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The toddlers came in droves, their tiny feet pounding the stadium steps in a frenetic drumroll. Piercing screams filled the air like streaking arrow fire. Everywhere you looked, parents grimaced, gaunt and weathered, like peasants stolen from one of Bosch’s oil-on-oak hellscapes.
And yet, there is only joy at Monster Jam.
The monster trucks came, so we went. The Seattle show was simply remarkable. Firstly, because my family of three doesn’t get out much. Our 3-year-old is… well, we describe him to polite company as “energetic.” But really he’s a megaton explosion. So we tend to hand him off like a hot potato that needs to cool off outside the house. While mom gets rest, dad’s on duty, and vice versa.
But this was monster trucks, on home turf at the Seahawks’ stadium, so we made an exception. All hands on deck for the rippin’-est show in town.
The stadium gates. Home to jumbotrons and shrieking toddlers any which way you look.Kyle Kinard
Observation one: The crowd is the show before the show. A perfect cross-section of core millennial parenthood mixed in with Eeeehawwww! enthusiasts. There were the too-cool mommies with Botox foreheads sporting NASCAR throwback jackets. Of course, a sea of fellow balding dads with Pit Viper sunnies and the outline of a Zyn tin in their back pocket.
Everywhere else, the true believers roamed: grown men in decades-old Bigfoot T-shirts. Superfans dressed head-to-toe in El Toro Loco swag. There was a strong Hispanic contingent in attendance, all snip-toe cowboy-boot swagger, their kiddos clad in Grave Digger tees, flitting like moths past the merch stands and beer taps and sausage carts. Everyone, regardless of race or station, turned out for the monster trucks. The day was warm and perfect and sunny in the kind of rare perfection you won’t find anywhere but the Pacific Northwest in the death throes of summer.
Come to Monster Jam for the hearing damage, stay for serene views of downtown Seattle.Kyle Kinard
Observation two: Monster trucks ABSOLUTELY RIP. If you haven’t been, just go. You buy the tickets for the kids, but it’s the parents hanging off the edge of their seats. The whole event had my head spinning. The stadium frothed with the sensational joy of V-8 thunder and toddler screams.
At one point I turned away from my own awestruck son and watched a kid in a Scuderia Ferrari hat nearly collapse when Grave Digger tipped up onto two wheels, parading around the dirt in perilous balance before slamming back down to thunderous applause.
Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
The kid’s Prancing Horse hat and that roaring V-8 forged a fresh neural pathway. A thought: Does Formula 1 need more monster trucks?
I chuckled to myself. It would certainly bring some much-needed verve back to the grid.
Monster Jam transforms your local NFL venue into a dirt bullring with hella-sweet jumps, which begs the question: Couldn’t Silverstone use a jump or two?Kyle Kinard
Unless you understand exactly what I mean, this will be a hard sentiment to explain, but there’s so much hand-wringing about how boring F1 is these days that it’s easy to almost forget just how boring today’s racing actually is. The broadcast’s production value is so high, the in-car camera angles so stunning, and the glamor of the sport so effervescent, it distracts you from the dullness of the actual on-track product.
At the moment it’s all filler, no killer. Take the latest F1 Grand Prix: The series debuted its newest track, another soulless street circuit in Madrid called the “Madring.” The race was anything but mad.
Peter Fox/Getty Images
In the end, the track produced yet another nearly drama-free procession. Think Monaco, minus all that history and yacht-club glitz. Lando Norris snagged pole then caught the leading edge of an unfortunately timed yellow flag, one that allowed a window for his competitors to pit, but (arguably) not Norris. He fell two spots, handing Kimi Antonelli and Mercedes the win.
I promise you that reading my dull synopsis will have raised your pulse no more than watching the race live.
Remember when the cars looked, sounded, and felt like THIS?Kyle Kinard
So, why stick with the series at all? Memories, I guess. These days, I watch F1 by force of habit. Like a tiny mallet to the knee, I rise reflexively before the sun to watch the guy in the hottest car lead 21 other drivers on a Sunday drive around those hallowed temples of motorsport in… uh… Azerbaijan, Qatar, and Miami…
It’s important to remember that—even if the tracks were better in The Good Old Days—much of F1 history has been one dude in the best car just slapping the rest of the grid in the mouth for two hours on his way to a WDC title. BUT, back in The Good Old Days, the cars at least spat rude noise from the business end of God’s Own V-8s and V-10s and V-12s and so forth.
You saw the drivers wrestling the things and never heard them compare a race car qualifying lap to operating a TI-86. The regulations mandating hybrid systems and smaller displacement in 2014 are the lowest-hanging fruit on the blame tree, but really it’s a more deeply rooted problem with the priorities of the sport itself.
So much of a monster truck’s thrill is a cacophony loud enough to shatter your ear drums and tickle your brain stem. Usually at the same time. The machines are hefty and difficult, and you see and hear drivers struggling to corral that tangle of noise and power and mass.
I once attended a test for a magazine wherein my co-worker drove Fernando Alonso’s V-8–powered MP4-22 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You could hear that car for miles outside the Speedway and when you did, it stood the hair on your forearms on end. It did not suck.
Somehow, the only image of Alonso’s McLaren I took that day.Kyle Kinard
First order of business to improve F1 should be getting that earplugs-required soundtrack back. It’d cut complaints in half.
And while there are competitive elements to a monster truck show, it’s not really a competition, only a spectacle. It struck me at the moment when Grave Digger sent a whole stadium into convulsive fits that F1—at its absolute best—should be both.
But at some point, either before or during its hybrid era, F1 forgot that the spectacle that matters most is the one on track. Distractions line the grid these days. Every viewer angle near the track is designed to be Instagramable. There are $130 T-shirts at the kiosks, a star-studded grid walk, and probably the most likable set of nice-boy drivers ever to suit up. What F1 is missing right now is awe.
Where can you find that in spades? Follow your toddler’s footsteps.
Kyle Kinard
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The only car writer dumb brave enough to flip a grain truck on its roof, Kyle Kinard once plied his trade at America’s greatest car magazines. He now lives near Seattle and enjoys the rain. His column, Kinardi Line, runs monthly, as does the Camaro vs. World project-car series.