July 22, 2025 • 50 mins
Strap in and hold on tight—today’s episode takes us off the beaten path and deep into the wild, with off road racer Amber Slawson, a fearless competitor carving her own trail through some of the toughest terrain on four wheels. From dusty deserts to rocky mountain climbs, Amber's journey into the world of offroad racing is powered by grit, determination, and a love for adventure that knows no limits. Whether she’s wrenching on her rig or flying through a stage at full throttle, Amber is proof that the offroad world is just as much about heart as it is horsepower. Get ready to meet the woman who’s rewriting the rules of offroad racing—one mile at a time.
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00:00 Meet Amber Slawson: Off-Road Racer 01:26 Amber's Journey into Off-Road Racing 03:13 King of the Hammers: The Ultimate Off-Road Challenge 04:43 The Suzuki Samurai: Amber's First Racing Rig 15:18 Transitioning to the Bomber 19:29 Fine-Tuning and Racing Strategies 21:54 Physical and Mental Preparation for Racing 26:52 Role and Importance of a Co-Driver 29:08 Behind the Scenes of Off-Road Racing 30:59 Environmental Responsibility in Off-Road Racing 33:17 Challenges and Lessons Learned 35:52 Encouraging Women in Off-Road Racing 40:55 Advice for Aspiring Off-Road Racers 42:28 Future Plans, Personal Interests, Closing Remarks and Shoutouts!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Break Fix podcast is all about capturingthe living history of people from all
over the autos sphere, from wrench,turners, and racers to artists, authors,
designers, and everything in between.
Our goal is to inspire a new generationof Petrolhead that wonder to.
How did they get that jobor become that person?
The Road to Success is paved by allof us because everyone has a story.
(00:27):
Strap in and hold tight becausetoday's episode takes us off the
beaten path and deep into the wild.
With Off-Road Racer Amber Slauson,a fearless competitor carving
her own trail through some of thetoughest terrain on four wheels.
From Dusty deserts toRocky Mountain climbs.
Amber's journey into the worldof off-road racing is powered by
grit, determination, and a lovefor adventure that knows no limits.
(00:49):
Whether she's wrenching on herrig or flying through a stage at
full throttle, Amber's proof thatthe off-road world is just as much
about heart as it is horsepower.
So get ready to meet the womanwho's rewriting the rules of
off-road racing one mile at a time.
And with that, let'swelcome Amber to break fix.
Hello Amber.
Hi guys, and joining me tonight isa special co-host returning to the
(01:09):
studio, David Andrews, our residentoff-roading expert, who you might
remember from the all the torques.
And Jesus takes the wheel episodes.
So welcome back Drew.
What's up?
All right, Amber, like allgood break, fix stories.
There's a super heroine origin.
So let's talk about the who,what, when and where of you.
What first drew you in to the world ofoff-road racing and do you remember the
(01:30):
moment that you knew it was your calling?
Uh, I was in college and Ididn't really have direction.
I didn't grow up in Offroading at all.
Like my dad and my brothershad dirt bikes and we would go
camping and stuff like that.
And then when my dad got twoolder ride dirt bikes, he had
this Toyota pickup and that's kindwhat I learned how to drive in.
So he kind of got intooffroading that way.
It's because, so you do youknow who Jesse Combs was?
(01:52):
Mm-hmm.
So, yeah, so just for listeners,Jesse Combs was a female
race car driver and a welder.
And a fabricator.
She raced King the Hammers,and she won in spec class.
The only year they raced it in 2014and won stock class in 2018, I believe.
But anyways, so she passed away in Augustof 2019 trying to set a land speed record.
I'd always been a big fan of hers.
(02:13):
Know, watched her growing up andshe really inspired me to get
into welding and then to get intothe rock crawling and offroading.
And then when she passed away next day,me and my brother were like sharing
memories over the phone and he'slike, well, you gotta do something.
And I was like, kind of wanna risking thehammers and he is like, you should do it.
So it was.
Her passing that me to take on thiswhole challenge, and I was like, I
(02:33):
kind of wanna do my own off-road thing.
And then, uh, I got mySamurai when I was 20 ish.
I went to my first King of the Hammers.
We only went for like a threeday stint on the way home.
I was like.
Man, that was so awesome.
I gotta make this the center of my life.
It was just the, I was so impressed.
I was there for three days and didn'tsee another single regular car.
(02:54):
'cause like back then, you know hownowadays King of the Hammers, you see
a bunch of like regular cars drivingaround, people bring their daily
drivers and there's people comingin from town and stuff like that.
Back then it was justrock crawlers everywhere.
I was like, this is.
The coolest thing ever.
So that was kind of theinflection point for me.
Well, Amber, first off for our listeners,let's cover what King of the Hammers is.
(03:16):
Yeah.
So King of the Hammers, it's calledthe hardest one day off-road race.
It's a lot like theBurning Man of Off-Road.
That's what a lot ofpeople like to call it.
It's turned into this like three weeklong, almost like a festival where it all
started, the King of the Hammers race.
Was with rock crawlers basicallygoing fast in the desert too.
(03:37):
So the very first king to hammerswas in 2007 and it was like a 36
mile long course on means dry lakebed and out in the hammers trails.
And the hammers trails are in SouthernCalifornia, Johnson Valley, OHV Park.
So it was this loop with a little bitof desert and a couple rock trails
and whoever did 'em, all the fastestone for a case of beer basically.
(03:58):
So that kind of evolved intodesert racing plus rock racing.
And now this year's course, theone that I ran was, uh, 120 miles.
Something around there, Ithink is usually what they are.
So it was about 60 miles of desertfor our first lap, which we did twice,
and then 20 or 30 miles of rocks.
(04:20):
So if you've never been to orseen the rock trails at Johnson
Valley, you should go look 'em up.
See how big these rocks are?
Yeah, those rocks can beat you up.
Even just floating over 'em.
You guys are taking them at speed.
Up and down the mountain.
Can you describe some of your mostchallenging races you've ever competed
(04:41):
in and how you pushed through it?
Oh, wait, wait.
Before we get to that, drew, I thought youwould ask her about this Suzuki Samurai,
like you've had some weird off roaders.
Well, no, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I'm gonna get to that.
I'm very curious about the samurai,but I'm really curious about the
whole process that she broughtup, bouncing over those rocks.
(05:02):
That's tough.
It's pretty totally my body.
Especially, and that's somethingthat I've learned going from the
Samurai to now I'm in the bomber, ishow much more comfortable this car
is and how much less I get beat up.
When I used to race in my Samurai,I started in 20 and the goal was
always just to finish becausethere's like a 85% attrition rate,
so like 85% of cars that interchangethe hammers don't finish at all.
(05:22):
So my goal was to just finish and I'dusually spend around 10 to 14 hours in
the car just trying to get that finish.
It would beat me the heckup getting into the bomber.
Nowadays it's a lot more comfortable,like I'm coming off it the next day.
Less sore, less beat up.
But going into, you know, even when Iwas just prepping my Samurai, it was
(05:43):
October through January, 'cause therace is the first week of February.
To circle back to your originalquestion, the most challenging thing
I've ever had to overcome, it's kindof a hard question for me because.
A lot of racers don't finishthis race because they break.
I've never had a mechanical failure.
I've always only evernot finished due to time.
(06:03):
Probably the hardest thingmentally for me to overcome was
my very first year that I raced.
My goal was just to finish, and Iwas so absolutely just hell bent on.
I just wanna keep going.
I just wanna make it to the finish.
The cutoff time had come and gone and theywere like, oh, you need to come in now.
Like race ops went to my mom.
And told her she needs to come in'cause we wanna see her cross the
(06:27):
stage and come into Hammer Town.
I had just done the whole desert lap.
I had just gotten to the rocktrails, which is all I really
wanted to do was rock crawl.
And so they called me in before I got tomy first rock trail and I was so upset.
I was driving in and I busted two tireson my way in and that year too, I got
most of the way through the first lapand then I think I was out on my second
(06:48):
lap and the rear pinion nut came off.
It backed off 'cause it didn't get.
And, and so my pick career had thatchanged out in like 15 minutes.
Oh, that's a terrible, so that wasn'tthat hard of a thing to overcome when
I did my research on you and I wassitting there like this girl did King
of the Hammers in a fricking samurai.
I would've been good withjust most challenging things
(07:10):
being there in a samurai.
So for most users that don'tknow what a Suzuki Samurai is.
It's a late eighties, earlynineties, SUV with solid front and
rear axles that do not move Much.
Very pleased to see your samuraiand how you were just a rebel.
I don't know anyone else who wouldrun King of the hammers in a samurai
(07:32):
probably saw some really amazingthings that that thing can do.
