King of the Hammers 2015

We had a great week out doing some marketing and product research in Johnson Valley, CA for the annual King of the hammers event. We used the shop rig as transportation to different viewing areas during the main race and it performed flawlessly.

We started the day off at the starting line to watch some side by side drag racing off the starting line.

After watching the first 50 competitors set out we left Means dry lake bed and headed out Boone Rd. where we dropped into the sand wash by the bridge on our way to the sand hill on the far south western part of the course. We made it just in time to see the physical leader, Erik Miller of Miller Motorsports, approaching the Sand Hill with the helicopter getting some aerial footage just overhead.

With the cars getting spread out after some desert miles, the normally tough sand hill was easily conquered by the capable 4400 cars, so we headed out to a ridge near race mile 52 that overlooked remote pit 2A and race miles 82-84 where we could watch these cars use up some of their suspension travel through fast rough sections of desert. From our vantage point the first car through the fast stuff was relatively unknown driver, Clay Gilstrap out of Texas.

After getting our fill of watching from the top of the ridgle line we dropped down onto the desert floor to check out the speed these guys were carrying a little more up close and personal, of course all while obeying the spectator rules of maintaining a minimum distance of 150 ft from the live racecourse.

From here we made the short trek over to Boulderdash to watch some rock crawling. Upon arrival we saw the Amsoil car of Roger Lovell coming down the trail.

After realizing that the BLM was not letting spectators past the entrance to the canyon we continued south along the rock trails to our final viewing destination, Wrecking Ball canyon; but not before getting a little crawling of our own in with the Full Metal Fabworks JK.

We made the grueling trek, on foot, to the top of wrecking ball and then hiked along the top of the ridge to the trail's main attraction, the waterfall. By this time we realized we were having great luck with timing when we saw race leader Erik Miller coming through, followed shortly after by the physically 2nd place Bomber Fabrication car of Randy Slawson. We knew it was a battle of time and attrition at this point since Slawson had started the race nearly 20 minutes behind Miller.

Shortly after the leader passed through on their final lap, the 2nd lap racers started piling up. We watched up until the sun set and crowd favorite Tom Wayes came through and then started our trek back to the Jeep to head into hammertown where ultimately Slawson would arrive first to seal his fate as 2 time king of the hammers winner.