WARSAW — A sizable crowd packed in the bleachers of the Kosciusko County Fairgrounds grandstands Friday night, July 13 to watch dings and crashes and smoking engines as competitors got behind the wheel of some pretty ugly vehicles for the annual Demolition Derby.

The evenings’s activities included two heats of “gut and go” competitors, meaning cars that are just gutted of needless interior items, one heat of trucks, one heat of full-sized cars and one heat at the end of gut and go survivors. Each heat also included an award for hardest hitter. But the unique attraction of the evening was the exhibition of four full-sized school buses who sped around the speedway in a customized version of a figure eight pattern.

In the first gut and go heat, Shawn Bucher placed first, followed by second-place Jesse Green, third-place William Ryan Moore who was also named hardest hitter, fourth-place Darly Jacobs and Beny Fitzpatrick in fifth. In the second gut and go heat, Tony Rasmussen drove his white beater longer than anyone despite having no tire or rim on his driver’s side rear end and a wobbly tire at best on the other side of the rear.

“There were two of them on me there at the end, they were teammates,” said Rasmussen. “They rang my bell pretty good too.”

Michael Faulkner, Joshua Strauss, Chris Cage and Tyler Evans placed second, third, fourth and fifth respectively. Shawn Bartley was named hardest hitter.

In the truck competition, David Terrell won top honors with Nathan Bever placing second and winning hardest hitter. The remaining two competitors were not named.

In full-sized car competition, Matt Combs won the top prize, followed by hardest hitter Levi Bowman in second, Jason Koch in third, Ian Pherigo in fourth and Tim Schultz in fifth.