It’s called Ultra4, or compete with four-wheel drive unlimited. The few rules that are written to address safety, environmental or behavioral-team issues, but the manufacture of vehicles in general, falls to the manufacturer’s innovation and audacity.
The showcase of this new generation of motor sports is the King of the Hammers Griffin (KOH), a stage race in the beautiful winter but lasts Johnson Valley off-road vehicles in southern California. Only in its fourth year, the event’s popularity has grown to attract teams from Europe, Australia and Japan through intense Internet chats between off-road enthusiasts that are both unconditional desert racing – which began with the Jeep Meyers and owners of the Isle of Man to find the fastest way to the peninsula of Baja California in the 1960s – and rock crawling – a relatively new sport of extreme precision driving confusing laws of gravity as cars at steep rock walls.
KOH challenges runners to set up for both disciplines, but there are conflicts. If the suspension is compressed to absorb the desert terrain to increase the speed, or if they fall to maintain contact with the rocks and increase traction? Air shocks or coil overs? Straight axle or independent suspension fron t? Powerful V-8 turbo four or light? individual seat or running with a browser? And not even mention the myriad of options for tires. The strategy is also key: “Winning in the rocks and survive in the wilderness? Or take ‘em in the desert and pray on the rocks?
The race covered 135 miles 2010 Hammer, of which about 100 miles were over beds of lakes and high-speed desert washes full of mounds. The remaining distance includes eighteen cannon rock trails with names as brutal as the conditions: Aftershock, Palanca, Claw Hammer, Wrecking Ball, Hammer. Even more threatening, noisy fans use their own modified four fours to reach the public roads alone and find the nearest rock display, including those directly at the races.
One hundred vehicles started the race this year, with only forty-three finishes within fourteen hours. The team based in New Mexico, Loren Healy and Rodney Woody won with a time of 6 hours, 57 minutes and 53 seconds, just 28 seconds ahead of world champion rock-2009 tracking Brad Lovell and co-pilot Bill Kunz Colorado.