When I started racing my Samurai, noone had ever raced a Samurai stock class
before, so I kind of had to figure it out.
'cause.
Had to figure out all this safety stuff.
More or less, read the rule book coverto cover a million frigging times, trying
to figure out what goes and what doesn't.
So between August, 2019, it waslike six months to get my Samurai
(07:55):
ready for King of the Hammers.
'cause like racing, king of the Hammershad always kind of been like this.
I'll do it one of these days kind of gold.
And I had always imaginedbuilding another rig to do King
Hammer in like a real race car.
And so at the time I was like, well,I don't have time to build a bigger
race car, and I don't really havethe skills yet, but I've got my
Samurai so I'll figure it out as I go.
(08:16):
I got through all thatstuff, made it through tech.
I think I only had to go back to techonce, you know, they sent me back to fix
my window nets or something like that.
Came back and passed,which is pretty good.
Apparently made it to the green flag.
And so I was the first to racestock class in the Suzuki Samurai.
And then I think at our peak therewere six Samurai racing in total.
(08:37):
He started a trend.
Look at you.
Yeah, a little bit becauseI mean, they're so cheap.
Like I figured my whole program was.
Cheaper than any other race car out there.
It was so cool to just putthese things together for people
that just wanted to go racing.
You know, they were just like meracing something that they already had.
Cheap, but not fast.
Not fast.
No, no, no.
(08:57):
What did you learn from your samurai?
Was that one of those things that otherthan, you know, slight little things,
that it was actually kind of like alittle donkey, a little workhorse.
It made it through without too much issue?
Yeah, actually, that reallyspeaks to, like me never having
a mechanical failure on course.
I like to say those things don'thave enough power to hurt themselves.
You know, there's 60 horsepowerfrom the factory stock and then
(09:18):
like the fuel injection ones arelike 65 horsepower and they've got
small axle shafts and stock axles.
To get this, I was only running 31 inchtires the first two years I raced as well.
Oh my gosh.
And stock axle.
Oh my goodness.
But the, by the third year, I'd raised.
I had done Toyota axles and thenby the fourth year I had done fuel
(09:41):
injection and much bigger shocks andbasically tapped the thing for the
modifications that I could do to it.
I length in the wheel base three inches,which was the max for the rule book.
It was on 35 inch tires when Ifinished racing it 'cause stock class.
Rules are you have to keep thestock body, if it came solid
axle, it has to stay solid axle.
If it came IFS, it has to stay IFS.
(10:03):
If it came with leaf springs,you have to stay on leaf springs.
You can't go to Lynx, vice versa.
And then you have to keep thestock motor and stock transmission.
You have any transportation axles.
Weren't TAM MRIs on LeafSprings at one point?
Yeah.
All the Suzuki Samura that were madein America were all leaf sprung.
And yours was a foil sprung?
No, no, no.
Mine's still leaf springs.
Okay.
Yeah.
By the time I was done racing it, Ihad Holly Fuel injection on the stock
(10:25):
motor, longer leaf springs on it, but itwas still leaf sprung, so it was okay.
Toyota axles 35 inch tireslength in the wheel base.
Like I said, it was.
As fast and capable as I could make it.
And it still wasn't fast becauseyou said 60 horsepower on a
brand new engine back in the day.
So what did a dino at?
I've never actually dno thething, but I assume calculated
(10:49):
is about 65, 66 horsepower.
23 or 24.
I blew it up and then I rebuiltit, put a freshie in it.
Then I did the fuel injection and thatadded like five or six horsepower.
You think about it, it'sa 10% gain in horsepower.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's huge.
Yeah.
But Eric, you don't really needa whole lot of horsepower when
you're running in lower gears.
(11:11):
And if you get your gear in right,it helps to have more horsepower.
But that thing is so littleand it, how much did it weigh?
29 50. Think was withthe 17 inch wheels on it.
Wow.
That's heavy for that little thing.
Yeah.
I cut the weight a lot when Iput the 15 inch wheels, but I
don't think I weighed since then.
And then when you put the 30fives on, something like that,
(11:32):
the breakover on it is amazing.
So it doesn't need the 37, 44inch tires to get it over rocks.
It just literally Billygoats over to everything.
Yeah.
Or it squeezes in betweenit because it's so.
So we might have skipped over it,but let's talk about the speeds of an
event like King of Hammers, becausethere's different types of off-road
(11:53):
events, some really low and slow stuff.
There's high speed stuff like theMint 400 and everything in between.
So where does King of Hammers sit?
You were talking aboutthe desert portion of it.
Is that pretty flat and you're just tryingto cruise as fast as you can and you get
to the rocky part, which slows you up?
Yeah.
So speaking about comparing speed.
Mint 400.
I think the average speed for thatone is around 60 miles an hour.
(12:15):
For the winners, it's around 60 milesan hour to finish all 400 miles.
And so the average speed, I remembercalculating it a couple years ago just
to finish, king of the Hammers is around12 miles per hour, and so the first lap
is pretty much just flat out, kind of goas fast as you can to get to the rocks.
I feel like my average was probablyaround 45 or 50 miles an hour, even though
(12:39):
I hit up to 70 and it's pretty flat.
Like this year was pretty smooth.
They changed the course everyyear and they try to keep it
as flat and smooth as they can.
But we also run the same as theDesert Challenge that goes on the
first weekend of King of a Hammers.
So like the big Mint 400 truckswill run that course and shoot
it up, so we run the same one.
(12:59):
And you're doing about 50 or 60 or 70in the desert section, and then the
rocks you're doing maybe top speed 12miles an hour, usually one to two miles
an hour, especially in the bigger cars.
You're not just rock crawling, youknow, you look at rock crawlers and
you see like small, technical, reallyslow movements, really low gearing.
(13:21):
When you're racing, it's all aboutpicking your line and tuning your shocks
just for right tires, just dance overthe rocks instead of having a bam,
bam, bam, bam hit every single one.
But in the Samurai it was, I wasgoing pretty slow, but I was still
trying to go as fast as I could.
But it taught me a lot in that respect.
Well, you know, drew, you knowwhat I didn't hear on her list?
I didn't hear Jeep Commander orMercedes G Wagon on that list.
(13:41):
Um, yeah, that's.
Messed up.
You got no name for the G Commanderor the, or the Mercedes G Wagon.
I haven't seen either of thoseraces, but I'd really like to.
I'd be so stoked.
Yeah.
Actually, when you bring that up,I've always kind of been a fan of
the underdog, like who isn't right?
But.
Every time I see a car come into stockclass that's a little bit different.
Like last year we had a, a VolkswagenPorig come in and compete with us.
(14:05):
And then a couple years ago wehad a Durango buddy of mine had a
Toyota Sequoia that he had built up,and I like really suckered him in
to racing mat a couple years ago.
I was like, that's a really cool rig.
It looks like a, a modified class card.
He is like, yo, what kind of is.
Now he races and his wife racesand they've just stepped up to a
(14:26):
bigger car and got them all into it.
And then like all the S thatcame in racing, like I kind of
created this still community of,we're all just kind of connected.
'cause you know, if I came into pit.
And needed help.
I know that those guys,they totally lend a hand.
I've had friends do that for me before andif I wasn't in my pit, I'd want my crew
to help out the next Samurai guy becauseyou know, we all share the same parts.
(14:50):
Well, that's what I had.
I had a Jeep commander and I'mcurrently on a Mercedes G wagon,
and IU actually use both of them.
Nice.
Commander is Donezo, and I bringthat up because in every racer's life
there's the car you started out with,which is the one eventually kind of
becomes your personal museum piece.
So your samurai's never gonna leaveyou unless money talks, right?
(15:11):
Nope, sorry, not with that one.
Yeah.
Right.
But at the end of the day, that's.
Gonna be the one that's gonnabe with you forever and then
you evolve to something else.
And you mentioned earlier that you'rean A bomber now, and so as I understand
it, that's more like you see an RCcar offer a, you know, big wheels
kind of low truck, that kind of thing.
Right?
So that's what you're innow, what was that transition
like going from stock class?
(15:32):
To a fully prepared off roader.
So backstory, Randy's my husband.
He's the one that designedthese cars in the first place.
Bomber is his business.
I like to think that bombers is all ultra.
Four cars are kind of called theSwiss Army knife of our sport.
You know, they have to runfast in the desert and crawl
through the rocks quickly.
But so going from the samurai tothe bomber was kind of detrimental
(15:52):
to the Samurai 'cause now I jumpback in Samurai and forget, I'm.
I had never driven anythingwith that much horsepower.
The bombers only got 460 horsepower.
It's a Crate LT one, only 460horsepower, only 460 horsepower,
(16:13):
400 more than your Samurai.
