Meritor ChampTruck World Series | Semi Truck Repair

Photo via champtruck.us.com

Okay, okay….

Here at JAM, when it concerns sports, we’re Ohio State Buckeye Fans before anything else. Period.

During the football season, you can fully expect most of the staff to know the latest scores/stats.

But our friends over at Meritor have given us something that we are almost as excited about.

This Friday, for the first time since 1993, the States will see the start of a series of big rig races similar to those that a number of other countries have been enjoying for nearly a quarter of a century.

Seriously. Big rig racing is BACK!!!!!!!!!!!

What makes it even better (in our own humble opinion,) is that the folks over at the ChampTruck series have leveled the playing field in a number of different regards.

To start–anyone can race. From corporate sponsored seasoned vets to independent owner operators, Meritor’s ChampTruck Series is open to any driver–regardless of their level of experience.

But, as they mention on their website, “deep pockets and unlimited budgets will not put any team on the podium.” (Can we get an AMEN?!)

Nope, this is a true-blue, honest to goodness, RACE.

The series starts Friday at New Jersey Motorsports Park and travels around the country to 8 more tracks for a total of 56 heats. The final World Series event is being held in Las Vegas at the end of October. Any dual axle truck can race, provided it is over 5 years old, has a full roll cage, manual transmission, racing seat, and fire system and safety harness in place. The rules even specify that the trucks “will be older road going, highly used and abused trucks that may have seen the end of their working days.”

(Getting excited yet?)

We’ll definitely be watching and following the series. (And if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll score two tickets to see it in person when we’re in Dallas for GATS in August!! Hint, hint, nudge nudge to any of our corporate friends who may happen to read this! :))

Below we’re including the pretty/shiny promo they published for the series and then below that a much grittier, point of view video from one of the Series races in Europe. The POV version is long, but it’s cool to take a peek at. Check ’em out.

And check out the series too. It’s one to watch.
The ChampTruck Promo Video

The gritty POV European version