Porter Looks To Extend Grave Digger's Record Of Excellence In Sunrise This Weekend

By Scott Douglass
Aug 14, 2012

  This coming weekend Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam^® excitement returns to the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Florida, a venue that has hosted Summer Heat action for more than a decade and over that period Team Grave Digger^® has landed in the win column multiple times every year, often dominating the results over the course of the weekend events contested on each August trip to south Florida. With Grave Digger continuing to celebrate 30 years of being Bad to the Bone it will be Gary Porter behind the wheel this time, ready to thrill the legions of Grave Digger fans in the Ft. Lauderdale area and looking to add to the outfit’s impressive win totals in that facility this Friday and Saturday. 

During Grave Digger’s three decades of domination maybe no state has seen more victories for the black and green wrecking machine than Florida. Grave Digger creator Dennis Anderson has had countless major wins in the Sunshine State and his teammates have followed suit from Jacksonville to Miami and all Florida points in between. The annual summer trek to Sunrise has proven to be another Florida home away from home for whichever Grave Digger driver has gotten the assignment there annually, with thousands of loyal Grave Digger fans turning out and roaring their approval with each year’s string of success.  

Checking the stat sheet over the past 11 years there have been 33 racing brackets and 33 freestyle competitions held in this building and the Grave Digger win total far and away dominates the competition. Team Grave Digger has won the Championship Round race 21 times in Sunrise for a dominating .636 winning percentage. To put it another way, three have been three race brackets contested annually in the BankAtlantic Center, and Grave Digger has an average of winning two out of the three every year against stiff competition from the likes of Maximum Destruction^®, Gunslinger, Advance Auto Parts Grinder^SM, El Toro Loco^® and a lengthy list of the tops teams in the sport who have raced in this venue during that span. The freestyle performance ledger is almost as impressive with Grave Digger claiming victory in 19 of the 33 freestyle competitions Sunrise has hosted the past eleven years. So the pressure is on for Porter to add to those impressive numbers this coming weekend. 

Porter has contributed plenty of triumphs to those gaudy numbers himself although this will be his first appearance in Sunrise since 2005. Porter campaigned his Grave Digger there several times in the early 2000’s, while the wins in recent years have been piled up by Team Grave Digger pilots Pablo Huffaker and Randy Brown at the BankAtlantic Center. You can bet Porter is excited about his return to this beautiful part of the country where he knows thousands of passionate Grave Digger fans are planning their weekends around getting to see Gary again and cheer this all-time legend on as the Grave Digger 30^th Anniversary season continues. 

To add to the Grave Digger Sunrise win numbers Porter will get stiff challenges from a line-up full of some of the greatest trucks and most talented drivers in Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam today, and none of them have any plans to being Grave Digger’s newest Sunrise whipping boy. Among those challengers former World Freestyle Champion Lupe Soza brings his Advance Auto Parts Grinder back to south Florida. Both Soza and “The People’s Truck” have long been fan favorites everywhere, but especially in that part of the United States. Native Floridian Scott Hartsock has competed in this building more often than any other Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam superstar and he will have Gunslinger “cocked, locked, and ready to rock” this weekend in his home state for sure. So it all adds up to what fans expect, intense competition every time the light turns green this weekend in Sunrise. 

The action this weekend in the Thunder Nationals format will also give fans even more opportunities to cheer on their favorites because to complement the racing and freestyle competitions, all of the Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam trucks will also compete in both wheelie and donut competitions. It has always been one of the things that make these more intimate settings unique and exciting, to see what the top names in the game can do in an arena that is chock full of challenges and to have to battle through not two, but to complete four separate competitions. That’s exactly what’s in store for the fans who join us Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise. 

Sunrise has become one of the anchors of the Summer Heat series with more than a decade of tradition now to look back on, and all of the teams heading to the Ft. Lauderdale area for this weekend’s battles want to add their names to the impressive list of winners so many fans have cheered on in this fun locale. This has become a real late summer highlight on the schedule and the action will be off the hook, so it is a weekend that you can’t miss if you’re an Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam in south Florida. Make sure that you Live it Live as the thrills are back in Sunrise for a triple header of the greatest excitement on the planet coming your way this weekend.