Great races deserve great champions. The roll call of those who have won the Turkey Night Grand Prix, one of midget racing’s touchstone events, contains some pretty good ones: Vukovich and Parsons, Jones and Foyt, Kenyon and Shuman, Boat and Stewart. Last Thursday, Dave Darland joined the club. His name doesn’t just belong on the list; it brings the whole group up a notch.
Darland, out of Lincoln, Ind., has been going in circles since 1983, coming of age in the sprint cars owned by his late father, Bob. He stayed too close to home a bit too long, so the rest of Motorsports America was late in discovering how special he was, but they sure know by now. You could say that Darland has won a few big things: the Hoosier Hundred (1995, ’96 and 2004), the Tony Bettenhausen 100 at DuQuoin (1997, ’99 and 2003), the Western World Championship at Manzanita (2005), the Oval Nationals at Perris (2005 and ’06), the Belleville Midget Nationals (1999 and 2002), Eldora’s 4-Crown Nationals in sprints, midgets and Silver Crown cars. He is one of only four men who can boast of having won championships in all three of USAC’s national divisions. If he was inclined to boast, that is.
According to Kevin Eckert, the most reliable statistician in the game, Darland had won 178 features before he showed up at Irwindale on Thanksgiving. Well, his 179th was a dandy. He is supposed to be a dirt specialist, but that certainly didn’t show on the Irwindale blacktop. Darland drove Steve Lewis’s No. 9 into the lead on the third of the 98 laps, and at the checkered flag he was so far in front of runner-up Kasey Kahne and third-place man Bobby East that they may as well have finished in Pasadena. He had joined that roll call of Turkey Night winners, where his name will fit just fine.
Interviewed on the public-address system by J.C. Agajanian, Jr., whose family has promoted these holiday specials for better than half a century, Darland shined as brightly as he had in the feature. He said he was humbled and honored just to be standing there.
Clearly, Darland felt the significance of the whole thing. It would be nice to think that every driver who straps into a midget understands the history and lineage of Turkey Night, but that would be asking too much from today’s upwardly-striving pups. For many of them, Turkey Night is a big deal not because Vukovich or Foyt won it, but because people like Kahne, Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman ran it before they got to NASCAR. These kids see Turkey Night only as a possible stepping-stone. To old-schoolers like Darland, it is a destination, one of those grand events that really mean something. Dave Darland knows about Parsons and Parnelli, you can count on that. He has raced with a third of his fellow Turkey Night champions, and looks up to the other two thirds.
Right now, he is about as solid a hero as you can name. Not just in USAC, and not just in open-wheel cars — on pavement or on Darland’s beloved dirt – but in American short-track racing, period. He is 41, closer to the end of his career than the beginning, but when he hangs up his helmet he will leave behind no hard feelings. No nasty slide jobs, no bad break-ups with car owners, no sad-faced kids who couldn’t get an autograph. There isn’t an ounce of prima donna in Dave Darland; he’s just a guy who, for better than 20 seasons, has put his head down, given his all, and then hung around later, shooting the breeze, the way bullring stars are supposed to.
The post-race scene at Irwindale was a beauty. Darland’s mechanic, Kelly Drake, could not stop raving about the job his driver had done. Steve Lewis, the car owner, told well-wishers, “Forget about me. That was all Dave.”
Behind the Lewis trailer, Darland sipped a cold beer, wife Brenda at his side. Two of their kids, son Trenton and daughter Tristiny, were hovering nearby. Another daughter, Destiny, was back in Indiana, attending church camp. A stream of fans poured in to shake Darland’s hand, or pat him on the back. He knew some of them by name (“Thanks, Joe”), and some by nickname (“I appreciate it, Catfish”), and was meeting others for the first time. Young Billy Wease, the defending Turkey Night champ, grinned and told Darland, “You are the Man.” Jason Leffler, the 1999 and 2005 winner, walked over to offer congratulations. Dave Steele and Kody Swanson, Darland’s teammates on the three-car Lewis team, swallowed their own disappointments and celebrated alongside the winner.
California icon Jimmy Sills, retired now, explained that he and some other old-timers had been cheering from the pit grandstands in turn one, doing “the wave” as Darland drove past in the closing laps. “The only problem,” Sills told Darland, “was that by the time we all stood up, you were already in turn three.”
No one had to explain to Leffler, or Steele, or Sills — or those creaky old-timers who had struggled to their feet, urging him on — that this man belonged with all the greats from Turkey Nights past.
Vukovich, Foyt, Shuman, Stewart. And now, yes, Darland.