Dustin Hayes revs his engine and slowly moves onto the track. His brother, Dalton Hayes, enters the track, and they follow each other in a circle until – smack. Dustin Hayes hits another machine head-on, lifting him off his seat.

But the 19-year-old from Grayson County restarts his engine and continues, bashing his opponent in the side. The brothers have spent months perfecting their machines for Thursday’s derby at the Southern Kentucky Fair. But unlike many fair derbies, the drivers were not banging into one another with cars, but rather with lawn mowers.

“This is not your normal bumper cars,” said spectator Emily Kaelin, as she gawked at the hand-built lawn mowers smacking into one another on the dirt track at Lampkin Park.

As thick smoke filtered through the air and the crowd roared at every collision, Dustin Hayes had already strayed from his usual strategy.

“I try to hide from the other mowers,” he said. “I just try to not get hit at all.”

While many are familiar with demolition derbies, lawn mower derbies are becoming more popular as events at fairgrounds across the nation, and several happen in this part of the country. The idea is to pummel the other mowers until they can no longer operate.

Many drivers who competed Thursday, including the Hayes brothers, travel to different events almost every weekend.

And many begin building, testing and crashing lawn mowers at an early age. The younger Hayes brother, 16-year-old Dalton, doesn’t have his driver’s license yet, but he has competed in the lawn mower derby since he was 14.

He has cut his leg during competitions, and he once flipped his mower and was thrown onto a bank. He remembers watching his brother fly off his seat and land on the hood of his mower.

Dalton admits he gets nervous before each competition, but he still takes mowers apart, rebuilds them into bulky machines, and tries to demolish other mowers on the track.

“It’s kind of hard not to” keep doing it, he said.

Dalton was among the youngest competitors Thursday alongside 15-year-old Logan Duvall of Bee Spring. Logan always wanted to be in the derby since watching his father compete in demolition derbies. So at the age of 12, Logan competed in his first lawn mower derby.

“I just like tearing stuff up,” he said.

Logan won first place in the modified division, while Travis Besau, of Brownsville, won in the stock division. First place winners received $500, while runners-up received smaller amounts.

When he rides onto the track, Logan has one strategy: to watch his opponents’ wheels. He also has a pre-derby ritual.

“We all like to smack ourselves in the face to get pumped up,” he said, giving himself a few slaps on the cheek.

Willie Hampton of Grayson County spent the minutes before the derby inspecting his rebuilt mower.

“I couldn’t afford a car, so I got a lawn mower,” he said.

Hampton has competed with eight different lawn mowers, and has come away with both prize money and injuries. Last year, he found a knot on his leg after getting hit during a competition.

Those injuries are part of the sport – the T-shirt and denim-clad riders wear little protection other than helmets. But the injuries also make parents, such as Jeff Hayes, nervous.

When Hayes, of Grayson County, discovered his sons, Dustin and Dalton, wanted to enter the lawn mower derby, he initially wasn’t thrilled.

“I’m always afraid they’ll get hurt,” Hayes said.

Still, Hayes and other relatives cheered with every smack of the metal. They roared when one mower flipped, sending the driver tumbling to the ground and then running to the bank to get away from danger. They laughed when one driver rolled onto the track with a black cowboy hat on top of his helmet.

Logan’s father, Jeff Duvall, admits he was nervous when his son started competing because he was so young. But now it’s become a family tradition, and they have even made friends with Logan’s competitors.

“All these boys, they’re all buddies,” he said.