King of the Hammers 2023
Our first trip back to the lakebed since losing Zandy was more about being with our team and extended race family than winning. We wanted to finish and compete, but we were also there to heal and find some peace.
All the prep work and actual journey to King of the Hammers 2023 was a beatdown to say the least. It seemed like everything was fighting the guys, and we had more struggles getting to Johnson Valley than ever before. Once we were there and ready to start pre-running, those struggles didn’t stop.
Several things gave us fits and led to spending what felt like more time working on the cars than pre-running – including transfer case changes for both cars, and an engine swap for Donkey. We can’t thank the team at Gromm Racing enough. Without them, getting a new engine installed and running with enough time to still do some pre-running would’ve been almost impossible.
Once the cars were running and ready to race, we got to do something special with Ultra4. Dave Cole created the Z Walk trail, and in the middle of the week we took our whole crew out to officially dedicate it to Zandy and put the plaque on. Now he’ll live on forever on the lakebed.
Once qualifying rolled around, we were excited to get the cars on course. Chocolate Thunder made for an exciting – and challenging – qualifying lap. Both cars ended up around the middle of the pack and, with no more significant issues, were ready for race day.
Chip and Brad ran into trouble on lap 2 that ended their day early. Pip and Tim were running strong the first two laps – despite having to run the back half of lap 2 twice – but had issues with the motor halfway through lap 3 that took them out of the race.
Even though our two main cars didn’t finish, we got to support another part of our race family – the young gun from Wicks Family Racing, Justin Wicks – as he brought it home.
The time we spent with everyone that now makes up our race family from all over the country and across the pond was the highlight of KOH ‘23 for us. We can’t thank everyone enough for the love and support they’ve shown us since we lost Zandy and as we continue to race and live in his memory.
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