I just wanna point that out.
Exactly, and it's cool 'cause justwith this last race that I just
did in Moab a couple weeks ago, I'mfinally finding the limits of that.
You only use the horsepower flat outfast stuff coming from the samra.
I've always been really intimidatedby that fast stuff, so I just.
Really easing into it.
(16:33):
And now I'm trying to finally findingthe limits of the 460 horsepower.
Let's see, the bomber's got 114 inchwheel base, 37 inch tires when I race it.
Nine inch axles.
Yeah.
It's a full cheater code, basically.
Yeah, it's, and they're built for thehammer trails too, like my husband.
And Randy lived down there for yearsand that's how he did his research
(16:55):
and development is what he would goout and run the trails and come home
and fix whatever broke and updateit and upgrade it for the next car.
So they're really like purposebuilt for King of the Hammer stuff.
You know, I got to know the hammerstrails really well from my Samurai
and I got to know rock crawlingreally well for my Samurai.
And there were a lot of justfundamentals that I learned from
(17:15):
small tires and small horsepower andsmall wheel base and stuff like that.
And it really helped me goinginto the bomber because.
You know, you can't just gofrom a pee shooter to a big gun.
There's a big learning curve and allit really took was seat time for me.
I think I've got like eightweeks total worth of seat time at
this point in that car or more.
24 was the first time I raised it.
(17:36):
25. I've done two more races.
I've got four races under mybelt at this point in that car.
So I'm gonna lean back intoour question from before.
'cause speed is important, right?
You got 400 extra horses.
Now, what's it like on the open desert?
You were able to do 60, maybe 70 in thesamurai, but you're pegging that thing.
What's it like in the bomber?
Are you doing a hundred plus mile an hour?
Oh no, I wasn't thatconfident with it this year.
(17:59):
I think we did hit 90 at one pointacross the dry lake bed, there's a
nice dry lake bed out in the back ofhammers that you can go as fast as
you want to and then you can let offand go back up into the rock trails.
But the summer, I really onlyever got it up to like 50 or 60
miles an hour foot to the floor.
The hole for lap downhill with wind.
You back.
But so driving the bomberon the first slap, it's.
(18:20):
Win or lose the race in the corners.
And that's something that I've struggledwith recently is just cornering and
the timing of it all and breaking,working on coming into a corner,
breaking, drifting the corner, andthen throttling right back into it.
The infrared back inyour seat is pretty cool.
So it's funny you bring that upbecause sometimes we talk about how.
Other disciplines of motorsportcan help you with your own personal
(18:43):
racecraft in your own discipline.
And so have you ventured into, let'ssay, any circuit racing or done any
other kind of practice in other cars toget that car controlled, to build that
confidence, to get a better understandingof the cornering and the braking, or
you're just doing it as you're out there?
Honestly, haven't had any opportunities.
To do that sort of thing,I'd totally be open for it.
We have BLM land right across the street,but we spend so much time just out
(19:07):
practice there and we'll go from here.
We'll do 200 mile loops in a dayout to the desert and out around
corners and just practice then.
Going up to Rubicon is onlyan hour and a half from us.
So rock crawling is right there andthe federal officers don't give you
guys any mess for being out there.
Yeah, we haven't been hassled off road.
We get yelled at if we try to go on road.
(19:28):
It's pretty game out there.
Imagine that you mentioned that you'reconstantly tuning and tweaking on
the vehicle to be able to etch outa little bit more time to help your
bottom line and help you to win.
So what are some of thethings that you guys look at?
To improve the balance and theperformance of the vehicle.
(19:48):
Mostly what goes into finetuning that goes into them
these days is just shock tuning.
So last year I made a point to makemore shock tuning appointments, and I
think last year low, when we did four orfive, they were mostly for Randy's car.
He is 4,400 car, but we gotmy car so freaking dialed.
It is.
(20:09):
Arguably better than the big cars now.
Wow.
I watch videos of this thing andwhat you're kind of looking for.
The goal is if the car's goingstraight over rocks, you want the
tires dancing over the rocks and youwanna watch the chassis stay still, and
that's exactly what my car does now.
That's where the fine testing and tuninggoes into with every car that we build.
(20:31):
We build it as best we can andthere's gonna be little tweaks
here and there that you gotta make.
It's mostly shock tuning.
Wouldn't the tires also bepart of that package as well?
Because the air pressure alonemaking drastic changes in air
pressure would change the waythe shocks bound and rebound.
'cause they're all part of thatmechanism when it's impacting a
stone or whatever it is, right?
(20:51):
Yeah, actually.
So, we'll, we'll mess with horsepowerdepending on what race we're doing.
Like for King, the Hammers,we'll run about 25 pounds.
You're going fast and you're goingslow in the rocks, so you don't
want the rocks beat you up, but youdon't want to bust a tire if you
hit something part of the desert.
But like this last Moab race thatI did was mostly a rock race,
and those rocks are harsh, so Ibumped mine down to 22 pounds.
(21:13):
Just to give me a little bit more cushion.
Playing with that goes into it a lot,and it depends on what we're doing.
If we're just running out in thebackyard doing laps in the desert, we'll
bump it up to 25 and keep it there.
Do you see any change in tirepressure like the road racers do,
where you're out there and you'rerunning hard, you're in the sun.
Do you see the temps and thepressure start to climb and then
you have to adjust or you're notreally paying attention to it?
(21:34):
After you said it, I'm notreally paying attention to it.
Like I, I don't whip out a tiregauge when I'm out in the middle of
nowhere to check the tire pressures,but we do kind of compensate for
it a little bit when we're racing.
You know, it's something we keep in mind.
It's not like driving onasphalt where you've got that
constant tension and traction.
You're not building that kind of heat.
You know, you've always got a little bitof slip under the tires with the dirt.
Kind of keeps it.
Cool.
(21:54):
Kinda switching gears a little bit,let's talk about the human side of this.
'cause we talked a lot about the carand the prep and it gets beat up and
shock adjustments and stuff like that,but you're getting beat up in the car.
There's a lot of prep you gotta do.
And when I sit down and talk with prodrivers in the road racing world, they
always talk about, oh, I jump on thesimulator and it's all about hydration.
And what's the prep likementally and physically.
(22:16):
For off-roading, but this is the thingthat I love the most is off-roading.
It's wheeling and rock crawlingand that kind of stuff.
So for me it's super easy to just getinto it and just love every minute.
All of the prep that Ido, I kind of love too.
In the last year or so, I've actuallystarted, I lift weights like two or
three times a week, and I'm tryingto get a cardio machine so I can, you
(22:37):
know, increase my stamina a little bit.
And then I've gotten really hardon my snack game and my hydration
game in the car, and that'ssomething that I'm constantly.
Tweaking and tuning on with thelast couple races that I've done
is just staying fed and hydrated.
'cause yeah, we wear this fitnessmonitor just watching what your body
does, or at least me an hour before Iget in the car, my heart rate raises
(22:57):
and just stays there, the whole race.
So I have to keep feeding mybody so that it performs like
I need it to, or else I crash.
My brain stops working.
I can't think straight andI don't perform as well.
I gotta remember to hydrate, eatsnacks and just keeping calm.
And I've been told and kindof experiences for myself that
(23:18):
running off the adrenaline is not.
A safe or good idea.
So you kind of keep your heart ratedown, stay calm, twist, throttle.
You're not slamming Red Bulls and just,
yeah.
But I mean, it's still, uh, the wholetime I'm in the car, but I've been
working on mitigating that in yoursamurai older car manual transmission.
(23:41):
More rowing of the gears,working the clutch.
Even at low speed, you're a lotmore physically active in the car.
I can assume if it's anything like someof the ATVs I've been in, especially
the high speed ones, floppy paddlegearbox in your bomber automatic
transmission, it's a little less physical.
And I'm not saying it's any lessphysically demanding, but you're
not as active behind the wheel.
(24:01):
Am I wrong about that?
Well, I mean, if you're comparing thesame ride of the bomber figure, I'm
probably more active behind the wheel onthe bomber just because I'm going faster.
Well, I am using my clutch foot on thebrake pedal now just in a different way.
And then I'm still shifting gearsbecause it's turbo 400 transmission.
So I'm still shipping 1, 2, 3in reverse whenever I need it.
But it's a lot less of patyour head, rub your belly, and
(24:24):
jump up and down on one foot.
Kind to think with theautomatic transmission.
But I kind of love that about theclutch too, 'cause I got so good at it.
My samurai just.
Became second nature and with the threepedals set up a skill that translates
from road racing to off-road is knowinghow to heel toe, because you need to be
able to hold the car, slip the clutch,give it a little all at the same time.
It's like, wait, I gottwo feet and three pedals.
