So you have a top level Monster Jam team getting ready for a big event and at the last minute you find out that your regular driver is not available. Or you have a prime time team that has to give up your driver at the start of the season to take over another truck for a few months because of injuries. Who ya gonna call? It’s now obvious that in Monster Jam today, you are going to call Lee O’Donnell.

I guess we will start calling Lee the best driver in the sport without a regular ride. Somebody is going to put this talent in a full time ride someday, but for now, O’Donnell is always ready, helmet in hand, to fill in and drive the wheels off of any machine he gets the chance to drive. That was in evidence last weekend at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, where Linsey Weenk had been scheduled to perform in his Blue Thunder Ford. At the last minute, Linsey’s sponsor honored him by summoning the popular Canadian to Detroit’s Auto Show to be a part of Ford’s unveiling of their new F-series. With Linsey takin’ care of the Ford business the truck still had to be in the Atlanta event and ready to battle. I mean this is one of the year’s biggest shows, another sold out crowd filling more than 60,000 Georgia Dome seats. So even though it was just a couple of days before he needed to be in the truck, O’Donnell gladly said “yes” when the Blue Thunder team called to see if he would drive the Built Ford Tough piece on the tricky Georgia clay. And boy did he ever drive it. O’Donnell put Blue Thunder on the winner’s stage, defeating Allen Pezo and Predator in the event’s Championship Race, and then getting oh so close to winning his first “Double Down” trophy when he had the freestyle lead with only one competitor left. That competitor was Tom Meents, however, and Meents rocked the Georgia Dome in Maximum Destruction to win the freestyle trophy and deny O’Donnell’s bid for the Atlanta sweep. Still, it was a very impressive effort from Mr. O’Donnell. He gets the ride on Wednesday, shows up that Friday, and on Saturday he drives Blue Thunder to the racing win followed by a runner-up finish in freestyle. He was so excited after the racing win that he not only stood triumphantly on the roof of the blue Ford to accept the cheers of the crowd , he actually bent down and kissed the top of his victorious machine.

Remember that in 2007 O’Donnell was the choice of Adam Anderson to drive his Taz truck while Adam filled in for his injured father on Grave Digger’s 25th Anniversary Tour, and he showed his stuff throughout the first quarter of ’07, his season highlighted by racing Taz to the Championship Race victory a year ago in Orlando’s Citrus Bowl. O’Donnell was strong and consistent in Taz every time he jumped into the seat, but with Dennis Anderson fully healed and back in Digger the Taz ride is once again being piloted by Adam. So the 2008 campaign starts with O’Donnell on the sidelines, but he showed in Atlanta last weekend he is always ready for another opportunity to show the Monster Jam world that he can play this game, big time.

O’Donnell’s success is making it clear that while there is not a feeder circuit into Monster Jam driving, like say, NASCAR has with its many support divisions, we are seeing the emergence of other dirt based race circuits as a potential breeding ground for the next round of Monster Jam stars. Look at the two new faces that have made the biggest impact at these high profile stadium events over the last 12 months. They are athletes who have made names for themselves in other motorsports, where they are used to flying vehicles through the air and adapting to changing dirt racing surfaces on a constant basis: Damon Bradshaw, the former Supercross star who has exploded onto the scene in the Air Force Afterburner, and O’Donnell, the accomplished off-road racing star who has emerged as the ultimate fill in driver any time a team needs a hot shoe to pilot great equipment. You can also add in Bobby Parr, now in his second season behind the wheel of Team Suzuki, a driver who has already seen plenty of success and just keeps getting better. Parr came into Monster Jam with tons of motorsports experience including years of racing ATV quads. The immediate dividends that Bradshaw, O’Donnell, and Parr are paying would indicate to me that we may see more new Monster Jam drivers coming from these types of dirt based motorsports in the future.

