The focus on the 2012 Monster Jam indoor season is quite obvious. At the forefront will be eight Grave Digger trucks, two Grave Digger-The Legend machines, and one Son-Uva Digger monster celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the infamous truck.
But, there's another story that fans, teams and drivers want to keep in the minds of everyone that attends the events. That other story...spoil the Digger party.
Without question, when it comes to Monster Jam, every driver longs to beat the Digger team. But this year it seems to be the key driving force among the entire stable of drivers to spoil a tour that is all about Dennis Anderson, his team, his sons, and the legacy of his truck. The big thing about that driving force is there are plenty of drivers capable of playing that role.
No driver wants to spoil the tour more than Tom Meents, driver of Maximum Destruction.
Since the 2000 season, Meents has been the driver to win more titles, more races, and cause more chaos during a season than even Anderson himself. Last year, Anderson won all but two racing events at the venues he attended, more than any driver on the circuit. However, when the big event in Las Vegas came, motor issues put him on the sidelines.
Meents seized the opportunity as he would win the racing bracket, adding a ninth title to his trophy case, more than any driver on the circuit.
It's no secret that Meents loves racing Anderson, but he loves beating him more. The two have faced off numerous times since that year, and have competed head-to-head at the World Finals three different times, and Anderson has won two of the three, including last year's racing championship.
Meents debuted a brand new chassis in 2011 en route to that championship, after campaigning the same chassis that he debuted with in 2000. The entire Maximum Destruction team will have new trucks this year as Kreg Christiansen got his last season for the west coast tour, and now Neil Elliott will run a new chassis this year.
Team Maximum Destruction is ready to rumble this year, and will be the favorites all season to undo a celebration.
The other two teams that will be 2Xtreme Racing and the Lucas Oil Racing Team.
When it comes to the 2Xtreme Racing team, possibly the best driver to not have won a racing title is the lead driver, Jimmy Creten, in Bounty Hunter. Here is a driver that has made it to the final round on four different occasions and could not come across the line as the winner.
Creten does have a freestyle championship, coming in 2005, but he really wants to have a racing title on his mantle.
This year in particular he is extremely happy to be on tour as all his drivers will be campaigning their own trucks. Creten will be in his familiar Bounty Hunter, while fellow driver Ben "Bobo" Winslow will campaign the Iron Outlaw. Darren Mingues returned to the team this past summer, and is now the driver of the second Bounty Hunter truck, however he will be driving the new "Bounty Hunter Black", which is a new look for the team on a completely new chassis.
Finally, making a return to the seat is Creten's wife, Dawn, who took a year off to be with her and Jimmy's three daughters and one son. Now, she is ready to return to the seat of her truck, Scarlet Bandit.
These four are ready to put the power to the ground come January.
Finally, the one driver the Monster Jam fans are sure to keep an eye on all season long will be Linsey Weenk in the Lucas Oil Crusader. For the first part of his career, when driving Creten's Iron Outlaw, Weenk had the number of Anderson, beating him three consecutive times. But then fell into a slump and Anderson won the next 16 races they faced each other.
That ended this past summer when Weenk went on to win two racing events, and both times would beat Anderson on the way to the victory.
Weenk has made it to the semi-finals the last two years at Las Vegas, falling both times to Meents. That still shows that Weenk is one of the toughest drivers to beat on the circuit, and that is the reason Lucas Oil named him as their driver of the Crusader truck beginning last year.
He definitely is capable of going the entire distance and winning the world title, and that could mean beating Anderson to get the job done.
The 2012 season may be all about the anniversary celebration of the "Black and Green Wrecking Machine" but Weenk, Meents, Creten and everyone else are set to make sure that the Grave Digger isn't the only truck being talked about at season's end.
Get your tickets now to an event near you by going to MonsterJam.com.
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