(24:46):
How the heck does this work?
Yep.
It's something we try to drillinto our students in road racing,
but I think you guys kind ofpick it up almost intuitively.
Yeah, you, you have to.
There's a stuff, especially with theSamurai, that it just won't do clutch.
A dirt bike, clutch.
Beat the crap out of it to makeit do some really cool stuff.
And that's what I reallyloved about that thing.
(25:07):
That was a fun part.
You're taking the biggest beating out ofeveryone who you're working with, but do
you expect your crew to be able to havesome sort of level of fit as you to be
able to, you know, replace a half shaft?
As fast as they can.
Those tires are likeover a hundred pounds.
(25:28):
They have to pull disassemble, suspension.
So is there a a requirement forthem to be just as capable as you?
I mean, I don't expect my pickcrew to be as physically capable.
I know they are thoughbecause I'm 130 pound chick.
If I can do it, these dudes on my pitcrew, they could definitely do it.
And so that was actually a. Thing thisyear with me and my co-driver, because
(25:50):
I busted a tire going into one of therock sections at Hammers this year.
I didn't realize it at the time, but Iwas so exhausted and gotten tasked for
water when we came for our main pit stop.
So I was exhausted, I wasdehydrated, and I busted this tire.
I couldn't have gotten that done by myselfif my co-driver had been there to help me.
Like we even had a hard timejust getting the lug nuts off.
(26:12):
They've been toed on so tight,which is something that I'm
now fixing going forward.
I know that I can't pick thosetires back up, put them back
onto the rack on the car.
Having my co-driver physically fit isa requirement, and I know that most
guys are able to lift those tires.
I just can't.
As far as the crew goes, youalways hope for the best.
Right?
(26:33):
You know, if we breaks something major,like a link mount rips off or something
like that, we'll just call the race.
This year at Hammers on Randy'scar, we had a diff failure for him.
It was me and a couple guys tryingto get the thing changed out.
It was no problem for any of us.
You know, these partsaren't big and heavy.
It's just a matter ofknowing how to do it.
Well, you brought upsomething really interesting.
(26:54):
You said the word co-driver.
Immediately.
I fall back to growing upwatching World Rally and.
Stuff like that.
You know, again, very centered in Europeanracing, but in the rally world, co-drivers
are there with their hieroglyphs and theirnotes, and it's all pace notes, how much
to the next corner, how fast you can go.
They do a lot of sighting and trying tofigure out where the course goes, even
on those long stages that they havethat are tens of twenties of miles.
(27:17):
So what is the expectation ofa co-driver at King of Hammers?
What are they there to do for you?
Are they giving you those same pace notesand that, or they there to help you,
like fit the vehicle through an area?
What, what's.
The deal.
Yeah, so it's not so much PaceNotes is like, we have a low
risk GPS in the car and it's gotthe course downloaded onto it.
So it's basically just tellingme, you know, there's a corner
(27:37):
coming up, turn right, turn left.
And then this year they've beenreally hard on rock checkpoints.
RCPs and vcps virtual checkpointsthat our GPS points are exact.
So these are points on the course, andyou have to hit the vcps within, I think
125 feet and the RCPs within 50 feet.
So we basically have to navigatefrom point to point to point.
(28:01):
Like it's not like Rally whereit's just point to point.
You have to figure out how to get there.
The course is kind of set up for us.
We just have to hit those checkpoints.
So that's the biggest job of theco-driver is just to wash the
map and make sure we hit those.
Also, like I mentioned earlier,when you bust a tire, they
need to get out and help.
We got stuck a couple times in therocks, and so the co-driver will hop
(28:24):
out and either winch or try to get thecar unstuck or something like that.
Shout out to my co-driver, Tom, this you.
He did a great frigging job.
We got stuck more timesthan I'd like to admit.
Had a ton of issues with at one point.
I was almost with mysteering ram into a rock.
So we couldn't winch forward,couldn't pull ourselves backwards.
I was ed on a rock and we had to get thehigh lift jack off, and he tried to jack
(28:45):
up every corner of the car, get sometraction somewhere to get it unstuck.
It finally worked, but just the high liftsdidn't wanna cooperate most of the time.
So that's pretty much co-driver duties.
So Drew, this goes back to what you'vealways told me, which is never go offroad
in a low, never in front of camera.
Drew opened the door to talk alittle bit more about how much
(29:06):
the team plays into your success.
We've heard from drag racers what it'slike behind the scenes, and they come
in from a run and they got a thrash andyou know, tear motors down and replace
clutches and all this kind of stuff.
What's the dynamic like on anoff-road event behind the scenes?
Oh, it's definitelystill a thrash sometimes.
And so we try to prep these cars asbest we can while we're at home in
(29:28):
the shop where everything's nice,but sometimes things do break out
there and you do have to come backand absolutely thrash in the car.
The night before the race a coupleyears ago, Randy brought two cars.
He had a 4,400 unlimited car and a 4,800limited class car that he was racing.
One of them blew a transmission andthe other one cracked the axle housing.
(29:49):
Thrashed to get those things ready.
One of 'em was the day beforequalifying, and the other one was
like two days before the actual race.
Sometimes you pull the car intothe tent from pre-running and find
something's absolutely broken andneeds to be fixed right now, and you
just don't go to bed until it's fixed.
And then you try to get as muchsleep as you can until the next day.
(30:11):
And then either you gotta aqualifi or you got a race.
Sometimes it's like that.
Thankfully it hasn't been likethat in the last couple years,
and I like to keep it that way, soI'm gonna keep prepping my cars.
Well, but yeah, and, and that's kindof the beauty of hammers too, is if
you camp close to Hammer town, you'llhear grinders and cars revving and that
kind of stuff going all night long.
(30:31):
And it's kind of part of our culture,if you wanna put it that way.
Yeah.
Even just in rock crawling andoff-roading in general, you know,
if you break on the trail, sometimesyou're out there fixing it after a
and all the way through the night justto get home the next day, go to work.
And that's why we tow our rigs in.
Yeah.
No help.
(30:52):
Well, this might be intimidating toa lot of people that look at this
stuff and they don't have any cluelike what goes on in the background.
What are some of the biggestmisconceptions people have
about off-road racing?
Everybody thinks it'sdirty, and it definitely is.
Probably the biggest one, is thatwe don't care about our public
land and we're just here to mess itup, which is completely not true.
(31:13):
You know, it's this balancewhere we love what we do and
we have to keep the land Nice.
To keep doing it.
It's really funny.
They were really hard on the RCPs, therock check points and stuff this year,
and they told us we have to hit thembecause they didn't want us blazing other
trails next to the actual rock trail.
They wanted us to stay in the rock trail.
(31:35):
And so we do things like that tominimize the impact on the environment.
There's also suns of smokey andtread lightly will come out and do
trash pickups every night becausethe place does get pretty trash.
I know King of the Hammers worksa lot with the BLM, especially
throughout the year to keep thetrails nice and keep Johnson
Valley OHB good for the rest of us.
(31:57):
But there's a lot of stuff that I dotoo with Rubicon Trail Foundation,
for example, is trying to set a goodexample of people that need to be out
there and keep our trails nice and don'ttrash the place, don't drive off trail.
And you know, it's just, it'slittle stuff that seems like
it should be common knowledge,common sense, but it really isn't.
And I've seen that side of it.
(32:18):
It's just a matter of teachingpeople when you come out here,
we have to treat this stuff withrespect or else we're gonna lose it.
All of us have to do our part to treatit with respect and act responsibly
and teach others so that we cankeep having fun out on public lands.
I, I don't think people understand,like you said, when you gotta treat
these lands and trails with respect.
(32:39):
Because once the government getsinvolved or any local municipality and
they take it away from you, that's it.
There's no getting it back.
You can petition.
You can go and talk.
It's happening all over the country wheretrails and lands are getting shut down for
recreational use, so it's very important.
One of the first things I talked aboutwhen I was being interviewed was to
(33:03):
make sure you clean up after yourself,any fluids, dirty water, trash.
Fire pits clean up.
I always like to say, leaveit better than you found it.
Absolutely.
Leave it better than when you found it.
Yeah.
So what are some of the moments andthings that didn't go as planned
during a race that's like, goshdarn it, and did you learn from it?
(33:25):
Did you have a after actionreview and say, all right.
This is fixable.
This is what we'll do going forwardto not let this happen again.
So the second year that I raisedKing the hammers in my samurai, I had
finally made it to the rock trails.
I made it down the first rock trail andI started heading up the second one.
And I was so stoked to finally beout Rock crawl, and we got maybe
(33:45):
a hundred feet into this trail.
