Formed in 2013 by veteran Indycar and NASCAR driver Robby Gordon, the Speed Energy Formula Off-Road Presented By Traxxas (formerly called simply Stadium Super Trucks) series is what you get when you scale remote control cars up to life size. These events typically take place in packed stadiums and feature plenty of big-air jumps and tight corners, not unlike what you’d find at your local RC track.
The difference here being that the trucks weigh thousands of pounds, pack hundreds of horsepower, and as this next video shows, it’s a lot harder to land a full-size race truck than the RC equivalent.
The unfortunate driver of this particular Super Truck is Pat O’Keefe, who was making good time at the Long Beach event a couple of weeks ago before coming into one of the jump-laden straightaways. Combining multiple camera angles from both inside and outside of O’Keefe’s truck, we can see how he came down on an angle off of the first big jump.
That led his vehicle to take the second jump sideways, launching driver and truck into the tall fences surrounding the race track. As flimsy as these fences may look, they do their job well, pushing O’Keefe’s truck back onto the race course, rather than into the pit and grandstand. A driver following close behind manages to hit the brakes and avoid the jump rather than crash into O’Keefe, and the whole incident feels more like “business as usual” than a race-ending event.
Thankfully, O’Keefe was just fine, and his truck will almost certainly “live” to see another race too.