Team AMSOIL Dominates in Hammertown

If I had to describe King of the Hammers in one word, I would say it’s brutal. It is the toughest one-day race in the world for a reason. It’s tough. There’s no doubt about that.

Other races are tough also, but the thing that’s unique about King of the Hammers is getting through these rock canyons. And, if you start struggling in there, it goes downhill fast and it can get very physical. It’s the gnarliest rock race there is, and it really challenges you mentally, physically, kind of everything. King of the Hammers is the pinnacle of man and machine versus the toughest terrain on the planet.

So coming out here, it’s product testing, it’s tuning, it’s trying to go up against the toughest terrain on the planet and not break. So amazingly it’s putting everything on the line. You know, it’s the culmination of thousands and thousands of hours of work in the garage to build something that can handle the abuse that these guys are going to put it through. [ Engine revving ] It’s pretty funny to see some of the guys out here go pre-running.

Then they come back. They’re like, what are we doing? How are we going to get through this stuff? So I think that’s what’s cool about this event is it throws stuff at us that we’ve never seen.

It challenges us. [ Music ] King of the Hammers means a bunch of different things to me. As a person who just really got into off-roading with my Jeep* Lucifer, it’s a place that I can come out here, test some of my skills but also be immersed in all the motorsports that I love. When you first kind of show up to King of the Hammers, you’re driving in off the freeway or the highway and you just see this lakebed.

And it’s a dirt road, and you’re coming in. And all of a sudden there’s, you know, 100,000 people camped out here. And I got out here Thursday and, you know, there’s probably 30,000 people. Who knows?

And then, all of a sudden, you wake up the next day and it’s just even more packed and more packed, and you can barely get back to your camper. So it’s just so cool to see the vibe and the camaraderie of everybody out here. Everybody’s willing to help out. You see everybody on the hill.

If somebody rolls, they run over, want to help and winch. You know, for me, King of the Hammers is exciting because I’m interested in product design. I’m interested in seeing what these guys are doing to make their rigs more capable because, although I’m not a racer, I have an appreciation for building something that can withstand the test of time, that can hold up under a lot of pressure. And that’s everything that King of the Hammers is about.

It’s about building something that can hold up and survive impact, survive abuse. And so we see a trickle down of that technology being used in the vehicles we build, the OEMs. Everyone’s looking to make their vehicle better, perform better. And by coming here we are surrounded by people who are all trying to do that same thing.

And we’re going to see that those performance advancements manifest themselves in new products that are coming down the pike for end users who are building Jeeps and trucks. I think Dave Cole and Hammerking Productions have really built up King of the Hammers to give an outlet to everybody. You know? King of the Hammers is not just one thing to one person.

It’s completely different. You know, if you look at myself compared to Bryce Menzies compared to Kenny Hauk, you know, if you want to go rock crawling during the day, you can do that. You want to go watch some racers and watch qualifying inside of Hammertown, you can do that as well. If you want to just sit in your RV and just watch all the unique type of vehicles drive by, that’s a possibility.

I mean, Kenny Hauk brings out Wrecker and I bring out Lucifer, two different types of vehicles but we are experiencing the same thing. And I think that’s what King of the Hammers really means to all of us. You know, the thing I love the most about King of the Hammers is getting out of Hammertown and getting out here in the desert. The harshness, the brutality but all that is out in the desert.

And it’s easy to get sucked into Hammertown because there’s so much going on. It’s like a tradeshow at this point. But the great thing that I love the most is just, you know, the peacefulness, the challenge of getting out in the desert. That’s why we’re here.

Well, King of the Hammers is really special but this area is really special to me. I grew up in the back of a Jeep when I was seven, eight, nine years old Jeeping in this area before there was ever a King of the Hammers. But, instead of going to the beach every weekend and surfing like a lot of guys, I was out here Jeeping. I was out here enjoying it with my family.

And just one mountain range over in Lucerne Valley over 30 years ago is where I won my first desert race. So it’s really a special area. It’s special to be out in the desert. King of the Hammers has brought a lot of that out where there’s 50,000 people out here with their family.

King of the Hammers has built a lot of my lifelong friendships over the years. Without KOH, I wouldn’t have near the friends or what I consider family that I do today. You don’t get that in any other sport. The off-road world is just so full of just awesome, awesome people.

Our sport in general isn’t really super hush-hush and secretive. If you want to know something about my race car, come ask. And I guarantee there are 200 other guys in the pits that are the same way. And that has helped the sport progress over the years and progress at the rate that it has.

People don’t want to out-tech you. They want to outdrive you. And I think that’s important and it kind of shows the type of people that the off-road family gets. I mean, they are the best people you’ll ever meet.

[ Music ] We won! We won! Yeah! So if anybody’s ever thought about coming out to King of the Hammers, you’ve got to do it.

It’s amazing. We’ve spent a lot of time out here and watching teams grow. Everything is getting bigger. There are 120 UTVs racing today, trophy trucks, limited classes, unlimited classes, motorcycles.

There’s something for everybody out here and just to be a part of it at this point, of the growth and seeing what’s next. We have plans for the future. We plan to be part of this event for a lot of years.