And came up on six or seven cars, eitherbroken or stuck, basically in this
trailhead completely blocking me fromgoing forward and completing my race, and
there was nothing I could do about it.
I was so pissed off in that moment.
I was literally looking at thesecanyon walls thinking I could
(34:06):
attach my winch up there, justlike Spider-Man across the cake.
That thought seriouslycrossed my mind and after.
But, so the lesson that I learned fromthat was staying ahead of the traffic
because king of a Hammer's, like Isaid, there's an 85% attrition rate.
85% of the cars don't finish.
Traffic happens and it's a big deal.
(34:27):
Strategizing in a way to stay aheadof the traffic is a huge priority
in my book now, and that's part ofwhat led to my success this year.
So I actually took second place.
In overall in the Everman this yearI finished physical first and I
was the first female to take thephysical first overall finish in
(34:48):
the Everman Challenge this year.
And I was knocked down to secondplace due to missing a couple RCPs.
So those are time penaltiesworth 15 minutes a piece,
and I missed three of them.
So I got knocked from first to second.
That was my second official finishat King of the Hammers, and obviously
my best one yet, so next yearit's just gonna have to be better.
(35:09):
By the time I was finishedwith Lap one, I started in 30th
position and I moved up to six.
So there were only six carsahead of me going into the rocks.
Six cars is totally manageable.
Even if all six of those carsbroke down in the same spot, I
should be able to get around them.
But if you are last in a field of 120 carslike I was in the Samurai and you've got a
(35:32):
hundred cars broken in front of you alongvarious points in the course, it's gonna
be really hard to get through those spots.
That was a big frustration.
They are then the obstacles.
Yeah.
They, we like to say, uh, if you'renot moving on the race course,
you're part of the race course.
That's like, you are not in traffic.
You are traffic.
Yeah.
Earlier you mentioned you werethe, uh, only female at the time
(35:56):
racing a stock class Samurai.
Did you have any goals or aspirationsto be like a. Figure for other women
or other rebels to choose vehiclesthat not necessarily the gold standard.
Yeah.
As far as goals of being arole model for females in the
sport, that's been a thing too.
(36:17):
And I've been working a lot with theJesse Combs Foundation, bringing new
girls into King of Hammers 'causethey have a scholarship program
for girls going into the trades.
It's not just a scholarship.
They also really try to immerse thesegirls in the whole community and the
industries that are involved too.
So they'll bring the scholarshiprecipients, they'll grab a group of
(36:38):
them and they'll bring 'em back to Kingof the Hammers or SEMA or PRI show,
or Easter Jeep Safar, another one.
You know, they.
Bring these girls out and introduce usto us, and I show 'em around our pit
and show 'em what it takes to go racing.
So that's been really cool too.
Oh, that's really cool.
The Easter Jeep Safari stuff.
So they bought a new Jeep andyou show 'em like, Hey, if you're
(37:00):
interested, there's levels to this.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
I love that part.
This past year has been reallyinteresting because we have looked
at a lot of different disciplinesof motorsport investigating
the gender parody that exists.
In some motor sports and not in others.
And so NHRA drag racing is at the topwhere it's almost 50 50 men to women
(37:21):
and you kind of come down into shorttrack racing and things like that.
So how do you see the off-roadinglandscape, at least in your area?
What does it look like in termsof, you know, men to women ratio?
Are you seeing more womengetting involved in off-roading?
Oh yeah.
Definitely seen a lot more womengetting offroading, especially since
I was a kid, which is really cool andI attribute most of that to Jesse.
(37:43):
Tom.
She was a big driving force and havingwomen offroading and wrenching and
wheeling and welding and all that stuff.
I'd say around here it's probably15 to one men to women, and then
also with King of the Hammers.
This year I was the onlyfemale to race in 4,800.
Although I had other femalefriends racing in 4,500 modified
(38:06):
class, 4,600 stock class.
So I think total in the everymanchallenge, there was five or six.
Females racing, the every man challenge.
I know there was exactly one femaleracing in the 4,400 unlimited class.
That was Bailey Campbell this year.
And I've actually become friendswith a lot of the females that have
started racing after me, and a lotof 'em that came before me too.
(38:29):
So it's fun to have that littlefriend group and we all bring each
other up and help each other out.
So what do you think off-roading could doto make the sport more inviting to women?
That's a good question because ingeneral we don't like to get dirty
and it's a really dirty sport.
The thing that really drew me toit was the independence of it all.
(38:50):
First of all, like when I was a kidand having my own car, being able to
drive places and take myself places was.
Awesome.
That was paramount.
Getting into off-roading andlearning how to fix your vehicle
when it breaks, how to maintenanceyour vehicle so it doesn't break.
Taking yourself out into the wildernessconfidently and just knowing that
you can take care of yourself,you know, whatever happens, you're
(39:10):
not gonna die for the most part.
Just having that confidence to be ableto go out and do these solo trips.
It's been a building block for me ina way, just like a pushing factor.
You know, when I'm out by myself,I can go out by myself first and
foremost, and then when I am outby myself and something happens, I
know that I can get myself outta it.
Circling back to your question,and this is something that I push
(39:32):
for, is showing people, especiallywomen, that these are attributes.
That they already have in them.
It's just a matter of knowing that youcan do it, whether you think you can
or you think you can't, you're right.
Do you think having representationin organizations like Women in Motor
(39:53):
Sports North America, or Shift Upnow, or some of the other groups out
there that represent women racers,would that help with inviting more
off roaders in especially young girls?
Oh yeah, for sure.
Jesse Combs was the whole reasonI started racing, and if I hadn't
seen her in Extreme four by fourwhen I was a teenager, you know,
(40:13):
she was on that TV show, extremefour by four, and we would watch it
every Saturday morning on Spike tv.
So seeing Jesse do these things.
That mostly guys would do mademe think to myself, well, if
Jesse could do it, I could do it.
And so I've had this conversation witha friend before about how people are
inspired to do new things when theysee someone that's like them doing it.
(40:34):
Having women out there representingthe sports is a big deal.
Well, you've been at this now forover a decade, and whether you have
acknowledged it or internalizedit, you're now a role model.
Four young girls looking to get intoMotorsport, like my two daughters.
They're of the age where they're going.
I see myself as you said, see me.
Then I can be there, sort of thing.
(40:55):
Let's say one of my daughters walked upto you and said, Amber, why race off road?
What advice would you give them?
How would you tell them to start out?
Probably biases you, Sam, I oryou commander or a Jeep commander.
She says, begrudgingly.
Yeah, because that's kinda how I gotstarted was when I bought my Samurai
(41:17):
and I just kind of dove into it.
I just wanted to learn allthis stuff that I could.
Would it be worth coming in andbasically shadowing by maybe starting
out as a co-driver or something?
Yeah, that is another way.
So.
If we go all the way back,if came to me and asked, how
do I get into offroad racing?
I would tell them, get on with pit crew.
Find a friend who races.
I'm a friend who races here, comehere, be part of my pit crew.
(41:38):
Just hang out with us at the campfire,like see what goes into this.
And that's kind of how Igot started in racing too.
So 2014 was my first king tohammers and me and my family all
volunteered the whole first yearand we volunteered every year since.
So having that behindthe scenes perspective.
Of the whole eventreally helped a lot too.
(41:59):
That would probably be my number onepiece of advice to any regular Joe or
Jody out there looking to get into thesekinds of events is volunteer first.
You know, they're alwayslooking for volunteers.
It's a great behind the scenes.
Thing to do.
You really see the innerworkings of the whole situation.
And then from there you're gonna meetpeople, you can get on a pit crew,
(42:19):
start seeing what picks to be on pitcrew, go from there to a co-driver.
You just work your way up.
It's kind of like I startedwelding, you know, start sweeping
floors, same kind of thing.
You work your way up.
What's next for you?
When will we see yourunning the Mint 400 or.
Maybe NASCAR is in your future.
Dirt oval.
Yeah.
(42:39):
A little bit more flatter,straighter, softer.
Oh gosh.
What's next for you?
What's coming up?
So the next thing for sureis King of Hammers next year.
That's all I've got planned for sure.
May or may not risk.
Vegas to Reno this year, whichwould be a big one for me.
That's a bucket list.
That would be a fun thing.
And that's about it.
That's about all I've got planned.
I try not to plan too far in advance,but you know, if opportunities
(43:02):
pop up, sometimes I say no.
It's sometimes the stupidest thingI ever say, but I catch myself or
I go back and say, yes, we're gonnasee you on, I be rooting for you.
Hundred percent.
We can get some stickers on herrig at least if nothing else.
Matter fact, I wanna see that thebarbecue hut that you guys got,
(43:27):
where you do catering and stuff likethat, just putting it out there.
Oh gosh.
