WEST MEAD TOWNSHIP — Anticipation hung in the air like thick, black smoke as the head track official, like a general preparing for battle, gave a briefing to the huddle of motorheads.

“Anybody here color-blind?,” asked Brian Rudder. “Red means stop. Green means go. A checkered flag means somebody won a little bit of money.

“Inevitably, there’ll be one or two of you who wanna fight over a hit,” he continued, but “but this is a demolition derby. ...(And) that’s what we’re here for — to put on a show.”

And once that show started, all similes went out the window — literally. Thick, black actually did hang in the air as the derby’s drivers tore around the concrete block-lined arena with one objective in mind: Crush the competition, and bad.

A primary purple-colored monstrosity with ‘SMASH!!’ and ‘Git-R-Done’ painted in angry-looking letters on its back and sides crunched – hard – into what may once have been a nice, normal family’s station wagon, turned now into a blackened, charred and beaten, but somehow still-moving, pile of twisted metal.

At first, some of the cars looked like they’d maybe been in a few too many fender-benders. A couple of minutes in, though, it was more like they’d come into contact with a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex.

And so it went, heat after heat.

Engines roared thunderously.

Tires popped explosively.

Fenders went flying.

And drivers found themselves sandwiched between metal and concrete, metal and metal and variations in between, all much to the delight of the fans in the stands.

“That was exciting!,” Justin Williams, the driver of the purple monster, said after becoming one of two finalists from the derby’s first heat.

The 23-year-old Meadville man said he’s been beating up cars — and himself — in the fair’s derbies for around the past four years. “My father got me into it,” he said. “It’s fun, so I do it all the time.”

Saturday’s two demolition derbies — one day-time preliminary and one night-time final event — were presented by Nationwide Demolition Derbies of Zanesville, Ohio and co-sponsored by Lake View Ford Inc.

The derbies marked the final major events of the 63rd annual Crawford County Fair.