Derby drivers are ready for vehicle demolition

“The Undertaker” visited Sonora last year and did its grim work, carrying Brian Holt of Ceres to the championship of the Mother Lode Fair Destruction Derby. File Photo/Union Democrat

He’ll enter a 1975 Cadillac Coupe deVille and drive it into the arena of the Mother Lode Fairgrounds, put his foot on the brake, glance every which way at about a dozen other automobiles ... and then wait.

“You get real nervous,” said Holt, 35. “At the beginning of the week, the nerves aren’t so bad. But towards the weekend, you’re anxious, excited and then just before you see the green (starter’s) flag, your nerves are raw. There is no way to prepare for it until you get out there.”

Welcome to the Annual Sonora Destruction Derby.
   

“I’ll have major butterflies,” says Troy Brown, 37, of Sonora, who will drive a 1973 Chevy Caprice Classic. “Before I go out there, I feel like I’m gonna puke. It’s the fear of the unknown. You don’t know what will happen. But once they drop that flag, the adrenaline starts and the nervousness goes away.”

And once the derby commences, so begins the uninterrupted battering of machine into machine.

The rules of this sport are quite simple, if not a bit medieval:

No. 1. Annihilate all your opponents’ autos into a motionless, useless shredded piece of scrap.

No. 2. Be the driver of the final car that’s still running.

“Once you get hit, or deliver a hit, then it’s all fun,” says Holt. “You’ll want to keep hitting again. Dangerous? Nah. The worst I’ve ever heard is a broken arm. And I’ve just seen one or two of them in my 20 years of doing this.”

“I’ve been doing this for 10 years,” says Brown, “and in my second year, I broke my finger and I have a plate and five screws in that finger now. Two years ago at Sonora, I broke four ribs. But I love it. I enter two of these a year and it’s a special time where I just get to tear it up.”

Holt is one of four brothers known collectively as “Fat Boys, Inc.” The self-given, good-natured nickname is derived from the Holts being big-boned. For example, David Holt is 5-foot-8, 400 pounds.

“But I am trying to lose some,” he mentions.

Last year, Brian Holt took first place in the Sonora Destruction Derby, Brandon Holt second and David third.

“The Holt brothers are serious competitors,” said David Owsley, the coordinator of the Derby. “They do this just about every weekend and they’re very good.”

The entry fee for Sonora’s derby is $100. First place is worth $1,000.

“It’s what I call a ‘medium-safe sport,’ “ says David Holt. “For instance, when your car gets smacked from behind, that’s not too bad. It’s the hits you’re not expecting — the one’s you don’t see coming — that can hurt.”

Win or lose, says Holt, “by the end of the competition on Sunday, my Cadillac will look like a Pinto.”

Brown shares such certainty.

“By the end of the night,” he said, “my car is gonna get hammered.”