You know drag racing, right? Now, imagine if they tilted the quarter-mile up about 45 degrees, then scattered boulders as big as your first Volkswagen all over the track and then had you run up it all for time. That’s the Holley EFI Shootout.

Officially, it’s the 2018 Holley EFI Shootout Sponsored by KMC, King and Action Sports Canopies, but we can just call it the Holley from now on. It is the second big motoring event that makes up the 2018 Nitto King of the Hammers Powered by Optima Batteries, which we may just call KOH. The KOH is a week-long festival of outrageous off-road competitions held in Johnson Valley in the Mojave Desert of Southern California. For the Shootout, organizers pick a particularly gnarly gully and make that the drag strip, if you could call it that. This year’s course was only a half-mile away from what is called Hammer Town, the city of 45,000 people in elaborate motor homes that pops up every year for KOH.

Thirty-one crazed, caged entries gave it a go; 26 made it to the top of the course, and Ryan Webb in his Team Kryptonite Kustoms rock bouncer from Louisiana did it faster than anyone else. Webb somehow managed to get up the course, named Front Door after last year’s Back Door course, in 16.48 seconds, beating out second-place finisher Bobby Tanner by a quarter-second. Good Shootout everybody.

Jeff McKinlay conquers Yukon Mountain

But that was not enough. After the Shootout, teams were lured to try and surmount a 75- to 80-degree rock face known as Yukon Mountain. Drivers got their chance in the order in which they’d just finished the Shootout. Driver after driver tried and failed, some spectacularly. Consensus was that the most spectacular failure was one Adam Pierce, who, according to organizers, “got almost to the top of Yukon when his front wheels lost traction. His car went completely vertical before flipping down the rock wall and landing upright on its wheels.” Both driver and vehicle, remarkably enough, were OK and Pierce drove his rig away that same night.

Finally, with only three drivers left, Jeff McKinlay from Rigby, Idaho, used simple throttle control with the help of rear steering to make it over the top of Yukon. He won $10,000 for his efforts from Yukon Gear & Axle. The only other guy to make it up and over the rock was Cody Waggoner who, ironically, had paid McKinlay’s entry fee.

King of the Hammers continues the rest of the week with more outrageous competition.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io