Caleb Leff didn’t realize his car was on fire.
As he drifted and skidded around the muddy racetrack that had been built into the stadium, race staff spotted an orange glow coming from just above his hood.
“Get an extinguisher! Get out of the car!” Eric Olsen called from above the announcer’s booth at the Cache County Fairgrounds’ outdoor arena.
Quickly, Leff scrambled out the window and away from the vehicle, putting distance between himself and the stripped-down 4-cylinder as race staff charged the vehicle, armed with fire extinguishers and urgency.
This is Trash Car Racing, the combative motorsport that’s been thundering through northern Utah for a decade. Think of it as a mix between NASCAR and demolition derby.
And this was Leff’s first time.
The workers doused the entire scene in white flame retardant as they sprayed it all over the hood of Leff’s red, white and blue car.
Around the track, other drivers revved their engines from where they had paused mid-lap during the July 18 race.
“He was literally in the hot seat!” Olsen, the announcer, called to the cheering crowd. “Hey, that’s what happens when you try to light up while you’re driving and you drop it!”
Leff lifted his arms for the screaming audience, looked at his freshly extinguished car — and hopped back in.
Taking the wheel
Every summer, the league holds races in Cache and Box Elder counties, turning fairground arenas into racetracks lined with thick piles of mud to stop careening cars.
But to Curtis Morrison, the race’s operations manager, this year has felt different.
Shortly before the beginning of the season, Wayne West — the creator of the rambunctious race — died.
“My best friend, Wayne West, started Trash Car,” Morrison said. “He was just the biggest Evel Knievel fan anybody’s ever met, so he was always jumping cars, jumping bikes, jumping motorcycles — you name it.”
Years before the first green flag ever waved on a Trash Car race, Morrison said West moved from his home in Cache Valley to Oregon, where he promoted demolition derbies and jumped automobiles over other cars as halftime entertainment.
Eventually, West found his way back to Utah in the early 2000s. In 2016, Morrison said West wanted to combine two things he loved — demolition derbies and stock car racing. Thus, Trash Car Racing was born.
The point of the race is to win, rather than just smash into other cars. At the same time, drivers can smack into one another as they try to get ahead.
For a decade, Morrison said the sport has steadily gained traction. After West died in March, Morrison found himself behind the wheel of the growing racing league.
“There’s times when I just want to call him up and say, ‘Hey, you know, what are we going to do here?’” Morrison said. “Then I’ve just got to stop and think about what would Wayne do?”
He chuckled about the sentiment.
“I have learned to love it like he had created it to be loved,” he said.
‘Poor man’s sport’
Morrison isn’t alone in his respect for the mufflerless motorsport.
The allure of the event stretches beyond checkered flags and battered bumpers — it’s one of the cheapest ways someone can get involved in the notoriously expensive world of automotive racing.
All it takes is a one-time $30 driver fee, a cheap 4- or 6-cylinder car — and a little bit of industriousness.
Drivers are required to strip the vehicles of glass, airbags, plastics, and other components that could become dangerous given the repetitive impact their cars will face.
Then, they have to install a roll cage, attach a four-point harness to the driver’s seat, chain or bolt their hood closed, and weld their trunk and driver door closed.
“Safety’s got to be number one,” Morrison said.
Many of the clunkers are also outfitted with custom paint jobs, done to various degrees of care and detail. Race fans can expect to see crudely spray-painted beaters battling with the likes of Lightning McQueen.
Despite the high-contact nature of the racing, drivers keep cars running for several years, constantly fixing the trash vehicles as they are further crumpled and dented.
“We call it a poor man’s sport, just because they do everything they can to skimp and save, and it’s just amazing,” Morrison said.
Trail to trash cars
The race’s accessibility also means the sport brings in a wide range of competitors, though many are unsurprisingly comfortable with a wrench, welder, or angle grinder in their hand.
Brandon Smith and his kids, who are in their young teens to early 20s, started racing trash cars just last year, only weeks after they first laid eyes on the octane-driven spectacle.
His kids asked if they could become drivers.
“I said, ‘Yeah, you can do that, because if you can do that, then your mom will be OK if I do that,” Smith said.
They started with two trash cars and have steadily built a Mario Kart-themed fleet.
Other racers have found the gift of Trash Car Racing through a literal gift.
Colin Curtis — who races in the 6-cylinder division with his stripped-down Dodge Avenger — said he got his first trash car as a Father’s Day gift from his wife, Whitney Curtis.
“It got me hooked instantly,” he said. “I’ve been to almost every single race ever since.”
Flaming Finish
Leff — whose car caught fire on his first night racing — said he got into the sport because he was searching for a chance to race, and only found it in the driver’s seat of his trash car.
“I’ve just seen it over the years, and I’ve always been kind of interested in it,” he said. “I grew up at the drag races in California, so it’s kind of hard.”
Boasting experience from other kinds of racing, he was itching to get on the track — and felt a fundamental principle was the same across all racing.
“You ain’t first, you’re last,” he said, taking a line from Will Ferrell’s character in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”
Later, clutching his helmet just outside the arena, Leff glanced toward the spot where he’d leapt out of his car only minutes before.
After the first fire was extinguished, he hadn’t made it far until flames once again rolled under his hood, and the race was again paused as safety officials scrambled to extinguish the blaze.
“Dude, I had a blast,” he said. “I wasn’t scared at all.”
He didn’t finish the race, but he’d won his earlier heat. And he’ll definitely be back.
The next Trash Car race will be on Aug. 15 at the Cache County Fairgrounds.
