There’s a heap of huge days on the calendar of off-road racing, like the Baja 1000, Mint 400, Mexican 1000 and Dakar Rally. But as it stands, none are as easy to watch than the King Of The Hammers. Witness it right now, from the comfort of your own computer.
KOH is the championship event for a racing series called Ultra4. Ultra4 cars are part rock-crawler, part-desert racer and all glorious spawns of home-brewed extreme engineering. Think of an Ultra4 car as a Jeep Wrangler on steroids.
But close followers of the series will tell you there’s quite a bit of nuance from one car to another—some run solid axles, some have independent suspension. Some racers have a co-driver, others fly solo.
Check out this video for a crash course in what’s going on:
The race is going to be raging from 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST until pretty much the early afternoon, though the race course is technically still open until 10 p.m. PST. That’s a long day for whoever’s still out there when the sun goes down.
KOH is a week-long event leading up to today’s event. You may have seen it described as “the Burning Man of motorsports.” I’ll resist because that’s an exhausted cliché, but Hammertown really is a city that springs up in the middle of the desert for a week. If you’re anywhere near Johnson Valley, California next February you should definitely get your butt down here. Or, just peep the whole event here on livestream.