Double Duty: El Toro Loco Driver Aaron Basl Also Relishes Role As Team Grave Digger Crew Chief

By Scott Douglass
Jul 31, 2012

  At any Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam^® event where Aaron Basl is on hand you can rest assured of one thing: Basl will be one of the busiest people on the scene throughout the event weekend. You see at almost every event where he is booked Aaron performs dual roles, driving the popular El Toro Loco^® while serving as the Crew Chief for Pablo Huffaker’s Grave Digger^® at the same time. 

It seems that type of full plate, double duty occupation runs in the family with Aaron’s twin brother Daron holding a similar position for Flame Motorsports, where Daron combines his mission as the King Krunch Crew Chief with driving El Matador. The brothers from Shaw, Oregon, have found their niche relocating to Texas several years ago and landing the coveted positions with a pair of Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam’s premier teams, jobs that they have each excelled at for several years now. 

There are still others in the sport who stay as busy as the Basl brothers, driving one of these 10,000 pound mechanical wonders while also being the main wrench turners for their teams. Team Meents’ Chuck Werner quickly comes to mind, also driving an El Toro Loco while at the same time having the high intensity job of working as the Crew Chief on Neil Elliott’s Maximum Destruction^®. But this type of twin purpose role is not as prevalent as it used to be with more and more top flight technicians entering the sport exclusively to work underneath of these huge machines and at the same time we’ve seen a bevy of talented new drivers entering Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam, often with experience in other forms of motorsports, where their job is to focus solely on driving their monster jam trucks. 

Aaron Basl loves getting the opportunity to do both, to drive a popular truck and to also handle Crew Chief duties for the 2007 World Freestyle Champion, but he admits there are times when trying to handle it all is really tough. “Most of the time it’s pretty easy, but then again it can be challenging,” Basl admitted. “I know that when Pablo and RaceSource hired me to drive the second truck my main responsibility was still to take care of the trucks and to transport them and to do the displays. The driving part was kinda the second part of the job. I knew when I signed up for the job that was the way the job was going to be so it’s really not that hard for me but it’s a challenge. It’s fun because I get to maintain them, I get to work on them, I get to keep learning more about them, and to be able to work on all of the awesome machines that Pablo has in the shop to build the trucks. Then to have him trust me enough to go out and run one is really cool. And to get to watch him and learn from him, not just working on them, but as a driver to be able to improve on that too it is really fun.” 

A great example of just how challenging Aaron’s job can be came recently at a Thunder Nationals event in Mobile, Alabama. During the introductions for the Friday night weekend opening event Huffaker's Grave Digger came to a sudden stop during introductions and had to be towed back to its pit location. Basl stayed strapped into El Toro Loco, opened the event by performing in the wheelie contest, then as soon as he was done with that Basl came flying out of the crazy bull and sprinted over to Grave Digger and the thrash was on. Basl concedes that a moment like that is among the toughest moments he has, but when he and Huffaker got Grave Digger fixed and back in time to win both donuts and freestyle and the crowd was roaring, he had to feel a great sense of satisfaction for a job well done. And during the thrashing he didn’t miss a beat driving, as El Toro Loco competed in all four competitions at that night’s event, and El Toro Loco made the call for every event of the entire weekend at the Mobile Civic Center for that matter. “When he came out, and I’m already sitting there because I normally come out first, I sit there and I watch his truck fire up and he comes out, I’m always watching his truck as it drives around the track to make sure that everything is looking good and to make sure Pablo is happy with the truck. So in Mobile when he came out and went to do a donut and the truck stopped all of a sudden like that my heart just dropped,” Basl remembered. “What just went wrong? I’m looking at the truck and trying to figure out from the people around me what’s wrong with it. At that point I’m strapped in and ready to go to the first race, or in Mobile it was actually to the wheelie contest. At that moment I don’t have time to get out and look at it. I have to get back my focus on my competition. Then as soon as I get parked, and at that point I don’t care if I win or lose. I could have won, I could have lost, but my first responsibility at that point is to pop my belts, to get out, and to get over to see what is wrong with the truck. That night as soon as I got over to Grave Digger I knew it was the input shaft which is pretty common when you’re running on concrete, having that much power sometimes you’ll break an input shaft. Immediately Pablo jumped out and we started to take the transmission out. I ran to the trailer and got the parts we needed while he started taking the transmission out. We did it in like 20 minutes or so. That’s pretty good to change the transmission in less than 20 minutes. But every time I ever see that truck stop in intros my heart just stops because I’m responsible for that truck. It’s got to run so when something fails on it, that’s pretty hard on me.” 