So in my camp we actually do havea building that one of our friends
brings that's like a four orfive-sided wood building from Burning
Man that they bring out and set up.
And that's our kitchen like tent area.
Okay, that's interesting.
So my mom gets there about amonth ahead of the event, ropes
(43:48):
off a big old area for us.
And so we set up this kitchen tentand the whole camp area pitches
in for meals and cooks together.
And it's, it's a big communityeffort and it's a lot of fun.
We may or may not alsohave pyrotechnics up there.
Well, I'm glad you brought upcamping, like outside of getting in.
Your bomber and your Suzuki and andracing for a living, what do you like
(44:12):
to do outside of the motor sports space?
Do you still like to be anoutdoorsman type, recreational
off-roading or anything like that?
Oh yeah, for sure.
I wanna say this.
Racing thing is kind of thefull-time thing for me because
if I have a free weekend, I'mup on Rubicon Trail Rock Crawl.
If we've got another free weekend,we'll take the race cars and
(44:33):
go head out to the desert, do acouple hundred miles in the desert.
I've also got a 22 Tacoma,and I take that camping.
I did.
Three days in Death Valley last yearby myself actually, so funny story.
When I was a kid, I didn't like camping.
We would go to Jone Canyon in test onCalifornia, so my dad and my brothers
could go dirt bike riding every year,and I would sit and play on my game.
(44:57):
He kinda snowballed.
But yeah, I also ride dirt bikes too, sowe'll go out and do that behind the house.
I just love every part of thestuff I get to do every day.
I get to.
Come in and work in the shop and buildcool stuff and make customers happy.
And then after work, I go outand play in the hills and go
to the river and go camping.
Stuff like that.
Well, I gotta tell you, one of my bucketlists is to get out to the Rubicon
(45:20):
trail and experience that whetherI'm driving or be in a passenger.
I've always wanted to see that andgo on top of the mountain, wherever
that, I call it a river lake, but it'sa big old lake on top of a mountain
somewhere, and people jump into thatlake all the time from like a big
boulder, and it's on a Rubicon trail.
It might be Buck Island Lake incase you ever do wanna come out.
(45:42):
I run an event called Zuki Con.
It's mostly for Samura,but I let anyone come.
I gear it towards new peoplecoming to the root Con.
If you ever want to, you're invited.
We could dress up your GWA tolook like a Suzuki Samurai.
I don't think so.
Well, I got some things I wanna do tothat thing first before I even think
about hitting the actually stock.
(46:02):
I think that thing couldtackle the Rubicon trail.
It's a fricking tank whenyou get up under them.
They are so simple.
They have radius armsand they're just beefy.
They don't have control arms or aleaf spring or anything like that.
A SE coil and a big metal armdirectly connected to the body.
I have yet to see a Gwagon out on Rubicon.
I'm gonna be stoked the day that Ido see one out there, but I think.
(46:26):
Either way, get some arm under it or elseit ain't gonna be the same coming out.
Maybe, uh, we can trade some informationand I'll send you some photos.
And I have a YouTube channel as wellwith videos of me scaling walls.
Oh, cool.
Nothing like what you do.
That would be super cool to see.
All right, Amber, we've reachedthat part of the episode where
(46:48):
I'd like to invite our guests.
To share any shout outs, promotions,thank yous, or anything else
that we haven't covered thus far.
If you want to reach out to me,if you're interested in my event,
Zuki Con, or you want to learn moreabout Bomber or King of the Hammers
or any kind of off road racing, youcan reach out to me on Instagram.
My handle is.
The Bur D-A-B-U-R-R-S, and if youhave to ask, it kind of sounds like
(47:12):
my name, Amber Da Burrs, or you canlook up two stone racing on Facebook.
Check us out.
All right, folks, that wraps up anotheradrenaline fueled episode of Break Fix.
We had an absolute pleasure divinginto the dirt, grit, and glory of
off-road racing with the unstoppableAmber Slauson from her early days
behind the wheel to the high octanechallenges that she tackles today.
(47:33):
Amber gave us a powerful glimpse into whatit takes to thrive in one of motorsports.
Toughest arenas.
Her passion, resilience, and driveare nothing short of inspiring.
Not just for racers, but for anyonechasing the dream off the beaten path.
And with that, Amber, I can't thankyou enough for coming on Break
Fix, sharing your story with us.
And we wish you the best of luck.
We wanna see more trophies inthe trophy case for you from
(47:53):
King Hammers and other events.
And I wanna see you at the Mint.
One, we're gonna be rooting for you.
I've been to the men,just haven't raced it yet.
Let so I'll see it there.
We wanna see you in it.
Not at it.
Okay.
Maybe calling, but yeah, pleasetell me you got your inspiration
from the police car episode of TopGear when Richard Hammond built one
with the spike strip in the front.
You remember that withall the glowy lights.
(48:14):
And the pink foo trim and all that.
Gosh, I don't know if I've seen that one.
Oh yeah, it's a classic.
Gosh, I think that's the last timeI've seen a Suzuki Sam ride was
on top gear like 20 years ago.
There was a second time I saw a Suzuki Samride and that was also on top gear, and
they used one in their Bolivia special.
James May drove one, and I rememberhow slow it was compared to the
(48:36):
Range Rover and the FJ and allthis other stuff that they had.
But at the end, it was the most reliable.
It made it through that wholejourney that they took, which
was like 1200 miles or so.
Okay.
I gotta go back and bl that one now.
Go ahead.
I don't know why when you said BurningMan, I immediately, my mind shifted to
the Fyre Festival and I imagined this guystanding there with nothing around him.
(48:57):
And that was the kitchen.
I'm sorry.
It's just like my mind was wandering.
Mine's a fire needle going the kitchen.
And on that bombshell.
It's time to end.
Amber, thank you for your time.
I enjoyed the Good luck.
Thank you guys.
We hope you enjoyed another awesomeepisode of Break Fix Podcasts,
(49:19):
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Break Fix podcast is all about capturingthe living history of people from all
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The Road to Success is paved by allof us because everyone has a story.
(00:27):
Strap in and hold tight becausetoday's episode takes us off the
beaten path and deep into the wild.
With Off-Road Racer Amber Slauson,a fearless competitor carving
her own trail through some of thetoughest terrain on four wheels.
From Dusty deserts toRocky Mountain climbs.
Amber's journey into the worldof off-road racing is powered by
grit, determination, and a lovefor adventure that knows no limits.
(00:49):
Whether she's wrenching on herrig or flying through a stage at
full throttle, Amber's proof thatthe off-road world is just as much
about heart as it is horsepower.
So get ready to meet the womanwho's rewriting the rules of
off-road racing one mile at a time.
And with that, let'swelcome Amber to break fix.
Hello Amber.
Hi guys, and joining me tonight isa special co-host returning to the
(01:09):
studio, David Andrews, our residentoff-roading expert, who you might
remember from the all the torques.
And Jesus takes the wheel episodes.
So welcome back Drew.
What's up?
All right, Amber, like allgood break, fix stories.
There's a super heroine origin.
So let's talk about the who,what, when and where of you.
What first drew you in to the world ofoff-road racing and do you remember the
(01:30):
moment that you knew it was your calling?
Uh, I was in college and Ididn't really have direction.
I didn't grow up in Offroading at all.
Like my dad and my brothershad dirt bikes and we would go
camping and stuff like that.
And then when my dad got twoolder ride dirt bikes, he had
this Toyota pickup and that's kindwhat I learned how to drive in.
So he kind of got intooffroading that way.
It's because, so you do youknow who Jesse Combs was?
(01:52):
Mm-hmm.
So, yeah, so just for listeners,Jesse Combs was a female
race car driver and a welder.
And a fabricator.
She raced King the Hammers,and she won in spec class.
The only year they raced it in 2014and won stock class in 2018, I believe.
But anyways, so she passed away in Augustof 2019 trying to set a land speed record.
I'd always been a big fan of hers.
(02:13):
Know, watched her growing up andshe really inspired me to get
into welding and then to get intothe rock crawling and offroading.
And then when she passed away next day,me and my brother were like sharing
memories over the phone and he'slike, well, you gotta do something.
And I was like, kind of wanna risking thehammers and he is like, you should do it.
So it was.
Her passing that me to take on thiswhole challenge, and I was like, I
(02:33):
kind of wanna do my own off-road thing.
And then, uh, I got mySamurai when I was 20 ish.
I went to my first King of the Hammers.
We only went for like a threeday stint on the way home.
I was like.
Man, that was so awesome.
I gotta make this the center of my life.
It was just the, I was so impressed.
I was there for three days and didn'tsee another single regular car.
