King of the Hammers 2023
Posted by Brandon Sevestre on
If you have never attended a smaller automotive race still in its infancy, you haven’t been to a real race. King of the Hammers this year celebrated its 17th year, which by most race standards is relatively young.
The Baja 1000 has been going for almost 60 years, NASCAR is celebrating its 75th anniversary and Indy Car has been racing for over a Century. Most Fans for these races, watch from home on a screen, or attending in the stands like a concert or baseball game viewing from a distance.
At King of the Hammers, you can be right in the middle of everything. Walk down the middle of the race trucks as the lineup, out of their pits for the start of the race. Feel and smell the roar and vibrations of the thumping LS engines from these desert monsters.
Once the race course closes for the day, drive the same lines in your own truck on obstacles you watched the racers struggle on earlier in the day or tear across the desert feeling free from the everyday traffic of life. Check out what everyone else’s creative minds have built with their own off-road machines, and even shop and learn from the very same manufactures in Hammertown.
It's truly an immersive and surreal experience, and one that probably mirrors what those other races were like in their humble beginnings. The desert is harsh, with its blowing dust that finds every crevice to hide in, the cold nights and dark nights absent of any city light pollution. It’s raw and dare I say almost primal. In a rapidly changing world it truly feels like a magical place that literally fades away back into the desert until next time.
“No matter the conditions, King of the Hammers never disappoints, because of one constant - good company. It was great to talk with like minded people, marvel at awesome and uniquely built rigs, day dream of a future rig plans, picking the brains and backstories of new people met, but most of all bonding with the crew that you came with” - Don
“There truly is no other event like King Of Hammers and no other place like Johnson Valley. If you can look beneath the dust and chaos, you will see more dust and chaos. But if you squint passed that, you will find the most unique, capable, and eclectic assortment of rigs on the planet tackling the most challenging and varied terrain per square mile period.” - Bowman