The great teamwork between Basl and Huffaker in Mobile is par for the course, it’s what they do best, and they’ve been together for several years now. Basl appreciates the employment for sure, but he says that the ability to work at Pablo and Tina Huffaker’s RaceSource operation is an incredible perk of the job. “They are good teachers first of all,” Basl explained. “Like any job it can become a regular boring job if you let it. But this is something I have always been interested in and Pablo’s a great teacher, he’s always willing to spend time with me and answer any questions that I have. He’s always teaching me, always helping me when I want to learn something new whether it’s related to monster jam trucks or elsewhere in the shop with all of his machines. He’s willing to take the time with me to teach those things to me. We work well together because when we are working on stuff we both pay close attention to what we are doing. He’s clean about things, and I like to keep things clean. We keep the trucks maintained clean. That’s one of the things that he looks for, and it’s something else where we just get along, we see things the same way so often. It’s kind of hard to explain, it just works out for us.” The fact that along with getting to drive the awesome El Toro Loco and being the Crew Chief for Grave Digger, Basl also gets the opportunity to work for one of the industry leaders in building monster jam trucks means a lot to him as well. “It is a lot of pride that his brand is out there and it is so well known,” Aaron continued in talking about Huffaker’s RaceSource business. “When people look at a truck and realize where it came from, that it’s great equipment and then to have them associate me with RaceSource products, to know that I had a hand in building it, that’s pretty cool.” 

In last week’s column where I featured Advance Auto Parts Grinder Crew Chief Brian Christensen I quoted him regarding his thoughts on technical experience working on these trucks being a great learning path for Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam drivers, something that my colleague Mark Schroeder often makes note of on Speed broadcasts of the sport. Having a ton of experience both under the truck and behind the wheel, Basl too agrees with Schroeder’s oft-stated opinion. “It’s like any other form of motorsports, if you have actually had your hands in it, if you know what it is that you are actually driving and what the parts actually do then yes, I think that makes a better driver,” Aaron told me. “In that case as soon as something’s wrong with the truck you know it. If there’s a shake in the rear end or the gearing is not right or if there is a problem with a shock, if you have to maintain it then you are going to be aware of the problem quicker than someone who drives a truck but has never worked on one.” 

The idea that working on the trucks helps you become a better driver is one side of the coin that Basl feels helps him perform at the peak level behind the wheel of El Toro Loco. But Aaron went on to point out that he believes that driving El Toro Loco also makes him a better Team Grave Digger Crew Chief. Continuing along that theme of how all of his duties come together and one side of his job benefits the other, Basl talked about the fact that he is on the same team with one of the all-time greats in Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam, and that he knows working with and watching Pablo Huffaker makes him better in each phase of his responsibilities. “It does help,” Basl said. “Every weekend I am fortunate that I get to race with one of the best drivers out there. And he’s in a Grave Digger at that. Every time I watch him on the track I know that my truck is identical to his other than the body. Whatever he can do with his truck I know that my truck is capable of doing it too. So I just watch what he does and if he does some crazy jump and he tells me to go ahead and do whatever he does, that just makes me a better driver. I have confidence not only in the equipment but I also have confidence that he’s allowing me to do the same things that he does and it proves that he has confidence in me that I can do those things too. It really does make me a better driver.” 

Just keep in mind the next time you meet Aaron Basl at an Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Party in the Pits that when you get his autograph, you’re getting two for one: the signature comes from the driver of El Toro Loco, sure, but that same autograph is from the Crew Chief of the “Bad to the Bone for 30 Years” Grave Digger that Pablo Huffaker has thrilled millions of fans driving for decades.