(02:54):
'cause like back then, you know hownowadays King of the Hammers, you see
a bunch of like regular cars drivingaround, people bring their daily
drivers and there's people comingin from town and stuff like that.
Back then it was justrock crawlers everywhere.
I was like, this is.
The coolest thing ever.
So that was kind of theinflection point for me.
Well, Amber, first off for our listeners,let's cover what King of the Hammers is.
(03:16):
Yeah.
So King of the Hammers, it's calledthe hardest one day off-road race.
It's a lot like theBurning Man of Off-Road.
That's what a lot ofpeople like to call it.
It's turned into this like three weeklong, almost like a festival where it all
started, the King of the Hammers race.
Was with rock crawlers basicallygoing fast in the desert too.
(03:37):
So the very first king to hammerswas in 2007 and it was like a 36
mile long course on means dry lakebed and out in the hammers trails.
And the hammers trails are in SouthernCalifornia, Johnson Valley, OHV Park.
So it was this loop with a little bitof desert and a couple rock trails
and whoever did 'em, all the fastestone for a case of beer basically.
(03:58):
So that kind of evolved intodesert racing plus rock racing.
And now this year's course, theone that I ran was, uh, 120 miles.
Something around there, Ithink is usually what they are.
So it was about 60 miles of desertfor our first lap, which we did twice,
and then 20 or 30 miles of rocks.
(04:20):
So if you've never been to orseen the rock trails at Johnson
Valley, you should go look 'em up.
See how big these rocks are?
Yeah, those rocks can beat you up.
Even just floating over 'em.
You guys are taking them at speed.
Up and down the mountain.
Can you describe some of your mostchallenging races you've ever competed
(04:41):
in and how you pushed through it?
Oh, wait, wait.
Before we get to that, drew, I thought youwould ask her about this Suzuki Samurai,
like you've had some weird off roaders.
Well, no, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I'm gonna get to that.
I'm very curious about the samurai,but I'm really curious about the
whole process that she broughtup, bouncing over those rocks.
(05:02):
That's tough.
It's pretty totally my body.
Especially, and that's somethingthat I've learned going from the
Samurai to now I'm in the bomber, ishow much more comfortable this car
is and how much less I get beat up.
When I used to race in my Samurai,I started in 20 and the goal was
always just to finish becausethere's like a 85% attrition rate,
so like 85% of cars that interchangethe hammers don't finish at all.
(05:22):
So my goal was to just finish and I'dusually spend around 10 to 14 hours in
the car just trying to get that finish.
It would beat me the heckup getting into the bomber.
Nowadays it's a lot more comfortable,like I'm coming off it the next day.
Less sore, less beat up.
But going into, you know, even when Iwas just prepping my Samurai, it was
(05:43):
October through January, 'cause therace is the first week of February.
To circle back to your originalquestion, the most challenging thing
I've ever had to overcome, it's kindof a hard question for me because.
A lot of racers don't finishthis race because they break.
I've never had a mechanical failure.
I've always only evernot finished due to time.
(06:03):
Probably the hardest thingmentally for me to overcome was
my very first year that I raced.
My goal was just to finish, and Iwas so absolutely just hell bent on.
I just wanna keep going.
I just wanna make it to the finish.
The cutoff time had come and gone and theywere like, oh, you need to come in now.
Like race ops went to my mom.
And told her she needs to come in'cause we wanna see her cross the
(06:27):
stage and come into Hammer Town.
I had just done the whole desert lap.
I had just gotten to the rocktrails, which is all I really
wanted to do was rock crawl.
And so they called me in before I got tomy first rock trail and I was so upset.
I was driving in and I busted two tireson my way in and that year too, I got
most of the way through the first lapand then I think I was out on my second
(06:48):
lap and the rear pinion nut came off.
It backed off 'cause it didn't get.
And, and so my pick career had thatchanged out in like 15 minutes.
Oh, that's a terrible, so that wasn'tthat hard of a thing to overcome when
I did my research on you and I wassitting there like this girl did King
of the Hammers in a fricking samurai.
I would've been good withjust most challenging things
(07:10):
being there in a samurai.
So for most users that don'tknow what a Suzuki Samurai is.
It's a late eighties, earlynineties, SUV with solid front and
rear axles that do not move Much.
Very pleased to see your samuraiand how you were just a rebel.
I don't know anyone else who wouldrun King of the hammers in a samurai
(07:32):
probably saw some really amazingthings that that thing can do.
When I started racing my Samurai, noone had ever raced a Samurai stock class
before, so I kind of had to figure it out.
'cause.
Had to figure out all this safety stuff.
More or less, read the rule book coverto cover a million frigging times, trying
to figure out what goes and what doesn't.
So between August, 2019, it waslike six months to get my Samurai
(07:55):
ready for King of the Hammers.
'cause like racing, king of the Hammershad always kind of been like this.
I'll do it one of these days kind of gold.
And I had always imaginedbuilding another rig to do King
Hammer in like a real race car.
And so at the time I was like, well,I don't have time to build a bigger
race car, and I don't really havethe skills yet, but I've got my
Samurai so I'll figure it out as I go.
(08:16):
I got through all thatstuff, made it through tech.
I think I only had to go back to techonce, you know, they sent me back to fix
my window nets or something like that.
Came back and passed,which is pretty good.
Apparently made it to the green flag.
And so I was the first to racestock class in the Suzuki Samurai.
And then I think at our peak therewere six Samurai racing in total.
(08:37):
He started a trend.
Look at you.
Yeah, a little bit becauseI mean, they're so cheap.
Like I figured my whole program was.
Cheaper than any other race car out there.
It was so cool to just putthese things together for people
that just wanted to go racing.
You know, they were just like meracing something that they already had.
Cheap, but not fast.
Not fast.
No, no, no.
(08:57):
What did you learn from your samurai?
Was that one of those things that otherthan, you know, slight little things,
that it was actually kind of like alittle donkey, a little workhorse.
It made it through without too much issue?
Yeah, actually, that reallyspeaks to, like me never having
a mechanical failure on course.
I like to say those things don'thave enough power to hurt themselves.
You know, there's 60 horsepowerfrom the factory stock and then
(09:18):
like the fuel injection ones arelike 65 horsepower and they've got
small axle shafts and stock axles.
To get this, I was only running 31 inchtires the first two years I raced as well.
Oh my gosh.
And stock axle.
Oh my goodness.
But the, by the third year, I'd raised.
I had done Toyota axles and thenby the fourth year I had done fuel
(09:41):
injection and much bigger shocks andbasically tapped the thing for the
modifications that I could do to it.
I length in the wheel base three inches,which was the max for the rule book.
It was on 35 inch tires when Ifinished racing it 'cause stock class.
Rules are you have to keep thestock body, if it came solid
axle, it has to stay solid axle.
If it came IFS, it has to stay IFS.
(10:03):
If it came with leaf springs,you have to stay on leaf springs.
You can't go to Lynx, vice versa.
And then you have to keep thestock motor and stock transmission.
You have any transportation axles.
Weren't TAM MRIs on LeafSprings at one point?
Yeah.
All the Suzuki Samura that were madein America were all leaf sprung.
And yours was a foil sprung?
No, no, no.
Mine's still leaf springs.
Okay.
Yeah.
By the time I was done racing it, Ihad Holly Fuel injection on the stock
(10:25):
motor, longer leaf springs on it, but itwas still leaf sprung, so it was okay.
Toyota axles 35 inch tireslength in the wheel base.
Like I said, it was.
As fast and capable as I could make it.
And it still wasn't fast becauseyou said 60 horsepower on a
brand new engine back in the day.
So what did a dino at?
I've never actually dno thething, but I assume calculated
(10:49):
is about 65, 66 horsepower.
23 or 24.
I blew it up and then I rebuiltit, put a freshie in it.
Then I did the fuel injection and thatadded like five or six horsepower.
You think about it, it'sa 10% gain in horsepower.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's huge.
Yeah.
But Eric, you don't really needa whole lot of horsepower when
you're running in lower gears.
(11:11):
And if you get your gear in right,it helps to have more horsepower.
But that thing is so littleand it, how much did it weigh?
29 50. Think was withthe 17 inch wheels on it.
Wow.
That's heavy for that little thing.
Yeah.
I cut the weight a lot when Iput the 15 inch wheels, but I
don't think I weighed since then.
And then when you put the 30fives on, something like that,
(11:32):
the breakover on it is amazing.
So it doesn't need the 37, 44inch tires to get it over rocks.
It just literally Billygoats over to everything.
Yeah.
Or it squeezes in betweenit because it's so.
So we might have skipped over it,but let's talk about the speeds of an
event like King of Hammers, becausethere's different types of off-road
(11:53):
events, some really low and slow stuff.
