Imagine a desert-and-rock race so tough that only 10 percent of the entries finished: axles snapped, engines blew, rigs rolled, and when it was all done, the vast majority of the UTVs that started were still out there in the desert somewhere. The Can-Am UTV King of the Hammers presented by HCR did exactly that, with only 12 of 118 entries completing both huge laps of the brutal 134-mile desert articulation within the allotted eight hours.

One reason the race is so tough is that it’s held for UTVs, those little two-seater rigs you may refer to as side-by-sides. Some people may even snidely refer to them as golf carts. But perhaps not anymore.

“I think UTVs have gained a lot of respect over the last few years,” said longtime competitor Mitch Guthrie Sr., who finished third in this year’s race. “They’ve evolved into such high-performance cars. They used to be called kind of glorified golf carts, but now we’re going out on (trails like) Outer Limits and Splitters.”

Those are trails that would turn back even the most fully-featured monster trucks. While most of the purpose-built off-road rigs that will race in Friday’s headliner King of the Hammers have 40-inch tires, the little ATVs must conquer the same terrain on tires no bigger than 29 inches. Ground clearance and wheelbase are similarly shortened. So it’s a tough race for them, made even tougher by the general consensus that this year’s course was the hardest ever.

That didn’t stop entrants from signing up. The UTV race has the biggest field of any of the events during the weeklong dirtfest that is King of the Hammers, held every year in the Johnson Valley area of California’s Mojave Desert.

But attrition wasn’t a factor in qualifying, and short course racers dominated there, with Johnny Greaves, C.J. Greaves, and Casey Currie starting at the front of the 118-vehicle field. In the race, C.J. Greaves jumped out to an early lead and held it for a remarkable 89 miles of the 134-mile race before rolling while coming down The Hammers’ notorious Sledgehammer Trail.

“It came down to being rookies,” Greaves said. “We made a couple of big mistakes, like when we rolled on Sledge. We are just happy to be out here. And hopefully we can do it again. We didn’t prerun all of it. It takes a lot of knowledge and the rocks are crazy. I don’t even want to see the bottom of this car!”

When Greaves rolled, he handed the lead Mitch Guthrie Jr., whose father, Mitch Sr., has won this event a record six times. It was Jr.’s first time running it without his dad, after having co-piloted for him in previous races. Once Guthrie Jr. got ahead, he held the lead for the rest of the race.

“I don’t know what to say, it has been a long road getting here,” said Guthrie Jr. “I’ve been riding with my dad, and we had a few wins, but I really wanted to do it myself. I was so nervous, though. I have never driven in rocks like this before.”

UTV's ain't just for breakfast anymore. The little suckers can take on the same trails where the big off-road rigs go. The UTV race is the third major event that makes up the annual King of the Hammers. Jason Zindroski

Dad, longtime rock-crawling competitor Mitch Guthrie Sr., was an early adopter of the UTV platform. His six wins in the UTV class make him the winningest driver in King of the Hammers history. But Guthrie Sr. suggested that his domination might be coming to an end after finishing third this year.

“It’s going to be a question about returning. I would like to, but I don’t know if I’m a top guy anymore, with the young guns coming up. This was the worst one ever so far this year, physically.”

Champion desert racer Branden Sims came in second place, the third time he has been a bridesmaid in the KOH UTV Race.

“We qualified 19th so not the best place to start, but we got out in the desert and were catching people. I typically run desert races, and this is the only ULTRA4 event I do each year. My father was a rock crawler though, so I grew up with this.”

The 134-mile course was the longest and most difficult in the history of the race. On both laps the course went down a trail called Backdoor, a ten-foot-tall rock ledge that put most competitors onto their lids.

“In short course, we go all-out for 20 minutes. In this thing, I had to talk myself out of being in race mode and relax,” Greaves said. “Every once in a while, I would see someone in my mirror and I’d want to take off and my co-driver would have to rein me in. It’s not a race against other competitors, it’s a race to bring the machine to the finish.”

And only 12 guys did that.

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