Hidalgo, TX - State Farm Arena

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Trucks: USHRA Monster Trucks including Grave Digger® driven by Pablo Huffaker, El Toro Loco® driven by Aaron Basl, Storm Damage driven by Tim Mente, Hurricane Force, Fatal Attraction driven by Jeff Murphy, and Bad Habit driven by Joe Sylvester! *This is a non-dirt event


Friday, 7:30pm

We’ve had our opening night of Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam in Hidalgo, Texas and it sure was a great night full of excitement! Our fans in the valley of Texas one more time came from neighboring McAllen, and other surrounding areas to see some of the all time favorites like Grave Digger and El Toro Loco, and for the first time in Hidalgo, Storm Damage, Hurricane Force, Fatal Attraction and Bad Habit.

We started our night of competition with Monster Jam Wheelies. We had some amazing performances with very high scores. The first one to set up the pace was Hurricane Force (Steven Thompson) who had that truck pointing to the ceiling with a tremendous sky wheelie! The landing was a bit off, but still a good one ! Another high scorer was El Toro Loco ( Aaron Basl) who scored 20 points with a tremendous ski wheelie too, the landing on the back wheels was also a good one. Then, Grave Digger Pablo Hauffaker in one of his several specialties, did a great sky wheelie, truck achieving a superb vertical position as it jumped over the crush cars, and one of Digger's classic landings with the back wheels, rolling over the crush cars until he got off of them, his score was 23 points, and winner of Monster Jam Wheelies!! Pablo referred to the challenges of a small track, but with experience, strategy and the support of the fans, everything comes out great!! Other scores: Fatal Attraction with 19, Storm Damage with 11. Bad Habit couldn’t run in this match due to mechanical problems.

Earlier during pre-show, we had the drivers come out to the floor for their bracket drawing presented by Jack in The Box. They drew their positions in racing for Round one. There were several trucks reporting breakage and unable to run. Those trucks were Bad Habit and Fatal Attraction. In round one Hurricane Force qualified into round 2 by having a by run, Fatal Attraction was his match and unable to run. Then Grave Digger won over Storm Damage, and El Toro has another by run and qualifies in Round two of Monster Jam Racing. Hurricane Force fails to win over Grave Digger and Huffaker makes it to the Semi Finals. El Toro Loco runs against Storm Damage and wins his way into semifinals against Grave Digger. In the UTI Monster Jam Racing Grave Digger wins over El Toro Loco by small advantage. Since each section was being represented by one driver, section 112 was the lucky winner of Jack In the Box coupons! Again Huffaker dedicated his win to the fans who have supported Grave Digger for 30 years now!!

The Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Donut competition was another challenging competition for all drivers. Two elements that they have to dominate: 1. Dimensions of the track and 2. Slick Floor. However, this was not a factor when it came to the point of sticking those tires on the floor and make the truck spin at the most RPM’s possible! Hurricane Force started off with a little bit of a problem as Steven Thompson slipped and was shut off before hitting a wall. His score was 14 points. Fatal Attraction recovering from the 2 previous matches, came out aggressively on the floor nailed the truck down for some great spins and scored 20 pts. Storm Damage started off well but Tim Mente could not control his truck as it slipped against the crush cars, end of performance with a score of 14 pts. Bad Habit is back in competition and Joe Sylvester makes his truck spin like a maniac and scores 19 points. Aaron Basl on El Toro Loco floored his truck and in one try, spins his truck for almost 25 seconds and gives him the score of 24 points. Grave Digger comes close to obtaining another win but falls short against the leading score and ends up with 21 points. The winner for Monster Jam Donut contest was El Toro Loco!!

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Freestyle presented by Pueblo Tires was a tough match. Judges were watching closely for all the combinations and number of hits on the obstacles and it certainly did not result in very high numbers for the competitors. Hurricane Force 15; Storm Damage 16; Fatal Attraction 16, Bad Habit 14. El Toro went out for 23 points. Basl had better control of the truck , not letting slip so much. A constant problem that the other trucks had. El Toro did some good combinations of wheelies and donuts. Grave Digger came out as usual resorting to the strategy of speed to keep the flow going on the floor, with minimal interruptions as he kept moving from obstacle to obstacles, and doing some great combinations of donuts and wheelies as well. The judges scored him with 27 points. Pablo ends up the night with 3 victories, and what a way to continue celebration 30 years of being Bad to the bone!!

We’ll keep posted of coming results of Saturday and Sunday’s competitions!!
See you soon from The Valley of Texas!!

By Fernando Rubio

Saturday 2:00pm
Hello There from Hidalgo, Texas... it’s our second day of Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam in the great Valle de Texas ( Texas Valley) and it has been a tremendous day of wild action from all the monster in all contests!! Cricket Wireless presented one more time Monster Jam Wheelie Competition, and again the young talent starts to leave a mark on the score sheets. Hurricane Force driven by Steven Thompson got 24 points as he made a great wheelie including a tremendous Sky Wheelie, he scored 24 points. Such score is not easy  to defeat. El Toro Loco came to close with 23 points and the winner of Monster Jam Wheelies was Grave Digger with 27 points being this his fourth victory so far this weekend in Hidalgo. What a way to celebrate Bad to Bone for 30 years, Grave Digger. Storm Damage 19 points, Bad Habit 18. Fatal Attraction couldn’t compete due to a broken oil  pump.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Racing:
Jack in the Box brought the drivers to the floor for the racing bracket drawing. Round came our as follows: El Toro came out to defeat Bad Habit. Storm Damage had a by run as Fatal Attraction was no able to compete due to a mechanical problem, looked like a broken oil pump. Hurricane Force falls against Grave Digger. Semi Final Round: El Toro keeps advancing as he defeats Hurricane Force, and Grave Digger his way to the UTI Racing Final as he defeated Storm Damage.
UTI Racing Final, Two world champions El Toro Loco and Grave Digger. This time luck was not with Pablo Hauffaker, who fell short of winning Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Racing. Aaron Basl driving El Toro finished first and defeated Grave Digger. It was a very close race; Judges had to see the replay twice to determine who the winner was.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Donuts Results:
Hurricane Force 21; Storm Damage 17; Bad Habit 26; El Toro Loco 24 and Grave Digger 28. Bad Habit for the first time this weekend comes that close to winning donuts, and only 2 points made the difference for the winner Grave Digger.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Freestyle.
Hurricane Force 19; Storm Damage 12; El Toro Loco 21 and Grave digger 25. Fatal Attraction and Bad Habit were broken. Bad Habit reported a damaged Spider Gear that controls the differential. Grave Diggers scores another great victory.


