger heat before running over debris and breaking his transmission in the Sunday final.

Even when derby drivers lose, they still count their blessings if they can at least walk away. Promoters make every entrant paint the driver’s door white to mark it as off limits, and they water down the dirt track to keep speeds down. In addition, drivers are taught to break a flag mounted on their driver door to let others know when their vehicles are disabled.

But no matter how many safety precautions you take, you’re probably going to get your bell rung in the best case. Running back LaDainian Tomlinson once told “60 Minutes” that playing in the NFL was like being in 20 car crashes every season. With demolition derby, there is no “like.” At the N.C. State Fair, promoter JM Productions makes every entrant and pit visitor sign a release that cites the possibility of “death” three times and demands the signee acknowledge that: “THE ACTIVITIES OF THE EVENT(S) ARE VERY DANGEROUS.” Those words are there for a reason: Last summer, at least two were killed at demolition derby events, both in Utah, and many others were hospitalized.

Shannon Goode arrived at the 2013 N.C. State Fair after breaking three ribs at another derby just two months earlier. During his first run, another car caught the 46-year-old sideways, shot his left arm through the steering wheel and snapped it. He went to the emergency room – but only after the 10-hour drive back home to New York. “It just seemed easier that way,” Goode said.

At a derby in Montgomery County one year, Lasater delivered a cross-track hit that compromised another vehicle but bruised his kidneys and nearly knocked him unconscious. He was wearing a helmet and a neck brace at the time. He has also dislocated his shoulder, which he says pops back out from time to time when he’s working on his vehicles.

It used to be Lasater was eager to get right back in the garage the morning after a derby, but these days he needs a little more recovery time. He recently decided not to drive compacts anymore, because it’s just too risky. “You know, I’ve gotta be able to go to work,” he said.

But when Lasater finally hangs up his keys for the last time, he’ll have a trophy room full of accolades to revisit along with the memories, if not a bigger bank account. His proudest moments have been the times he won a Mad Dog trophy along with first prize. The award goes to an event’s most aggressive driver and earns you the respect of your competitors. The Mad Dog is demolition derby’s seal of approval.

“Winning is nice, but when you win both, everybody knows you drove as hard as you could, that you gave it everything,” Lasater said. “Those moments don’t ever go away.”

This story was originally published October 17, 2015 at 4:23 PM with the headline "NC State Fair demolition derby draws gluttons for punishment."