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THE BLOGGER’S REPORT
TV Review: MOD Round 3 - Del Rio, TX April 22nd, 2006
To Sum It Up...: The third event of the 2006 Monsters of Destruction series plays before a sold-out crowd in Del Rio, TX, with Bigfoot and Dragon Slayer leading the pack.
The Highlight Reel: Dan Runte in Summit Bigfoot and Kreg Christensen in Dragon Slayer = Total Domination. The two raced their way to the Finals in both Straight-Line and Obstacle Course Racing, and took turns taking the win, Runte in Straight-Line and Christensen in Obstacle Course.
Kelvin Ramer in Natural High is, simply put, the Wheelie King. No question about it, Ramer shined in Freestyle leading off the contest, and while there was no official winner declared, Natural High was the class of the field.
As would be expected, veteran Dan Runte also turned in a solid freestyle for the Texas fans. With solid momentum, good hits on all the obstacles, and twice tackling the FMX hill, Bigfoot lived up to its name, but just didn’t have enough “wow” moments to equal the run of Natural High.
Kreg Christensen impressed with consistently quick reaction times all through the Racing portion of the show.
Taking Notes: Where did the indestructible Freestyle van come from, and where can promoters find more of them?? Not sure if they re-enforced the van before the show or not, but it held up very well and proved to be a tough obstacle for the Monsters to tackle.
Nice to see a sold-out crowd at an MOD event. The series has put on a number of events to near empty grandstands, so it is encouraging that they were able to full the stands in Del Rio. Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come for the series.
Certain drivers (ahem…Dan Patrick) seemed to have trouble adjusting to the starting light system in Del Rio. There were a number of red lights in Qualifying and Racing which kind of hurt the entertainment value of the competition.
How about the attitude of Kelvin Ramer and Natural High? Great to see a driver out there running purely for the love of the sport. Running on a shoestring with less experience and less horsepower at a competitive disadvantage to the rest of the field, Natural High still whipped them all in Freestyle. Ramer takes it all in stride, as driving Natural High is “Living the Dream” for him.
Great to see Dan Patrick and Samson running hard in the MOD series. It seems like Patrick has done less shows in recent years, focusing on his business of building chassis for other teams. Samson is a great lookin’ truck and Patrick an industry stalwart, and the MOD TV series is a great place to showcase his skills.
Kreg Christensen and Team KCM need to figure out their overheating problems. For the second time in three rounds of MOD, Dragon Slayer has been sidelined in Freestyle due to overheating.
The Hard Luck Award: Dan Patrick in Samson for losing his battles with the lighting system. Patrick struggled with the starting lights all evening, and pointed out in an interview that adding back the time he jumped before the light went green to his total time for the run, he would have had the best time of the night.
Rick Swanson and Obsession’s starter problems kept him from being able to race Bigfoot for a berth in the Finals in Straight Line Drags. Then later, a hard landing off the van stack caused breakage to Obsession ended Swanson’s Freestyle run early.
Team KCM was plagued with problems, as Spiderman’s steering problems sat Paul Jensen out of the Obstacle Course & Freestyle contests, and after taking the win in Obstacle Course, Dragon Slayer overheated, sidelining Christensen from Freestyle.
TV Talking Points: The MOD series on The Outdoor Channel has made positive strides this year in the first couple of rounds, but still has a long way to go.
The Good: First, of course, is the fact that this is Monster Trucks on TV. Unfortunately, that is too rare of a thing these days, and we are privileged to have the MOD series on TV.
One thing MOD has on Monster Jam is the time between their events taking place and actually airing on TV. MOD only has a couple weeks of turn-around time, while Monster Jam is measured in months. For example, Del Rio only took three weeks to air, while the St. Louis Monster Jam from February won’t air until December.
The addition of more driver interviews in between races is a plus, as this is better than the traditionally endless replays of each race.
The on-board camera on the side of Natural High was a great shot, just wish they would have went to it during Ramer’s Freestyle for some of those crazy wheelies.
Integrating reaction times of each run into the replays during Racing is a solid addition to this year’s telecasts, and a step in the right direction.
The Bad: The production quality of the MOD series continues to be lacking, but that is more of a product of being on The Outdoor Channel than anything else. Something about programming on TOC always comes across with a faded, fuzzy look to it in comparison to other channels.
Editing of the program is also not the greatest—notable gaffes from this weekend’s show include an odd, mirrored shot of one of Samson’s Freestyle moves and some poorly inserted crowd reaction shots (taped from introductions before the show) into the winner interviews after each Racing contest.
While I really like the addition of the interviews to the show, you can’t help but cringe during some of them, as they were often very awkward. I think this will be solved as time goes on however, as both drivers and the TV folks will get more used to interacting with each other on camera.
The announcing team—while the addition of a second voice in the booth has been positive, you still get the feeling most of the time that these guys know nothing about Monster Trucks.
The Ugly: Freestyle highlights?? This needs to be done away with immediately. Cut some of the endless replays of the Racing runs (one is plenty), and air the full Freestyle runs. Or, if there is no choice but to use highlights, just cut out the driving around in between moves, but none of the actual moves themselves, as was we learned was done in Round 3.
Points Movers & Shakers: After 3 Rounds, Kreg Christensen retains the Straight Line Drags points lead with 67, while Rick Swanson in Obsession slips past Dan Patrick in Samson with 58 points to Patrick’s 56, and Paul Jensen in Spiderman holds fourth with 51 points. With his Straight Line victory, Dan Runte moves into a tie for 5th place with teammate Rick Long, at 25 points each.
Obstacle Course standings see Dan Patrick retaining the lead with 65 points, but Dragon Slayer is coming fast. With his victory in Round 3, Christensen leaps from a 4th place tie up to 2nd with 61 points. Rick Swanson holds third with 60 points, while Rick Long remains in the top 5, his 40 points from Roswell keeping him in fourth. Paul Jensen rounds out the top 5 with 36 points.
Funny how the MOD website states that points will be awarded towards a championship for Freestyle, yet Freestyle hasn’t even had a declared winner in the first three rounds. Seriously folks, how hard is it to give a few fans scorecards so that Freestyle can be scored, and you can award points based on the results?? Would make things more interesting and motivate the drivers to run harder in Freestyle.
And the Score…: Round 3 from Del Rio, TX was a large step-up from the first two rounds in Roswell, NM, but still a lot of room for improvement. We’ll flash up a 6 on our scorecard (out of a possible 10), and be looking for the series to continue building towards its potential in the coming rounds.
Next Up: Round 4 from Del Rio, TX. Conventional logic would assume that this episode will air next Saturday, but it wouldn’t be shocking to tune in to a re-run of one of the previous rounds. See Monsters of Destruction on The Outdoor Channel each Saturday at 2:00PM Eastern.
** Note: I am a big fan of the MOD Series, so any criticisms are simply meant to be constructive. **
Ross Z. Bonar is the owner/operator of TheMonsterBlog.com, and this editorial contains his thoughts & opinions on the goings-on in the world of monster trucks. Opinions expressed in “The Blogger’s Take” editorial are Ross’s alone, and feedback is appreciated. Comments or questions can be emailed to Ross at rbonar@lzsportsource.com, or posted on The Monster Blog Fan Forum.
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