Monster Truck Racing Makes a Large Impact; It All Began with Bigfoot
Monster truck racing is a very popular motorsport in America. A monster truck is basically a truck or a regular pickup that has been modified to give it extra high suspension and massive wheels and tires. They are so large that they can easily be driven over smaller cars and manmade objects. With a history stretching back to the 1970s, monster truck racing has come a long way and has become a very popular form of sports entertainment in America and many other places around the world.
The original inventors and innovators of monster trucks were Bob and Marilyn Chandler. Living in Saint Louis, Missouri, Bob, being a construction worker, was always breaking his trucks and pickups. Since he could not find any quality parts to replace his worn out ones in the area, his wife and him saw a business opportunity and started their own spare parts business in the mid 1970s. Over the next few years, the Chandlers kept on upgrading parts on their truck until they ended up with one that stood six inches higher than other trucks in the area. Soon their truck started to gain a lot of attention and one day Bob decided to see what would happen if he tried to crush a few cars in a junkyard. This proved to be an instant hit and Bob started to perform the trick at numerous modified truck shows and the spectators loved it. The truck was so popular that it was named Bigfoot and it spanned a host of imitator trucks (Bear Foot, King Kong and Grave Digger, amongst others) that all looked the same and did the same trick of crushing cars. With a whole range of other monster trucks around at the same events, it was decided that the natural progression of things would be to start racing them. That is how the whole sport of monster truck racing started.
Monster trucks today are very technologically advanced machines with a lot of modern gadgetry in them. However, in 1989, the debut of a new Bigfoot truck on the racing scene turned everything on its head. This one truck called Bigfoot VIII caused a lot of controversy because unlike the other trucks, it ran nitrogen filled shock suspension instead of leaf spring suspension that was common in those days. It also had a tube frame chassis that was common in off-road vehicles at the time. The inevitable happened: Bigfoot VIII blew the rest of the competition out of the water and won so many races that after drivers started protesting, it was banned. Bob Chandler, the innovator of the new changes to the truck, sued the governing body of the races at the time but team Bigfoot had to compete with an older truck which also won the race it was put in. With the case dropped and Bigfoot VIII allowed to race again, it started to win races everywhere it went. Its innovative designs forced other racing companies to copy it and the industry standards were set once and for all.
Over the years, monster truck racing has changed and evolved till today, where a monster truck event is a fun-filled day out for the whole family. It features racing, stunt driving and car crushing type obstacle courses that the drivers must overcome. Each monster truck comes with three safety features. The first is a kill switch inside the truck that stops the engine in case of a crash or if the truck topples over. The other two are switches which are inside the cabin that allow a driver to kill power to all the electronics in the case of a rollover. Even with all these safety features, accidents do occur sometimes because it is very difficult to control such large machines and it is even harder to race them around a small track with many spectators watching.
The sport of monster truck racing is very popular in America but it is also slowly spreading to many different parts of the world. Many countries hold their own events and races and even design their own unique and innovative trucks. This sport, which was practically born out of a need to crush something, has slowly taken over the world. With advances in technology and modern equipment being used, the sport looks all set to grow and evolve and will probably be around for many years to come.
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