Monster Jam World Finals 24 Preview

The biggest weekend on the calendar for Monster Trucks is now here, as the industry moves all eyes to Salt Lake City, Utah, for Monster Jam World Finals 24. This year's location doesn't exactly meet the "destination city" criteria of the other non-Las Vegas World Finals. Still, the Utah Sports Commission has the funds to spare, and for this year (and potentially next as well), has secured both of Feld Motor Sports' marquee events at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Another wrinkle this year is that this is the latest this event has ever been run: July 4th and 5th. Adding the overlap with a major holiday weekend, and considering that people don't typically yearn to vacation in SLC to begin with, it's worth mentioning that Feld is looking at a significantly smaller house than they had last year in Los Angeles. Friday's event isn't exactly a hot ticket if Ticketmaster's chart is to be believed.

(Screenshot taken around 10:40 PM EST July 1st for reference. Also, in the interest of fairness, their Saturday house looks better than this a few days out, and their two-day packages sold great.)

Now, not to be 100% doom and gloom here (although I believe I have some good faith criticisms), there's still enough reason to be excited going into this weekend. Monster Jam's talent pool is still as elite as it's ever been on both the Stadium and Arena fronts, and while this may not be "the best of the best" outright, there's no shortage of superstars set for this weekend. From reigning World Champions Zack Garner and Tyler Menninga, to the sport's old guard in the elder Anderson brothers, Jim Koehler, Todd LeDuc, Bari Mussawir, who's had a career season in year 15, as well as some newer stars such as Jon Zimmer Jr. and Dalton Widner. That said, let's dive into the new format, track, and field, and ultimately, the picks for the World Racing and Freestyle Championships.

First Year Format

The revamped format for this year’s World Finals has been…less than well received, to put it lightly. For 2025, they’ve effectively split the field in half, with one group of 12 trucks only racing on night one, freestyling on night two, and another set doing the opposite. The two winners of the separate racing brackets would then go for the title on night two, while the freestyle champion would be the best score from either night. Additionally, once again, eight trucks will participate in a skills competition on night one and a high jump competition on night two, with each event having a pair of alternates in case they are needed to fill in.

The new look run sheet was received very negatively when it was discovered earlier in the year, and despite that sentiment not shifting much from what I’ve seen, Monster Jam’s lead group, headed by Jayme Dalsing, clearly had no plans of pivoting. Speaking freely, I’d be more shocked if this wasn’t a one-and-done idea. It hasn't been met with a 100% negative reaction, but it's not far off from what I've seen over the last few months, and it didn't exactly help on the ticket front, clearly.

Secondly, pre-determining the field split about a month and a half in advance, rather than basing it on qualifying results, for instance, seems like a very poor approach. I'm guessing this won't be touched on in their press conference tomorrow, but I'd love to know how those splits were determined. Then there's the point that Skills and High Jump don't carry the same level of importance as Racing or Freestyle within the context of this event, no matter how much they try. I'd much rather see Feld scrap them and retcon the "world title wins" (which are a stretch to begin with) than expand on those two events in the future, but that's just me.

Great Racing Course but Uninspired Freestyle Layout

Last year, I wrote a preview piece mentioning that the World Finals tracks have been almost exclusively great for racing but poor for freestyle since the event left Las Vegas in 2018. 2025’s course continues that trend for better or worse, depending on your view of things. Racing this year is a return to form of traditional World Finals racing, with a twist: drivers will go up and into the stands, Monster Energy Cup style, not once, but twice. Think “Orlando Style” but with the 2014-16 “Jersey Style” start. A late edition that wasn't in the inital track map is a roller coming down the stands and to the finish line, which is a little dissapointing in that we're not going to see drivers floor it to the line (unless someone wants to do a supercross double onto the tabletop, then in which case, this is the best racing ever), but it's mostly a safety thing, and is far from a deal breaker anways.

