(Coverage By Christopher Allen, Photos By Jim Allen)
Six of the top monster trucks in the world arrived at Firebird International Raceway in Chandler, Arizona for the annual NAPA Monster Truck Nationals and Night of Fire, held on Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1st, 2011. Participants included current Monster Jam World Finals Freestyle Champion Jim Koehler in Avenger, with last year’s Firebird runner-up Chris Bergeron in Brutus right behind him. Darren Migues would be filling in for perennial Firebird Champ Jimmy Creten in Bounty Hunter, Dan Runte would be back in Summit Bigfoot 16 and Travis and Ronnie Sturges would be piloting Unnamed & Untamed and Nasty Boy from just down the road in Tucson. Nasty Boy was even sporting the great looking TMB flag for the weekend’s events. The grand finale would be the return of the 40-foot tall, 60,000 pound car-eating, fire-breathing monstrosity Robosaurus.
Opening each show was a wheelie and donut competition with the brothers Sturges giving wheelies that set the stage for what was to come. Brutus not only surprised the Firebird fans with a 45 degree angle wheelie attempt, but gave cyclones that had yours truly thinking back to Wrecking Crew at the 2010 Monster Jam World Finals encore. Even better, Chris put the wreck from last year behind him with a perfect score of 30, followed it up with an outstanding freestyle, taking the Saturday night championship.
Sunday saw the encore performance for the fans that could not make it the first night. At one of his favorite places to perform, Dan and Bigfoot got the crowd pumped up with his shots at the wheelie and donut win. But it was déjà vu for Chris Bergeron, who found himself tied with Bounty Hunter with just freestyle left to go for the weekend. The judging was close, but Darren kept the Bounty Hunter Firebird legacy alive with a score tallied over wheelies and donuts combined with his freestyle number to oust Brutus for the second year in a row.
To close each show, Shawn Pacheco and Robosaurus fascinated the kids in the crowd by eating, breaking and burning a junk car or, in the case of the big show on Saturday, no less than three. In addition, Sam Sturges gave rides to fans young and old in his team’s “Boogie Monster” ride truck. Will Team Scream ever be able to defeat Bounty Hunter at Firebird? Find out next year. Until then, thank you for reading, thanks to everyone with Firebird Raceway for their hospitality, enjoy Jim’s great photos and cheer on!
All content copyright TheMonsterBlog.com 2011.
I look forward to doing the shows at Firebird for TMB. I am just as big a fan of monster trucks as you are and I love satisfying you with my coverage.
Hey chris, nice recap of what looks to have been a great weekend, it was nice meeting you in Vegas back in March