Scooby-Doo truck driver Linsey Read on her Monster Jam career and family life

Linsey Read, driver of the Scooby-Doo truck, talks about the various discipines of Monster Jam.

Dog O’Day – Have you always been a car person, or previously involved in motorsports?

Linsey Read – I haven’t! The tough truck challenge was the first time I had ever done any kind of event in motorsports, so I was kind of just thrown into it. I absolutely love motorsports and wanted to get into it, so I crewed for a stock car team in dirt track racing, but I’d never gotten an opportunity to drive until then. So I’m kind of new at the whole driving thing, but I feel like I’m picking up on it pretty quick, and I’ve just been living my dream ever since.

You were the Freestyle world champ a couple years ago?

I was! So in 2019 it was my first opportunity to be part of the Monster Jam World Finals, and I started in what’s called the Showdown, which is like a last-chance qualifier to get into the actual World Finals to compete in the racing and the Freestyle. So I was up against seven other drivers, and we did racing, I ended up being the first female driver to win a Showdown competition, so I got to advance into the main stage, and I ended up with the Freestyle win as well! It was great!

And Freestyle is the tricks element, with big jumps and wheelies?

Yep! Freestyle is two minutes for us to basically go out there and show off what we can do, we can hit whatever jumps we want to hit, we can backflip, I’ve done cartwheels…you can do basically whatever you want to try in that two minute’s time to showcase your talent.

And then there’s also the racing element and the Skills element as well, right?

Yes, for our Stadium Series we start out the show with bracket-style racing, from there we go into the Skills, and the Skills Challenge is basically – you’re either trying to get a nose wheelie going, where you balance on the front two tires, you can do it the reverse way and balance on your rear two tires, bicycles, just your standard wheelie, so many different things you can do in the Skills Challenge, and it’s up to you to figure out which ones you want to try to wow the crowd in the moment.

You mentioned that you got to the World Finals through the Showdown, How do most of the drivers qualify for that?

They choose us throughout the tour, they watch us, how we drive and interact with fans and everything. I ended up finishing third in my tour, really high up in the rankings for it, and with all the other ones that they chose for it, so it’s basically the drivers who have really succeeded throughout the year, so they put them out there so we can try to make it to the big show with all the heavy hitters.

Do you have a favorite of the three disciplines?

I love Freestyle. That’s probably a lot of people’s favorite, because that’s where you really get to go out there and go as fast as you can, full throttle, hit those big jumps – and what I love the most, no matter how crazy I get out there on the track, it’s just hearing the crowd chanting and getting up out of their seats and being so excited, and I love to see people get so pumped up for my runs.

So it’s a lot of fun to drive, really fun to see the fans get so excited, and plus with Monster Jam, I think it’s really cool how we get so much fan interaction. For our Freestyle and Skills elements, we have a site called JudgesZone.com, and everybody in the crowd gets to log onto that, and after our run, they are the ones judging on a scale of 1-10 how good you are out there, so at the end of the day, the fans are the ones who pick the winners of those two events.

Wow, did not know that. That’s really cool.

I know, right? And on top of that, we also do our Pit Parties, where you can get that one-on-one interaction and ask them about whether it’s their first time going to the show or their 10th, you get to see familiar faces everywhere we go, you get to meet new people all the time, I just really love the fact that we get that interaction with them.