I mentioned this as well last year: I don’t view the lack of cars, buses, etc, as a detriment to your modern Monster Jam freestyle layout. That said, the lack of creativity with doing all dirt obstacles would be perhaps my single biggest critique with them in 2025, and this track personifies that to a T.

Not a single obstacle here stands out beyond the middle jump, and even worse, the track is symmetrical down the sidelines on the outside with some of the more uninspired obstacle sets this event has ever seen. They likely had north of a year to come up with something for this event, and this being the final draft of a freestyle layout for your biggest show of the year is jarring. The new show format also locks you into this track for two days instead of doing a freestyle-only track for that second night, making this format look worse than most already perceive it to be.

Track as of Wednesday practice courtesy of Monster Jam's Instagram Feed

This is another thing I doubt they’d touch on the record in depth, but I'd love to know exactly what has gone into their stadium track philosophy over the last decade (and what's the line when it comes to making tracks friendly for skills but not to the complete detriment of freestyle). More so than in general though, speciffically with the Non-Vegas World Finals beyond that first one in Orlando, which I thought was pretty solid. The three other more traditional layouts (Orlando 2, Nashville, SLC) have been devoid of any real risk-taking with obstacle concepts/ideas, and to be blunt, save for a triple bus set in Nashville that wouldn't have been clearable with or without rain.

For as bad a freestyle competition we got last year, I’d much rather see a World Finals 15 or 23 freestyle layout than a World Finals 21, or 22 layout if freestyle is going be not good on the whole; because at least then you can say at least they tried to do something new, it simply didn’t work. World Finals (freestyle) courses SHOULD stand out compared to everything else, and beyond the room in the stands, which isn't a new concept, doesn't do that in any facet, which is massively disappointing. Not that World Finals 11 should be the standard since most drivers hated it, but they can do better than this right?

The Point of Points?

A full year into the post-Tom Meents era of Monster Jam, the 2025 grouping still touts over a half dozen former World Champions, headlined by last year's pair of Zach Garner and Team Grave Digger’s Tyler Menninga, plus Adam and Ryan Anderson, JCB's handpicked pilot Tristan England, Avenger's Jim Koehler, as well as Todd LeDuc.

Fan criticism has been a common theme this year, and that extends to even some drivers who made it in, and probably more so, those who didn’t. All three runner ups in the Monster Jam Arena Series’, Devin Winfield, Matt Cody, and MJ Solario, will have to qualify in the day before in the LCQ, despite drivers on the same arena series, multiple in the case of Winfield, get in despite finishing lower in the final series standings. Not that points should be the sole deciding factor of who gets in, but the Velociraptor driver only losing out to the best arena driver of this generation, potentially ever, in Weston Anderson, and seeing two company drivers who finished behind him, Coty Saucier and Bri Mahon, get in instead couldn't be more brutal. Even a stadium veteran, like Cole Venard, who has competed on the big stage several times, not making the cut was a surprise, despite a slightly down year. The number of independent entries into World Finals has remained relatively consistent over the last few years (5-6 typically), but realistically, there could have been 8-9 this year, which is disappointing given the talent outside of the Feld ranks these days.

Case in point on the "undeserved" invites this year, and I hope this doesn’t come off as adding on to the dogpile too hard, since she was singled out the microsecond this field got announced in full, but just statistically speaking: Marketing this event as having “the best field of the year”, and then having Kayla Blood, who’s finished 9th of 12th in stadium points in each of the last two years, is 0-3 lifetime in World Finals racing, while also qualifying dead last in all of her three appearances, in over a slew of great arena drivers (Indipendent and Feld drivers alike) or even some well-established independent stadium guys like Venard, would go against that statement. I'm not trying to come across as overly harsh here, and if this comes across that way, I apologize, but the numbers are ultimately what they are. If it means anything else, Blood isn't the only example you can point to (Mike Pagliarulo, one of 11 stadium drivers who didn't crack the 400-point plateau but won a couple of stadium freestyle events, is probably another).

