1992

BIGFOOT 50x50 Day 33, 1992: “Earning Your Stripes”

As 1992 began for Andy Brass, his time in BIGFOOT 8 would come to an end. On January 31, he took over the all-new BIGFOOT 10, the team's first rear-engined Stage 3 race truck and the first new truck to debut since 1989. The truck instantly became the darling of the fleet and was immediately a competitive force. Taking stadium and arena wins at both USHRA and USA shows during the year, its greatest triumph is capturing the 1992 PENDA Points Series championship, the team's first PENDA title and first proper racing title since 1990.
 
A week before Andy debuted 10,, Dan Runte would move up into BIGFOOT 8 and be tasked with defending the team's honor on the Camel tour, scoring his first televised win in Providence on February 7. The rookie definitely earned his stripes, and took his lumps racing against the likes of Taurus, Bear Foot, Carolina Crusher, Grave Digger and Equalizer.
 
1992 would also mark the year Jim Kramer wrapped up his full-time driving career and became something of a relief driver, piloting BIGFOOTs 3, 4, 8, and 9 at various points during the first half of 1992. Some of the events would even feature Jim as the masked man behind the wheel of Snake Bite! All of this would coincidentally line up with Gene Patterson assuming the wheel of BIGFOOT 9, leaving Jim to soldier on in just about whatever truck he was needed in.
 
The evolution of monster truck racing also meant that the sun was setting on a few of the older trucks as racing vehicles. BIGFOOTS 2, 3, 6 and 7 would continue to serve to the best of their increasingly limited abilities. Jim and BIGFOOT 3 did their best to keep up in places like Kansas City's Kemper Arena and Knoxville's Thompson-Bolling Arena, while Ron Bachmann becomes the 4th different driver to roll BIGFOOT 6 (as Carolina Crusher rolls over simultaneously with Lurch at a USA event in Toronto). BF6 is rebodied and repainted, first with a modified all-blue livery before earning its stripes and being sent on a grueling tour of the UK, Denmark, and Iceland.
 
While BIGFOOT 6 is under the knife, 2 is pressed back into service to help cover a select number of USHRA dates that feature a "BIGFOOT vs GRAVE DIGGER" billing, pitting C-Team leaf-sprung warhorses from each team against each other in a sort of "grudge match" format as a compliment to the night's pulling activities. Eventually, BF2 is converted into the first "SafariFoot" ride truck, earning its stripes in the process.
 
BIGFOOT 3, after completing the final competition events of its career, gets upgraded to a new-style fiberglass '92 Ford front clip before eventually earning its stripes and being used almost exclusively as a display truck through the end of the year, eventually making the transition to a second "SafariFoot" ride truck in late 1992.
 
BIGFOOT 4 would continue to soldier on, having earned its stripes (and some heavy upgrades) way back in 1990. With the departure of driver John Piant the previous year, 4 has seen a revolving door of drivers pilot the machine both as BIGFOOT and Snake Bite, including but not limited to: Mike Whitt, formerly the driver of Stomper, Kirk Frankish, Dan Runte, Gene Patterson and Jim Kramer, before Eric Meagher settled in as the most consistent driver of the truck in 1992.
 
All of this, and somehow the team found time to construct TWO MORE trucks in 1992, one of which will never see competition but may very well be the most-seen BIGFOOT truck ever. That truck wouldn’t debut until 1993, while the other truck would debut "at the 11th hour" in late 1992. Wildfoot, the R&D name for BIGFOOT 11 would see use in press and display functions before making its competition debut in 1993.