An increasingly popular sport in the United States and Canada is Mudding. Also known as mud racing and mud swamps, mud is an off-road sport in which vehicles are driven through mud pits. The winner is determined by who can get the furthest in the pit. The rise in popularity of the sport is evident in the number of mudding videos being made and sold.

The vehicles involved compete in extreme conditions and are generally four-wheel drive due to the hazards. The winner is usually chosen by whoever goes the furthest on the track, however if more than one runner makes it, the person with the fastest time is the winner.

Dragster style vehicles are often used with the rail style and are usually class V or class VI mud racers. The difference between Class V and Class VI vehicles is simply the tires. Class V tires are modified street legal tires. Notches and grooves are cut into the tire to improve traction. VI tires are like the ones on sand racers. They have specially designed paddles that help them move through wet terrain.

Equipped with super-charged engines that include nitrous oxide, which gives the truck that extra boost to get through tough spots, mudboggers are in a class of their own. Early in the sport, mudders were old trucks or SUVs specially modified for racing in deep mud. The suspension was raised and specific tires were designed. However, since the late 1980s, penalties have been in place to make mud become an official sport.

One of the best features of mud videos themselves is the up-close action that you get to see without the mess of being out there in the mud. From the comfort of your own home, you can watch races at just about any track imaginable. These include short one hundred and fifty foot tracks up to large three hundred foot tracks. The tracks can be holes, swamps, hills or even pits.

Not only is there a variety of tracks to see, but each type of track has a type of car that is best suited for it. For example, hills and holes are better suited to four- and six-cylinder road cars. And as a general rule, the larger the class, the larger the tire. One compelling thing about videos is what you can learn about the real sport by watching them. You can get up close to the vehicles and the drivers.

Mud is sanctioned by the NMRO or the National Mud Racing Organization. However, in 2008, a new group was formed, further unifying the sport, assigning points to drivers as normal auto racing does. But there are still plenty of exciting groups that come together for a more raw style of racing, that aren’t part of a team and that aren’t sponsored. This is what makes mud videos so exciting, the raw racing styles of the various drivers and teams.