Cam McQueen: The Backflip That Changed Monster Trucks
When 10,000 Pounds Learned to Go Upside Down
Cam McQueen looked at an obstacle on the floor of Jacksonville Municipal Stadium and had an idea.
This is frequently how expensive machinery gets introduced to gravity.
Monster trucks had been jumping cars, flying over dirt piles, standing on their rear tires and occasionally landing where nobody intended for years. Getting one upside down was easy enough. A bad landing could handle that without any planning at all.
The trick was going upside down deliberately and returning with the tires underneath it.
Travis Pastrana had tried. Tom Meents had been experimenting. Everybody understood the objective.
Nobody had yet landed one in scored Monster Jam competition.
Then McQueen noticed a ramp that had not received the memo that it was about to become a backflip ramp.
The Truck Wasn’t Exactly a Motorcycle
By 2010, motorcycle backflips were spectacular but no longer mysterious. A few hundred pounds of motorcycle and rider went up a ramp, throttle helped control the rotation and everybody hoped the tires arrived before the rider did.
McQueen was driving Nitro Circus.
Roughly 10,000 pounds. Around 1,500 horsepower. Four enormous tires carrying enough rotating mass to make a motorcycle wheel look like hardware from a wheelbarrow.
That changed the conversation considerably.
Once five tons of truck begin rotating backward, the driver cannot pull over halfway through and reconsider the project. Ramp angle, approach speed and throttle have already made most of the useful decisions.
Get them wrong and the backflip becomes a very elaborate way to inspect the roll cage.
Jacksonville Hadn’t Built Him a Backflip Ramp
On February 27, 2010, Monster Jam filled Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. McQueen was there driving Nitro Circus during freestyle, where the floor contained the usual collection of dirt obstacles intended for jumps and other forms of controlled abuse.
One of them caught his attention.
It had not been designed for a backflip.
It was simply steep.
Steep enough to make Cam start thinking.
McQueen later described the decision with considerably less ceremony than five tons of machinery deserved. Backflips had been on his mind, the obstacle looked usable and he decided to try it.
That is a calm way to describe pointing a 10,000-pound truck at the wrong side of gravity.
The ramp angle was already there. Cam’s contribution was deciding how hard to hit it. Too little speed could leave Nitro Circus arriving roof-first. Too much could produce another expensive interpretation of upside down.
He lined up the truck and committed to the experiment.
Then Jacksonville Lost Sight of the Ground
McQueen hit the obstacle and stayed in the throttle. Nitro Circus climbed the steep face, the nose rose and the truck kept rotating until all four tires were above the roof.
At that point nobody in the stadium needed an explanation.
The truck was upside down on purpose.
Rotation continued. The rear tires swept through, the front tires followed and five tons of monster truck came back toward the dirt.
Four tires landed.
Not the roof. Not the tailgate followed by an embarrassed flop. Not a pile of fiberglass and suspension pieces surrounding a driver explaining that the idea had been excellent until the second half.
The tires.
McQueen drove away.
The first successful backflip in scored monster-truck competition had just happened because a driver looked at an obstacle intended for something else and decided the builders had accidentally made it useful.
One Landing Changed the Question
Before Jacksonville, drivers had already proved monster trucks could be persuaded into the rotation. The troublesome part was finishing it.
McQueen removed that uncertainty.
A monster truck could perform a backflip in competition and drive away.
That is dangerous information to give competitive people.
The question stopped being whether somebody could do it. Now everybody wanted to know who could do it next, who could do it cleaner and how long it would take before one rotation stopped being enough.
Motorsports has a poor record of leaving a newly proven idea alone.
Next Year the Stunt Had Its Own Ramp
The following year’s Monster Jam World Finals showed how quickly things had changed. Jacksonville had handed McQueen an ordinary obstacle that happened to look useful.
Now Monster Jam brought a ramp specifically intended to send monster trucks over backward.
The stunt had acquired infrastructure.
Several drivers attacked it, and McQueen landed another backflip in Nitro Circus. This time he became the first driver to land one successfully during World Finals competition.
One year earlier, Cam had improvised with a pile of dirt.
Now somebody was building specialized dirt specifically for the foolishness.
That is how quickly a stunt becomes a feature once a crowd decides it wants another one.
Then One Flip Wasn’t Enough
Drivers did what racing people always do when somebody proves something difficult can be done.
They made it harder.
Consistency improved. Consecutive flips followed. Reverse attempts and corkscrew variations appeared. McQueen added tricks of his own, including a corkscrew-style backflip.
Before long, rotating a monster truck backward only once had begun looking almost traditional.
Jacksonville remained the dividing line.
Before McQueen’s landing, the backflip was something monster-truck drivers were trying to achieve.
Afterward, it was something the sport knew how to demand.
The Crowd Never Lets Progress Retire
That is the hidden problem with spectacle. Once people have seen a truck jump over cars, ordinary driving looks dull. Once they have watched one fly farther, the old jump shrinks.
Once 10,000 pounds rotate backward and land cleanly, jumping forward over another dirt pile suddenly needs better advertising.
The successful stunt moves the baseline.
McQueen did not merely add another trick to his own freestyle run. He changed what a monster-truck crowd could reasonably expect to see.
Good news if the business involves filling stadium seats.
Less comforting if the business involves keeping the truck right side up.
All Because the Ramp Looked About Right
The best part of Jacksonville is the lack of ceremony. McQueen did not arrive with a purpose-built structure and announce that monster-truck history was scheduled for later that evening.
He saw an obstacle.
It looked steep enough.
Other drivers had already demonstrated that the idea worked right up until the landing.
Cam decided to finish the experiment.
Ten thousand pounds climbed the ramp, went upside down and came back onto four tires.
Before February 27, 2010, a monster truck ending up on its roof generally meant something had gone wrong.
Cam McQueen demonstrated that the better version was to keep going.
The difference between a rollover and a new stunt was another half-turn.