The reality is that Feld will get “their” trucks in as well as sponsor trucks, which is fine on its own (Sparkle Smash, Megalodon, [insert character truck here], all make great merch money, it’s just a matter of fact and more importantly, good business). My issue would then be this: What's the point of doing points series when they are objectively just for show and nothing else? If you really think about it, there's no real added benefit to winning a tour anyway, since you'd (in theory) make World Finals anyway, and there's nothing else that comes with winning a tour, whether monetarily or from a benefits standpoint (think guaranteed late freestyle placement, or you get an auto first round bye in racing, things of that nature).

The Winfield case is something we pointed out as being especially egregious, but other arena drivers who performed well this year, like Fern Martinez, the aforementioned Solario and Cody, as well as Tony Ochs, all had good seasons that ultimately were meaningless. While what happened this year was unfortunate, strictly structuring this lineup based on series points moving forward would also be a mistake, as drivers, particularly in deeper series and probably more so in arenas, would likely receive a raw deal.

Ultimately, Monster Jam has tried to be part “Family Entertainment”, part Motorsport, but this is one of those cases where they’ve proven several times they cannot be both. My fix in a perfect world would be this: All active current/former Racing and Freestyle World Champions get a free provisional entry under the condition that they reach a specific points or wins threshold on whatever tour they’d be on. Series Champions would get in still, then you’d go at large bids in stadiums and arena, with transparent selections being awarded based on a mix of points finish, competition wins, event wins, etc (75-25 split of stadium drivers to arena drivers), for the however many remaining spots of 23, then you could either do a fan vote or LCQ still for that last spot. And if you want to incentivize winning a tour, guarantee a World Finals round one bye and then a freestyle spot wherever said driver wants outside of last to all of the five tour winners.

Sidebar: I don’t think increasing the field size to the old 32, or even the one-off 28 shown in 2013, would be good either. World Finals SHOULD feel like an exclusive event, and if this is supposed to be the elite of the elite, guaranteeing 75% of the drivers who run a World Finals invite wouldn’t be the right way to do things. Now, with all that out of the way, let's get to some title picks.

World Title Picks

Going into this weekend, we're riding a streak of eight different World Racing Champions in the last eight World Finals, and my guess is we're only days away from making that nine-for-nine. Although I didn't see every single show he ran this year, I can't look at the year Bari Musawwir had in 2025 and say he wouldn't be a worthy pick. Beyond the career year where he was on level with Tyler Menninga on the East Stadium Championship, he's consistently been one of the better World Finals racers over the last half dozen years, racking up a quarter finals and semi-finals berth in the previous two years, in addition to his runner-up result by way of a red light back in 2019. Especially given the racing layout this year, this is another prime opportunity for the well-respected 15-year vet to truly cement himself as a legend in this sport. Some honorable mentions here would be ex-Champion Tristan England, as well as Ryan Anderson, who feels due for a deep run after early exits the last two years.

For this year's Freestyle Pick, we're going based on a historical anecdote. If I'm not mistaken, Adam Anderson has won a World Championship every year he's received a new chassis to work with (conversions and refurbishments not included), dating back to 2008: World Finals 9 Freestyle, World Finals 15 Racing, and World Finals 19 Racing. Now, take a wild guess who got a new piece earlier this year. More importantly, ol' A.A. has something more important than that going for him this weekend: Vibes. It was revealed some time ago that he'd be sporting the old colors of Grave Digger the Legend, which, as the children say, means something to me, man. It hasn't been a banner year for the five-time World Champion, but anything can happen in freestyle. As a final note, he's is sweeping this event if they bring back the Coilover shocks for him; I don't make the rules. His younger brother Weston isn't a bad pick here either, and I'd also throw out current Racing Champion Zack Garner and then Jim Koehler, who still has the fastball hitting 100 mph on the gun around a dozen days out from turning 59 years old.

World Racing Champion: Bari Musawwir (Zombie)

World Freestyle Champion: Adam Anderson (Grave Digger the Legend)

Last Chance Qualifier Winner: Devin Winfield (Velociraptor)

Main Image via Monster Jam/Feld Motor Sports