There’s a heap of huge days on the calendar of off-road racing, like the, , and . But as it stands, none are as easy to watch than the . 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.