Saturday, 7:30pm
It is all in one day, all the excitement of Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam! Second straight show here in Hidalgo, and more and more people come to see their favorite monsters. We started off the evening with Monster Jam Wheelie contest. Hurricane Force 21; Storm Damage 24; Bad Habit 17; Grave Digger 26, El Toro Loco 27. Aaron Basl (El Toro) enjoying one more victory this weekend. He said that we wanted to have at least one win in each of the competitions and it is looking great so far for him. For the first time gets a win in the wheelie contest.
Monster jam donut Competition.

Hurricane Force 21; Fatal Attraction 22; Bad Habit 19; Grave Digger 25, and El Toro Loco 28. Another win in this very same contest as last night in donut competition. Again the tuck was just static spinning in one single spot!!

Advance Auto Monster Jam Racing
Round one
El Toro had a by run since for this contest we only had five trucks available for competition. Bad Habit falls short against Storm Damagel and Hurricane Force fails to win against Grave Digger.

Semi Final Round
El Toro runs against  fast loser Hurricane Force and ElToro cuts in the way of hurricane from advancing. Digger does the same thing with Bad Habit, that came into action since Storm Damage had a mechanical failure. Again El Toro and Grave Digger faced each other in the UTI Racing Final. This time and again in a very close call, Grave Diggers gets another Victory.

Advance Auto Parts Monster jam Freestyle
Hurricane Force 18; Fatal Attraction 18; Bad Habit 24; El Toro Loco 21; Grave Digger 25 wins the Monster Jam Free Style one more time! This marked a double down for Grave Digger and his pass to the World Finals in Las Vegas.! We still have one more day of Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam in Hidalgo, we’ll keep reporting all details. Until then!!

Hidalgo, Tx Sunday 2:00pm
It was our last day in Hidalgo, Tx in the great Valley of Texas. I knew that in spite of being this our last day, I still was going to see more surprises from our Monster Jam drivers; and I was right. That was no hard to guess, since every single competition of Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam is a great one. We saw the come back of several drivers, and started to score even higher during the last day of competition.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam wheelies
Hurricane Force started with a high score of 25 points . Fatal Attraction scored 22, Storm Damage 14; Bad Habit 20; El Toro Loco 29 and Grave digger 26. El Toro scored his victory of the day and was clearly determined to accumulating more wins today.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Donut Competition.
Hurricane Force 14; Fatal Attraction 17; Storm Damage 20; Bad Habit 16; El Toro Loco 19; Grave Digger 30. Another great win for Pablo Hauffaker driving Grave Digger. The celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Grave Digger continued with one more victory.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Racing.
Round One
Grave Digger started with a great win over Bad Habit. Fatal Attraction ran vs Storm Damage, who by the way, after fine tuning had a great run, Storm Damage makes it to the Semi Finals. El Toro continued to dominate his way into the racing competition and winning over Hurricane Force.
Semi Final Round
Grave Diiger wins againg over Hurricane Force(fast loser from round one) Storm Damage lost vs El Toro Loco. Again , for the 4th time this weekend Grave Digger and El Toro Loco faced each other in the UTI racing Final. Grave Digger landed by short advantage on the finish line, and took another win.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Freestyle results
Hurricane Force 19; Storm Damage 19; Fatal Attraction 12; Bad Habit 27; El Toro Loco 25, Grave Digger scores another consecutive win in free style with 28 points.




Sunday, January 22, 7:30pm

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Wheelies
Hurricane Force 19; Fatal Attraction 17; Storm Damage 19; Bad Habit 16; El Toro Loco 22; Grave Digger takes another win in wheelies with 24 points!

Advance Auto Parts Monster jam Donut Competition.
Hurricane force 23; Storm Damage 21; Bad Habit 18; El Toro Loco 26, Grave Digger 28, and making a strong come back with 29 points. Jeff Murphy had some mechanical problems and had to work the extra hours, and it really was worth it, after a great donut performance and a great win!

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Racing
Round One
Grave Digger takes it against Bad Habitl El Toro Loco wins over Hurricane Force, and Fatal Attraction makes it to the Semi finals, winning by short advantage over Storm Damage.
Semi Final Round
Grave digger takes it over Hurricane Force (fast loser from round one) El Toro Loco is faster than Fatal attraction and advances to the finals, but after the landing on the finish line, has an axle problem, and Aaron Basl ( El Toro) couldn't make it the final round. Fatal Attraction came back to face Grave Digger in the UTI Racing Final. Grave Digger was superior in speed and again took the last competition of racing.

Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam Freestyle
Hurricane Force 23; Storm Damage 21; Fatal Attraction 22; Bad Habit 26; El Toro Loco 25; Grave Digger 28. Pablo Hauffaker on Grave Digger did a great spectacle of Free Style, and right by the end of his regulation time, after a donut flipped to the side, ending spectacularly and taking all 5 free style victories in Free Style!