A large crowd gathered in the Covington Center Arena on Saturday night to for an adrenaline packed evening of demolition derby.

 

The first ever demolition derby at Kiwanis Covington County far drew a large crowd and should continue to be a staple feature at the fair for years to come, said Fair chairman Rex Jones.

“The derby was a huge success,” Jones said. “There were 4,000 people at the fair on Saturday and more than 1,100 of them came into the arena to watch the demolition derby. I’ve heard a lot of people say some good things about it, and hopefully it will be something that we continue to have as a feature event.”

Andalusia’s own Greg Palmer was victorious in the first heat of the evening. Palmer’s car survived against two other competitors in the opening heat. Palmer chose to drive in reverse for most of the evening in order to protect his engine, but did land a bone-jarring hit head on collision that helped immobilize his opponent’s car.

Palmer and one other car began to sandwich the third opponent in the center of the arena. The force of the two cars caused flames to come out from under the sandwiched car, which forced derby officials to briefly suspend the race to put out the fire.

Once the derby resumed, Palmer finished off the opposing vehicles to emerge as the winner of the first heat.

In the second heat, it was time for the more powerful vehicles, and five large-bodied cars commenced to pound each other senseless.

When the dust settled in the second heat, three cars were declared winners to go on the feature event.

Palmer and the other two smaller cars then went up against the three larger cars in a winner-take-all fight to the finish.

Emerging as the winner in the feature event was Jerry Lewis from Troy. Chris Dorrus of Enterprise finished second and Red Level’s Steve Clark finished third.