In his role as JCB’s industrial design chief, Ben Watson has created a diverse range of machinery, from diggers and tractors to forklifts and dumpsters.
But the new JCB Digatron was developed to take on perhaps the toughest task any of the firm’s vehicles has yet faced: racing a giant shark. “I’ve never designed anything like this before,” says Watson, glancing up at the Digatron’s large, snarling face. “It has been quite an experience.”
Welcome to the bizarre but fascinating world of Monster Jam, the planet’s biggest monster truck competition. And cast aside your preconceptions, because beneath their cartoonish exteriors, monster trucks are absolutely incredible feats of engineering.
There is more than a hint of 1980s pro wrestling excess about Monster Jam, from the brash and oh-so-American event presentation to the larger-than-life excess of trucks styled after everything from sharks and superheroes to zombies and, er, unicorns.
And now, of course, British heavy-duty industrial equipment.
But the comparisons with pro wrestling only go so far: Monster Jam may be ‘sports entertainment’ in presentation, but it’s a proper contest that the team running it takes very seriously. Monster trucks are, just like Formula 1 racers, pure-bred competition machines.
In fact, Monster Jam’s trucks have to conquer a far broader range of challenges than the grand prix cars raced by Lewis Hamilton and friends. Those don’t race on courses that feature big dirt jumps or spend extended periods running on two wheels – and they absolutely aren’t regularly backflipped.
Monster Jam events require all of those skills. Each meeting will typically feature eight trucks, taking part in three events inside a huge stadium. The first is a head-to-head race, run in a series of knockout heats.
There’s a two-wheel skills contest, in which drivers have 20 seconds to show off their best trick. Finally there’s a freestyle event, with each driver getting 90 seconds and free use of the arena floor to pull off as many big stunts as they can.