5 Flags Speedway: Milton's Dylan Merritt looks to defend his Demolition Derby crown on Friday
Cars slip, sliding away on the damp asphalt of Five Flags Speedway. Smoke engulfing the front straightaway. The sounds of metal twisting and colliding violently. A standing-room only crowd pressing close to the action. Smoke … lots and lots of smoke.
Those are just some of the sights and sounds in store tonight at Five Flags as the track’s annual Demolition Derby returns with four features in the Outlaws, Pro Trucks, Sportsmen and Pure Stocks. Gates open at 5 p.m. today and admission is just $10. Children ages 11-and-under still get in for free.
Milton’s Dylan Merritt looks to defend his a “Demo Derby” title, this time behind the wheel of a 1997 Lincoln Town Car with a small block Chevrolet motor under the hood.
“If you have any feelings, leave them at house,” said Merritt, a Demo Derby veteran of nearly a decade. “This is just a bunch of dudes with a lotta aggression who are ready to let it out and have fun.”
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Demo Derby rules are intricate and focus on safety with all drivers wearing helmets and door hits being banned. There will be about a dozen or a few more cars staged in front and behind the start-finish line. Boundaries are marked with five-gallon drums and the track is wet down as a precautionary measure to prevent fires after hard collisions. The goal is simple: Be the last car running, the last man standing and walk away with the $1,500 in cash.
Merritt has won a handful of derbies, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who ran every single Demo Derby at Five Flags from the 1970s through the 1990s. He believes a strategy can be found in the heap of the crunch bunch.
“You definitely pick your shots,” Merritt said. “You always go for hits where it counts. You don’t wanna waste a hit and do more damage to your car. Try to go for tires, axels and not waste your time on a door hit. If you hit somebody the right way, their car will be done for.”
Even when he is not building a Demo Derby car, Merritt never stops working on anything with an “internal combustion engine that makes noise.” He mostly works these days on mid-60s-to-mid-70s era Ford Broncos at Velocity Restorations in Cantonment.
Last year, Merritt won the Demo Derby in an ’87 Mercury Grand Marquis, which also had a small block Chevy motor. At first, he didn’t realize he had won because so much was still going on.
“Cars are moving, so much smoke, so many noises,” Merritt described. “I finally looked around and didn’t see anybody getting hit and I realized I won. That’s when it got fun.
“It would mean a lot to win again this year. We really do put a lotta work into these cars. Hopefully, we have the car to be competitive and seal the deal. But, really we do it more for the fun. It’s the most amount of fun you can have around here … legally.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Milton's Dylan Merritt looks to repeat in Demolition Derby at 5 Flags
