The Clark County Fair features a handful of adrenaline pumping motorsports, often with locals behind the wheel. A few shared their favorite aspects of competing in the motorsports and their preparations for both themselves and their vehicles.
The Clark County Fair’s motorsports portion begins Wednesday, Aug. 7, with the demolition derby, followed by the side-by-side racing event on Thursday, Aug. 8. Up next is two days of Tuff Trucks on Friday, Aug. 9, and Saturday, Aug. 10, concluding with the monster truck show on Aug. 11. Showtimes for all events are 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Matthew Barner, demolition derby
Matthew Barner is utilizing a car for its second demolition derby of the season on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at the Clark County Fair. His not-so-secret secret to longevity with his smashed vehicle: hit with the back.
“Protecting your front suspension and your engine is probably the most important things because you could have no wheels in the back and still be dragging the thing through the mud,” Barner said.
When he drives into the arena in his U.S. military aircraft-themed car, he is one step closer to battle. When the demo begins and the bumping and crashing ensues, he starts to get excited, while still calculating his next move and protecting the front of his vehicle.
“It’s almost a euphoria because when you hit somebody, there’s just certainly adrenaline, but it just becomes almost like a game to me,” Barner said. “But at the same time, I try to make it entertaining for the crowd and stuff, as well.”
Ahead of his euphoric event, a lot of maintenance work is being done to his car. The car has been used and smashed before, so it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it needs to run and be safe. Prior to competing, Barner adds a car battery, inspects and enhances the welds inside the roll-bars inside, adds netting over the pre-existing window slots and more.
Fans of the Clark County Fair’s demolition derby can look for Barner in his matte-green sedan with World War II aircraft-style markings on the side of his battle car, the “Linda James,” named after his parents. One the driver side is painted “M. Barner,” and on the passenger side, he painted “J. Barner” in remembrance of his father, his co-pilot, who passed away a couple of years ago, he said.
Cody Quattlebaum, Tuff Truck driver
Big air, rollovers, forgetting his plan and getting the crowd rowdy is what Cody Quattlebaum, who competes in the street class, is all about.
The Ridgefield native fell in love with Tuff Trucks at the Clark County Fair after watching the contest at a young age, he said. Entering his fifth year of the Tuff Truck competition, Quattlebaum is testing out the toughness of a new vehicle after destroying ones the last couple of years.
While a Jeep purist may not be thrilled with the vehicle of choice this year, he will be putting a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited to the test.
“There’s very few of them made. They were only made for one year of that particular color,” Quattlebaum said of his competition vehicle. “I think there was like 1,400 of them in the U.S. and 1,500 to 1,600 in Canada. Both of these are Canada models, so they’re pretty rare. … There might be some sadness with people that know Jeeps, but it should be a good time.”
This year, Quattlebaum said he will be going for time in the first run, but his plan may change.
“You always pull up to the line and you kind of have a plan like, I’m going to take it easy or I’m going to go for time, and then you hear the crowd, and it just all goes out the window,” he said. “It’s an adrenaline rush like never before.”
To help his competition vehicle this year, Quattlebaum added some suspension modifications, roll cage, race seat harness, a 4-inch lift and even stuffed the coils with tennis balls to help absorb some of the bounce. He also added a skid-plate over the radiator this time around.
Nubbs Racing Team, Tuff Truck drivers
After a back injury landed Donald “Nubbs” Bagley in the retired list for Tuff Truck driving, he assembled a team to compete instead in five street-class and one pro-class vehicle.
“So I’m not able to drive any longer, but I have enough children, nieces and buddies that they took over my rigs,” Nubbs Bagley said. “My son did his first year of pro class last year in the Nubbs Special, and now he’s taken that over. My daughter does the street class, and my niece, Meaghan, has enjoyed this for many years, so she went and got her own rig. My buddy Chuck, he came out and wanted to come run after surviving cancer twice. … My youngest daughter, Jocelyn, will be out as a rookie this year, also.”
Chuck Franklin used to drive the Tuff Truck way unofficially in the farmlands of New Jersey, he said. Now he gets to test his truck and driving skills at the Clark County Fair.
“Almost two years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I went through a very long journey in chemotherapy, tried to work in the meantime, took a lot of time off, of course, and then from the moment I hit remission, I just kind of started going hard with life,” Franklin said.
Franklin said he doesn’t feel death-proof, but he wants to push the limit and feel alive while he’s feeling stronger and better than ever.
Meaghan Meyer is a rookie this year but grew up watching Nubbs perform on the Tuff Truck course.
After breaking her first Nissan Pathfinder in just a week, she landed herself another one to ensure she can compete.
“So I got this one for $800 and decided that I wanted to run with it because I’ve been watching [Nubbs] basically my whole life at the Tuff Trucks,” she said. “I decided that I need to get in on that action, too.”
Brina Chriss, a seasoned Tuff Truck competitor, was inspired by being in the pits, smelling the gas fumes, hearing the trucks and watching gravel and dirt fly.
“I wanted to do that,” Chriss said. “I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ I do it for the kids. It’s so awesome how many little girls come up to me and they’re just like, ‘you’re my favorite driver.’ It makes me almost tear up, it’s so awesome. I get so many little kids coming up to me and giving me hugs, asking for pictures.”
Donny Bagley said he was inspired to drive Tuff Trucks after being raised around it from “literally a year old.”
“My dad and my grandpa were both bringing me out to the races and bringing me out to monster jam shows,” he said. “I’ve kind of always been interested in vehicles and motors and just anything with wheels on it, for that matter. And when I got the opportunity after [Nubbs] broke his back, I was like, ‘Yeah, 100 percent I’ll drive the truck.’ ”
Jason Smolarek, Tuff Truck driver
Jason Smolarek has been behind the wheel of a Tuff Truck since 2002. He started out by testing the toughness of a Subaru Brat for six years, which led to him behind the wheel of a larger truck.
He is currently driving a truck that has been tough enough for an entire decade. The truck has been modified, which helped to keep it alive for the last decade, Smolarek said.
“I built this one in about a month and a half,” he said. “That was the first edition of it. So then I’ve added to it from there, and I flipped it the first year I ran it, put a new roof on it and then kind of just left it alone from there, and it’s been nice.”
The truck has suspension modifications, air bumps in the front and back, along with the engine being moved to the cab instead of under the hood — for big air purposes.
Like Quattlebaum, there’s just something about catching big air.
“I usually try not to say I’m going to hit the jump every year, but generally adrenaline gets the best of you, and I’ll try and hit the jump, or, you know, it depends on how the track is set up,” Smolarek said.
In preparation for this season, he rebuilt the motor mounts and installed a new radiator. After competing in Yakima last year, the front drive line needed to be fully redone. He said looking at the truck, nearly everything is bent, and he said it may be time to retire the decade-old truck and build a new competitor.
