What can we say about King of the Hammers 2019? It was cold, that’s one thing for sure. Aside from the cold, Thorson’s Racing had a great race. We ultimately had transmission issues that ended our day.
This year Thorson’s Racing grew to a two car team and welcomed long time friend and crew member Randy Watson of Watson Racing. Along with his Co-Driver James Treadway and their families. Randy and James have been pitting for us for the past few years and as of 2018 have been racing their own car. This would be their first King of the Hammers and we were excited to be able to help them at this race and the journey to KOH. 
Hells Bells had just been torn down and had all the major components rebuilt prior to KOH. With everything gone though, refreshed and race prep’d, we headed out to the lake bed. Everything went very smooth all week leading up to the race. Pre running was going well, #666 didn’t need anything besides a bolt being tightened here and there. With a moderate qualifying run, we qualified 90th. Going into this race we weren’t too concerned in our placement, our goal was to bring it over the finish line in time.
Race day came and it was a very brisk morning! We started the race and headed off into our 91 mile first lap. Our plan was to skip remote pit 1 the first time though and did just that. We kept a comfortable pace out in the desert and boy was it rough! We continued on until we came though remote pit the second time. We stopped and took 11 gallons of gas, had the crew look over the truck, everything looked good and felt good. We headed out and head back to main pit to complete our first lap. Thank you guys and gals at remote pit 1 for waking up early and taking care of RP1!!
Pulled into main pit for a quick fuel top off and off we went. Now on our second lap, we were passing cars, keeping a good pace up and having a great time. We started the rock sections and we’re having ball. Dealt with a little traffic here and there but nothing too bad. We pulled into remote pit 2b for fuel and ready to finish off our second lap. Unfortunately during the pit stop the crew noticed a leaking rear steer pump. Having a spare but located at main, they were quick to get on the radios and was able to get our spare out to us in record time. The crew robbed parts from the spare to rebuild the pump on the truck, got it fixed and we were out in a little over a hour. Thank you guys and gals for busting that repair out!!!
We had one rock trail left before we were back into the desert headed to main pit, Aftershock. We started down aftershock, when we got to the waterfall we encountered a upside down car at the bottom directly in the middle of it. #666 Co-driver gets out to help winch the car over and get them out of the way so we can continue. Our winch cable was jammed so we were going to hook them up and pull backwards in reverse to flip him over, that was when we found out we didn’t have reverse! Now we couldn’t go anywhere with cars coming down the trail. Not a good situation! We got the winch cable unjammed, was able to turn the upside down car over, but the driver killed the batteries while they were trying to winch the car themselves. This was very inconvenient as we couldn’t proceed forward due to him being directly in the way, and couldn’t go backward to hit the bypass because reverse was lost. We ended up sitting for 2.5 hours waiting for the driver and co driver to get back with a jump box to start the car. while they were gone we guided and helped multiple drivers navigating around the two cars blocking the trail.
Once they got the car started and out of the way, we continued on. Not far down the the trail we noticed along with reverse being gone, we also had lost second gear. Things were starting to look dim. We continued on, contemplating what we were going to do. We decided that we would finish our second lap and officially start our 3rd, and call the race. We milked it back, and pulled into our pit which was full of our crew congratulating us on our efforts and going as far as we ever have before in this race, 170 miles.
Although we did not finish, we as a team came together and did the very best we could, and went farther than we ever have before. We are proud of that. Every year we learn something new, and as a team we grow stronger, we will finish this race!!
Thank you everyone who comes out and helps us do this crazy race. Each and everyone of you play a very important role, and without your help, we couldn’t do this. We are forever grateful!
Lastly, thank you to our partners. Thank you for taking a risk and joining us in this wild racing program we having going. We really appreciate it! We are looking forward to the Ultra4 Racing West Coast Series to start off here on March 22nd, 2019 at Prairie City SVRA. We have some exciting things coming up for the 2019 racing season and beyond and cannot wait to share it all with you!! coughIFScough 🙂
Also, congratulations to Watson Racing #1942 for a solid first KOH race! They had a flawless day and ended up timing out with roughly 40 miles to go! You got it next year guys!!