You know what the craziest action sport is in the world? A little something called Stadium Supertrucks. This (mostly) street-course race with pickups that resemble desert racing trophy trucks has a ridiculous name (SPEED Energy Formula Off-Road Presented by Traxxas Stadium Super Trucks) and an onscreen alchemy that makes for riveting TV. The series (let’s just call it SST) is the brainchild of former NASCAR scrapper and desert racing king Robby Gordon, and here’s what makes it so great: SST combines the best of NASCAR (full contact stock car madness!), IndyCar (street racing through actual neighborhoods!), and the airborne trickery of AMA Motocross (jumps! Lots of jumps!). The final product is a fanboy’s dream: demo derby madness that’s actually unpredictable and competitive.
Will this series last? Gordon himself was pretty confident it would. He told me in a long 2013 profile profile: “I came up with this thing and I’m doing it because I know it’s going to rock. Imagine 60,000 people watching these trucks racing inside Cowboys Stadium. Nothing comes close to it. That’s extreme.”
The season opener in Adelaide, Australia, was a start-to-finish nailbiter. The winner was Sheldon Creed, but Keegan Kinkaid pulled the show-stopping ending with an ending that was many tiers of awesome: launching off the final jump, landing cockeyed, rolling, hitting the fence, and recovering to finish third.