Talk about Bold Moves, as the folks at Ford like to do. The addition of Linsey Weenk to Tony Farrell on the Built Ford Tough Blue Thunder team elevates expectations and points to 2008 as being the best year ever for Big Blue Oval camp’s top team in Monster Jam.

Farrell has been the face of the Ford team in Monster Jam since the start of this century, so you might think the veteran would be threatened with Team Ford adding one of the sport’s hottest young guns to the Blue Thunder team. Not so. “I think Linsey’s going to be a big asset to us,” Farrell said. “He comes from the Ford family. He had good equipment with Jimmy Creten and he’s a good, hard runner. He’s going to be his own man here; he’s going to run his own show. Ford’s good to us and Ford’s basically going to turn him loose. So we’ll see what happens, but I really think he’s going to be an asset to the team. I’m tickled to death. We’ve got a good young runner.”

Because of the high profile of the Blue Thunder team and the huge expectations that go along with driving for the sport’s biggest sponsor, Farrell knows that having a talent like Linsey in another Blue Thunder piece doubles the impact that the team can have, especially during the busy first quarter of the year when there are multiple Monster Jam events going on all over the continent. So now when Tony has his Blue Thunder battling in one event, say in one of the domed stadiums up north, Linsey can have another top flight Blue Thunder competing somewhere else, like one of the Florida stadiums, on the same night. Tony believes it will create even more success, looking forward to the day when fans go to the recap page here at Monster Jam on line and see that both Farrell and Weenk have driven a Blue Thunder truck to major victories on the same night in different parts of the country. Farrell, now completing what has arguably been the best year of his career, knows that he and his Blue Thunder team have the ability to compete for the win at every event he enters, and he says that Weenk will have a second Blue Thunder truck at the same level, capable of battling the biggest names in Monster Jam for high profile victories. “He’s got some good experience behind him, but he’s still a young gun,” Farrell claimed when talking about his new stable mate. “He has no fear. And that’s going to take him places.”

It should come as no surprise, really, that Farrell is so thrilled about Linsey Weenk driving a companion piece to his Blue Thunder. With the exception of the Monsters On Main Street Ford sponsored event, and possibly at the Monster Jam World Finals in Las Vegas, Farrell and Weenk won’t be competing against each other. And Linsey figures to, possibly, ease the pressure on Tony a little. Driving the corporately sponsored Ford piece can create even more pressure than other drivers have. I mean Ford is a great sponsor, the best in motor sports, and the Ford execs I’ve met love their drivers and are committed to giving them every resource possible to succeed. But make no mistake about it. Everyone at Ford loves to win, and expects to win. Tony has won often for his team in the past, and was second only to Tom Meents and Maximum Destruction in televised race winning percentage in 2007. Now along with Farrell’s winning tradition the Blue Thunder team has another driver who has tasted victory on some of Monster Jam’s biggest stages, a driver who put together one of the longest winning streaks ever seen in the sport to begin the 2006 campaign when he was driving Creten’s Iron Outlaw Ford. Partially because they won’t be competing heads up against each other all that often Farrell seems to view the new Blue Thunder line-up as a team that has two #1 drivers and trucks, not a top tier team and a second level team. That’s the way Ford wants it, Weenk wants it, and Farrell wants it. Linsey told me he’s really happy with the reception he has received from Farrell already and loves the way Team Ford treats its drivers.

Weenk showed his appreciated to his new sponsor right off the bat at Monsters On Main Street by turning on the crowd and winning the Freestyle Competition in his first performance as a Blue Thunder driver. Even his racing was spectacular, even though it was not a winning effort, when he rolled the truck over in the turn and had every fan in the capacity crowd on their feet. The Team Ford personnel on hand knew that they had made the right move with the selection of their newest driver as Linsey Weenk began to pay dividends immediately.

Ford Trucks has never had a higher profile or a stronger line-up of drivers in Monster Jam than it does right now. Veteran Dan Evans, a long time Chevy pilot, has created a new Destroyer Ford that is clearly his best machine ever. Marc McDonald has potential World Champion written all over him, and his Safe Auto Minimizer Ford is just bad-fast. Courtney Jolly has already become one of the sport’s most recognizable faces and she is getting better and better in her Pastrana 199 Ford. And those are just a few of the names taking Ford into the future. Creten’s 2Xtreme racing team has carried the Ford banner proudly for years, and the former World Freestyle Champion will continue to field a team full of threats to add more championships. The Ford line-up has never been stronger, and now the team that actually carries the corporate sponsorship banner for Ford has become even greater with what we can now call “Double Thunder”, Tony Farrell and Linsey Weenk.

Farrell says this Bold Move is wonderful for the entire Ford camp and he is thrilled about it, as is his new teammate. “I talked to Linsey about it and he’s very, very excited,” Farrell added. Then Tony looked ahead to 2008 and said that he can’t wait for the day when Linsey Weenk’s future will be staring across a starting line at his past, and it’s a good bet to happen in some awesome dome or stadium Monster Jam race. “The big deal will come when he has to run against Jimmy Creten,” Farrell predicts. “I think your gonna see a race of all races there.” Wherever it happens, and it is bound to, the fans will be in for the ultimate high intensity treat the day that Linsey Weenk lines his Blue Thunder up, head to head, against the man who helped put him on the map, Jimmy Creten in his Bounty Hunter. Let’s just hope that first match-up comes in an event championship race, on a huge stadium course, and that the Speed cameras are there to capture what will truly be a battle for the ages.