After a week off from the Monster Jam Fox Sports 1 Championship Series the Hooked Monster Truck team headed to Arlington, Texas for their first ever visit to AT&T Stadium. Driver Steven Sims rejoined the team after being out of the seat for two weeks due to illness and was ready to get back to action. Friday night would be Steven’s first chance to shake off any rust during practice and he turned in a pass good enough for 10th place in the session. With that out of the way it was time to focus on the challenge ahead on Saturday night as the team looked to climb up the point standings for one of the four automatic qualifier positions into Monster Jam World Finals XVI in Las Vegas. In qualifying Steven lined up alongside Donald Epidendio and Titan as they raced against the clock for their chance to make the racing bracket. While Steven wasn’t able to out qualify Titan, his effort was good enough for 8th place as the final qualifier for the racing bracket. His opponent in round one would be fastest qualifier Damon Bradshaw and Monster Energy. Steven knew it would be a tough challenge to make up time on Bradshaw and gave it everything he had, but the truck spun out in one of the turns which gave the victory to Bradshaw.
As the third truck out in freestyle the judges typically don’t give out scores high enough to pull off a win, but Steven Sims was hoping to beat that trend when he took to the floor for his freestyle in Hooked. With top level trucks like Grave Digger and Titan going before him, the bar was already high to clear but Steven was undeterred as he came out flying right from the start. Regulation time was filled with big air and a great pace that was matched by none of the previous two competitors, but right at the start of bonus time Hooked started to develop a steering issue. Despite the steering issues Steven battled onward to finish out bonus time to try and score as many points as he could. The extra bonus point would make a difference as Steven and Hooked would take the freestyle lead by one point over Grave Digger. As the competition went on it looked like Steven was on the verge of his second victory of the season until Monster Energy put up a score of 36 with two trucks remaining. Monster Mutt would then top Monster Energy which placed Steven and Hooked in third place at the end of the competition. While the result wasn’t a victory, it was still a great performance for the team and one that got the fans attention in Arlington.
Next up on the Monster Jam Fox Sports 1 Championship Series for the Hooked team is Detroit, Michigan for round eight of the series. It’ll be a busy week for the crew as Tommy and Ed work on putting a new motor into Hooked for this weekend’s event. Thanks as always to the guys for putting in the long hours to keep Hooked running strong. Be sure to catch the Arlington Monster Jam on Fox Sports 1 next week on Sunday March 1st at 12:00pm ET/9:00am PT.
