At the half way point of the 2006 Monster Jam winter season one thing has become crystal clear: we will head to the World Finals in Las Vegas with more legitimate contenders for the racing and freestyle World Championships than ever before.

Coming off of the 2005 championships where many were surprised that Madusa won the racing title and Bounty Hunter took the freestyle gold, the upcoming seventh meeting in Vegas to determine the year’s crown bearers seems perfectly set up for even more shockers. Or maybe this year we won’t be shocked at all about any results because the field seems so wide open and so many drivers have beefed up their resumes to the point where they have a great chance to win. Tom Meents and Dennis Anderson will still be among the most likely to win the championship for sure, but the group with legitimate shots to keep them off the world title stage is larger than ever this year.

Let’s start by looking at what has happened so far this winter in racing. Linsey Weenk burst onto the scene at the season opener in Montreal when he drove the Iron Outlaw Ford to a Speed televised racing win in impressive fashion, beating both Anderson’s Grave Digger and Jimmy Creten in Bounty Hunter on the way to the triumph. Anyone who thought the Canadian win was just a home country fluke was quickly proven wrong when Weenk followed that up by winning the first Minneapolis stop of the season over another all-star line-up. Weenk then carried that momentum into the New Year, running off 19 straight round racing wins, a streak almost unheard of these days. To further illustrate just how many drivers have pushed their way into the elite it wasn’t anyone named Anderson, Creten, or Meents that stopped the streak of the Iron Outlaw: it was another relative newcomer, Jason Childress driving the new Batman truck that finally made Linsey Weenk and Iron Outlaw taste a racing defeat in 2006.

It’s been a pattern throughout the year. Anderson, Meents, and Creten are still finding their way to the winners stage, just a little less often than in previous years. Actually while Anderson is having an outstanding year he has yet to win a televised racing event in this campaign, but he has won more TV freestyles than anyone. Faces that we haven’t seen walking up to collect the big trophies in previous years finally rising all the way to the top is what is really becoming more commonplace this season. Take Orlando as an example, where Steve Reynolds drove the Cowboy truck out of the Scott Hartsock stable to the racing win. Then the Speed cameras were in Houston for a moment that we had expected for quite some time: a huge televised breakthrough win for Carl Van Horn. CVH drove T-Maxx to the racing win in Reliant Stadium, beating another truck that appears to be on the verge of getting a statement victory soon, Superman with Chad Fortune behind the wheel. We’ve seen Marc McDonald put the Safe Auto truck in Atlanta’s televised finals, while veteran Jim Jack in Reptoid and the reigning World Racing Champion Madusa has made it into a televised final so far this year. Right now my odds for the racing event in Vegas are changing weekly, and will probably change several more times before I commit them publicly in this column. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the long time stars are falling down the list. Meents has driven Maximum Destruction to a pair of wins on Speed while Anderson and Creten have been close. It’s just that things are so wide open it’s hard to be shocked anymore, so my advice is to just grab the edge of your seat and watch the most exciting racing we’ve ever witnessed.

Although Meents and Anderson have accounted for five of the seven Speed televised freestyle wins so far this season, we have also been treated to a pair of amazing performances that show how on any given night today’s top stars can elevate their games and shock the freestyle legends. Paul Cohen did it in the Pastrana 199 truck when he wowed the Minneapolis crowd with a career best freestyle to win in the Metrodome, and veteran David Smith showed what a “home field advantage” is when the native Texan in King Krunch beat the best of the best to win the Houston freestyle. Here’s an interesting statistic if you want to look for consistency: of all the drivers who have competed on Speed’s Monster Jam television events so far this year more than once, the only drivers who have scored in the 20’s every time are the reigning champ Creten, 2003 World Champion Jim Koehler in Avenger, Weenk, and Neil Elliott driving a Max-D truck for Team Meents. That’s all. Driver’s who have a knack for consistency in freestyle have a way of stepping to the top at the World Finals.

We still have several weeks to go before heading to Sam Boyd Stadium to determine this year’s champions, and it is a time to watch the results page here at USHRA.com very closely. I know I’ll be looking each week to see if anyone can get on a roll, to establish momentum for Vegas and break out of what has to be the most crowded field at the top of the sport that we’ve ever seen.