(Hazelwood, MO) Team BIGFOOT is proud to announce that Rick Long, driver of BIGFOOT #15, has been officially crowned the 2010 Monster Nationals Racing champion!

Not since the 2005 Monster Nationals season has Team BIGFOOT fielded a vehicle for the full duration of the tour and challenged for the championship title. In fact, the last Monster Nationals title won by a BIGFOOT driver was Eric Tack in 2003 driving (you guessed it) BIGFOOT #15.

Although the 2010 season would be Rick Long’s first full trip through the Monster Nationals schedule, he is most definitely no stranger to the events, having competed in a number of them over the course of the 2006-2009 seasons.

Long’s road to the championship honors was a most impressive one, as the veteran driver showed he truly is one of Team BIGFOOT’s most aggressive and versatile wheelsmen. With only a couple exceptions, the Monster Nationals series primarily takes place on the bare concrete floors of various arenas across the country, due mainly to time constraints placed on the event organizers or venue regulations against using a track made of dirt. This, of course, presents the drivers and their crew with a host of challenges that they must conquer in order to find on-track success.
The Monster Nationals event format features several individual styles of monster truck competition, including the Wheelie Contest, Freestyle, and Side-by-Side drag racing over junk cars. Long and BIGFOOT showed no mercy in the side-by-side racing category! See the team’s jaw-dropping win statistics: over the course of 24 individual racing events, Long and BIGFOOT captured 16 event wins and took runner-up in a number of other final rounds. This 2-1 win ratio left Long with a total of 1,925 points at season’s end, nearly 1,000 points more than second place finisher Doug Noelke and Tailgator, who amassed 950 to his credit. With those facts on the table, it’s not hard to see why Rick Long is your 2010 Monster Nationals Racing champion!

Nearly as impressive as his racing success were Long’s achievements in both the Wheelie Contest and Freestyle segments of the events, where he finished in second place in both categories. This championship is Long’s second. His first was the 2007 Monster Madness

“We just had an outstanding year running the Monster Nationals tour,” said Rick Long. “Usually winning that many races means you’ve tore up a bunch of stuff, but we somehow lucked out and had it pretty easy this year,” he explained. He went on to add that “Our guys in the shop really took care of me this year, and whatever it is we did to the truck’s setup sure worked, because there wasn’t a truck out there this year that could run as fast and consistent as we did in side-by-side racing.” Perhaps even more interesting to note is the fact that despite its racing-biased tune-up and suspension setup, Long’s BIGFOOT truck proved to be a highly aggressive and successful competitor in both the wheelie contest and freestyle categories.

For the majority of the 2010 season Long competed as the only representative of Team BIGFOOT on the tour, the only exception being the 3-day Madison, WI event, where he was joined by teammate Chris Ludwig in Snake Bite (BIGFOOT #11). Ludwig would prove that Team BIGFOOT’s mastery of indoor non-dirt racing wasn’t strictly limited to just one truck, or one driver – Chris took second place honors in racing during the Saturday night event and captured his first ever indoor national event win on Sunday!

With the 2010 Monster Nationals tour in the books, Rick Long and company will shift their focus to a number of non-point events and a handful of special appearances for BIGFOOT’s two primary sponsors – Firestone tires and Summit Racing Equipment. One can certainly bet that by the time the 2011 Monster Nationals season kicks off in January, Rick Long and BIGFOOT will be ready to defend their title!

“We’re going to approach the 2011 season just like we did the 2010 season, with two goals in mind: win races, and make our fans happy,” said Long. “Thankfully, those two go hand in hand.”

For more information on Rick Long, BIGFOOT #15, and the entire BIGFOOT team, visit their online home at www.Bigfoot4x4.com. You can find driver and truck bios, an online store, the schedule for the team’s fleet of seven touring monster trucks, and much more.