Other news and notes from Hotlanta: proof that it really takes a year or so to dial in a new piece was front and center in the Georgia Dome. Allen Pezo had been struggling to get the bugs worked out of his latest Predator truck since debuting his new ride, and it looks like the team now has that machine heading in the right direction. Pezo was outstanding on the Cyclone style race track, and it was great to see the popular veteran back in the Championship Race at a Speed televised event…..and then there is Scott Hartsock’s new Gunslinger, which the Floridian created in 2007. He has had to spend the last year working out the kinks on the powerful Ford and it is now paying off. Gunslinger was the fastest qualifier and looked great in Atlanta, but caught a bad break when Meents spun Max-D out in time trials. With Meents seeded last in the bracket Hartsock’s reward for being the fastest qualifier was a first round race against the seven-time World Champion who got his act back together for round one, and Maximum Destruction defeated Gunslinger in the opening round. Then Hartsock came out huge in freestyle, I mean massive air, but he flipped the truck early in the run and ended up well back on the results sheet. Still, sometimes the results page can be deceiving. Hartsock has his new Gunslinger ready to battle for wins at every event he competes in this season…..watching the progress of Pezo and Hartsock with their new machines has me wondering how this year is going to work out for Dan Evans in his brand new Destroyer. I have never seen Evans more confident. It’s clear this is the best Destroyer Monster Jam machine Dan has ever built, but like his fellow veterans Pezo and Hartsock he may need some time to get the truck 100% to his liking. Evans lost his first round race in Atlanta, but came back to finish near the top in freestyle and Monster Jam fans should be thrilled to know that the new Destroyer looks even more awesome than the previous one when flying over a bus stack in reverse, as he did last weekend for the wild Atlanta fans…..speaking of wild, let’s get to Mike Wine. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is having more fun these days than the Monster Mutt driver. His autograph session at the Built Ford Tough Party in the Pits was like a constant party, and Wine entertained especially his youngest fans all afternoon. Thenwhen I interviewed him after he flipped the Monster Mutt to end an exciting freestyle run from the floppy eared Mercury he was really going crazy, having a blast, showing the fans just how much he loves being back behind the wheel after his 15-year hiatus. Here’s a thought. We always like new competitions, so maybe we can take the former Jersey Outlaw driver and the current Avenger driver into the middle of the floor and see who can get the Monster Jam fans more stoked on the microphone before they ever fire up their trucks. I know this. When Mike Wine or Jim Koehler get on the microphone live an event the poor technicians in the audio booth are having to pull the volume way down, because neither of these two personalities needs much amplification when they get on a roll…..I’m not sure there is any driver right now who has more pressure on him than Randy Brown. With Dennis Anderson spending much of this winter on the west coast getting reacquainted with his Grave Digger fans west of the Mississippi, it’s the talented Brown who has been tabbed to represent the black and green at several of the Speed televised stadium events this year. For Brown it’s not just the pressure of representing Anderson and the Grave Digger with the Digger fans, it’s knowing that many of the other drivers in each field really want a piece of him. Several drivers, many of whom have struggled one-on-one against Anderson in the past, have made it known that they think this is the year they can take out the Grave Digger in these high profile events, so Randy can’t slack off one little bit. He is going to get every competitors best shot round after round. In Atlanta Brown gave an excellent account of himself, racing strong until being eliminated by Pezo in a very close semifinal race. Then he was on pace to put down a freestyle run that might have made Meents’ job even tougher but flipped the Grave Digger with 30 seconds left on the clock. Even though that rollover ended his chance at the freestyle win, in true team Grave Digger fashion Brown refused to unstrap his safety harnesses while upside down and after the truck was rolled back onto its wheels Randy gave the Atlanta fans a sensation encore, not for points, just as a big thank you to the thousands of Digger fans on hand…..finally, I want to continue to give credit to drivers who have to take to the track early in freestyle and then turn in awesome performances that set the bar high. Every time I see this happen it just forces every other Monster Jam freestyler to elevate their game, and the fans are rewarded with a start to finish series of phenomenal freestyles. That’s exactly what happened in Atlanta, and this time the driver who gave everyone else a strong freestyle to try and top was new team El Toro Loco driver Nathan Weenk. Linsey’s brother is bent on making his own name in Monster Jam and his blistering freestyle to open the event in the Georgia Dome certainly grabbed plenty of attention. Like Frank Krmel’s freestyle in Donkey Kong last month that set the table for an incredible round of performances in Minneapolis, Weenk’s competition opening freestyle in Atlanta forced the other Monster Jam drivers to, as Meents loves to say, “Go big or go home”!