As the Stadium Super Trucks prepare to support YouTube personality Cleetus McFarland‘s Bristol 1000 at Bristol Motor Speedway, joining the grid are a pair of reality TV stars as “Diesel Dave” Kiley and Dave “Heavy D” Sparks, co-hosts of the Discovery Channel reality show Diesel Brothers, make their maiden starts. The duo spent Thursday testing at SST headquarters.
Kiley and Sparks, who are not actually related but close friends, originally began their media breakthrough with websites to sell diesel truck parts before starting a YouTube channel to showcase truck antics. Their popularity grew from their videos, which led to an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno before Discovery picked them up for their own show—continuing the premise of their YouTube videos—in 2016. Diesel Brothers is currently in its seventh season.
While most of their show and Youtube channel’s content focuses on building and driving various heavy vehicles, the duo has also dabbled competitively. In 2017, they ran the Mint 400 in the Trick Truck class, an effort that was featured in Season 3 of Diesel Brothers. They also competed in Monster Jam with the BroDozer and BroCamino monster trucks from 2018 to 2020, and the former participated in the 2019 Monster Jam World Finals with Sparks.
Sparks was initially scheduled to be the only one of the two running the SST weekend before Kiley confirmed his entry. The former’s stadium truck will sport a livery emulating the BroDozer.
“What I love about [SST] is it’s got plenty of power, it’s got plenty of suspension, and you’re not using it all,” said Sparks during testing. “It’s all about what the driver’s doing and I’m shaving little bits off of each lap by making dumb little changes, not big wide open pulls. That’s impressive. That’s definitely going to make not only me but everybody who gets a chance to do this a better driver.
“This is all about the science of driving and less about who has the biggest motor, who has the best suspension. […] This is about who can actually be disciplined enough to not use all the car in those moments where you shouldn’t. Max (Gordon) came out and he was like, ‘Hey man, you’re overdriving it. This isn’t a flat-footed track. This is half-to-three-quarter throttle.’ As soon as I did that, I felt myself speed up at least one or two seconds each lap.”
Other influencers making their SST débuts at Bristol this weekend include Derek Bieri of Vice Grip Garage, Matt Carriker of DemolitionRanch, and Netflix Hyperdrive star Fielding Shredder; the trio tested on Monday. Sparks and Carriker are also competing in the Bristol 1000 with McFarland and Robby Gordon.