There's high speed stuff like theMint 400 and everything in between.
So where does King of Hammers sit?
You were talking aboutthe desert portion of it.
Is that pretty flat and you're just tryingto cruise as fast as you can and you get
to the rocky part, which slows you up?
Yeah.
So speaking about comparing speed.
Mint 400.
I think the average speed for thatone is around 60 miles an hour.
(12:15):
For the winners, it's around 60 milesan hour to finish all 400 miles.
And so the average speed, I remembercalculating it a couple years ago just
to finish, king of the Hammers is around12 miles per hour, and so the first lap
is pretty much just flat out, kind of goas fast as you can to get to the rocks.
I feel like my average was probablyaround 45 or 50 miles an hour, even though
(12:39):
I hit up to 70 and it's pretty flat.
Like this year was pretty smooth.
They changed the course everyyear and they try to keep it
as flat and smooth as they can.
But we also run the same as theDesert Challenge that goes on the
first weekend of King of a Hammers.
So like the big Mint 400 truckswill run that course and shoot
it up, so we run the same one.
(12:59):
And you're doing about 50 or 60 or 70in the desert section, and then the
rocks you're doing maybe top speed 12miles an hour, usually one to two miles
an hour, especially in the bigger cars.
You're not just rock crawling, youknow, you look at rock crawlers and
you see like small, technical, reallyslow movements, really low gearing.
(13:21):
When you're racing, it's all aboutpicking your line and tuning your shocks
just for right tires, just dance overthe rocks instead of having a bam,
bam, bam, bam hit every single one.
But in the Samurai it was, I wasgoing pretty slow, but I was still
trying to go as fast as I could.
But it taught me a lot in that respect.
Well, you know, drew, you knowwhat I didn't hear on her list?
I didn't hear Jeep Commander orMercedes G Wagon on that list.
(13:41):
Um, yeah, that's.
Messed up.
You got no name for the G Commanderor the, or the Mercedes G Wagon.
I haven't seen either of thoseraces, but I'd really like to.
I'd be so stoked.
Yeah.
Actually, when you bring that up,I've always kind of been a fan of
the underdog, like who isn't right?
But.
Every time I see a car come into stockclass that's a little bit different.
Like last year we had a, a VolkswagenPorig come in and compete with us.
(14:05):
And then a couple years ago wehad a Durango buddy of mine had a
Toyota Sequoia that he had built up,and I like really suckered him in
to racing mat a couple years ago.
I was like, that's a really cool rig.
It looks like a, a modified class card.
He is like, yo, what kind of is.
Now he races and his wife racesand they've just stepped up to a
(14:26):
bigger car and got them all into it.
And then like all the S thatcame in racing, like I kind of
created this still community of,we're all just kind of connected.
'cause you know, if I came into pit.
And needed help.
I know that those guys,they totally lend a hand.
I've had friends do that for me before andif I wasn't in my pit, I'd want my crew
to help out the next Samurai guy becauseyou know, we all share the same parts.
(14:50):
Well, that's what I had.
I had a Jeep commander and I'mcurrently on a Mercedes G wagon,
and IU actually use both of them.
Nice.
Commander is Donezo, and I bringthat up because in every racer's life
there's the car you started out with,which is the one eventually kind of
becomes your personal museum piece.
So your samurai's never gonna leaveyou unless money talks, right?
(15:11):
Nope, sorry, not with that one.
Yeah.
Right.
But at the end of the day, that's.
Gonna be the one that's gonnabe with you forever and then
you evolve to something else.
And you mentioned earlier that you'rean A bomber now, and so as I understand
it, that's more like you see an RCcar offer a, you know, big wheels
kind of low truck, that kind of thing.
Right?
So that's what you're innow, what was that transition
like going from stock class?
(15:32):
To a fully prepared off roader.
So backstory, Randy's my husband.
He's the one that designedthese cars in the first place.
Bomber is his business.
I like to think that bombers is all ultra.
Four cars are kind of called theSwiss Army knife of our sport.
You know, they have to runfast in the desert and crawl
through the rocks quickly.
But so going from the samurai tothe bomber was kind of detrimental
(15:52):
to the Samurai 'cause now I jumpback in Samurai and forget, I'm.
I had never driven anythingwith that much horsepower.
The bombers only got 460 horsepower.
It's a Crate LT one, only 460horsepower, only 460 horsepower,
(16:13):
400 more than your Samurai.
I just wanna point that out.
Exactly, and it's cool 'cause justwith this last race that I just
did in Moab a couple weeks ago, I'mfinally finding the limits of that.
You only use the horsepower flat outfast stuff coming from the samra.
I've always been really intimidatedby that fast stuff, so I just.
Really easing into it.
(16:33):
And now I'm trying to finally findingthe limits of the 460 horsepower.
Let's see, the bomber's got 114 inchwheel base, 37 inch tires when I race it.
Nine inch axles.
Yeah.
It's a full cheater code, basically.
Yeah, it's, and they're built for thehammer trails too, like my husband.
And Randy lived down there for yearsand that's how he did his research
(16:55):
and development is what he would goout and run the trails and come home
and fix whatever broke and updateit and upgrade it for the next car.
So they're really like purposebuilt for King of the Hammer stuff.
You know, I got to know the hammerstrails really well from my Samurai
and I got to know rock crawlingreally well for my Samurai.
And there were a lot of justfundamentals that I learned from
(17:15):
small tires and small horsepower andsmall wheel base and stuff like that.
And it really helped me goinginto the bomber because.
You know, you can't just gofrom a pee shooter to a big gun.
There's a big learning curve and allit really took was seat time for me.
I think I've got like eightweeks total worth of seat time at
this point in that car or more.
24 was the first time I raised it.
(17:36):
25. I've done two more races.
I've got four races under mybelt at this point in that car.
So I'm gonna lean back intoour question from before.
'cause speed is important, right?
You got 400 extra horses.
Now, what's it like on the open desert?
You were able to do 60, maybe 70 in thesamurai, but you're pegging that thing.
What's it like in the bomber?
Are you doing a hundred plus mile an hour?
Oh no, I wasn't thatconfident with it this year.
(17:59):
I think we did hit 90 at one pointacross the dry lake bed, there's a
nice dry lake bed out in the back ofhammers that you can go as fast as
you want to and then you can let offand go back up into the rock trails.
But the summer, I really onlyever got it up to like 50 or 60
miles an hour foot to the floor.
The hole for lap downhill with wind.
You back.
But so driving the bomberon the first slap, it's.
(18:20):
Win or lose the race in the corners.
And that's something that I've struggledwith recently is just cornering and
the timing of it all and breaking,working on coming into a corner,
breaking, drifting the corner, andthen throttling right back into it.
The infrared back inyour seat is pretty cool.
So it's funny you bring that upbecause sometimes we talk about how.
Other disciplines of motorsportcan help you with your own personal
(18:43):
racecraft in your own discipline.
And so have you ventured into, let'ssay, any circuit racing or done any
other kind of practice in other cars toget that car controlled, to build that
confidence, to get a better understandingof the cornering and the braking, or
you're just doing it as you're out there?
Honestly, haven't had any opportunities.
To do that sort of thing,I'd totally be open for it.
We have BLM land right across the street,but we spend so much time just out
(19:07):
practice there and we'll go from here.
We'll do 200 mile loops in a dayout to the desert and out around
corners and just practice then.
Going up to Rubicon is onlyan hour and a half from us.
So rock crawling is right there andthe federal officers don't give you
guys any mess for being out there.
Yeah, we haven't been hassled off road.
We get yelled at if we try to go on road.
(19:28):
It's pretty game out there.
Imagine that you mentioned that you'reconstantly tuning and tweaking on
the vehicle to be able to etch outa little bit more time to help your
bottom line and help you to win.
So what are some of thethings that you guys look at?
To improve the balance and theperformance of the vehicle.
(19:48):
Mostly what goes into finetuning that goes into them
these days is just shock tuning.
So last year I made a point to makemore shock tuning appointments, and I
think last year low, when we did four orfive, they were mostly for Randy's car.
He is 4,400 car, but we gotmy car so freaking dialed.
It is.
(20:09):
Arguably better than the big cars now.
Wow.
I watch videos of this thing andwhat you're kind of looking for.
The goal is if the car's goingstraight over rocks, you want the
tires dancing over the rocks and youwanna watch the chassis stay still, and
that's exactly what my car does now.
That's where the fine testing and tuninggoes into with every car that we build.
(20:31):
We build it as best we can andthere's gonna be little tweaks
here and there that you gotta make.
It's mostly shock tuning.
Wouldn't the tires also bepart of that package as well?
Because the air pressure alonemaking drastic changes in air
pressure would change the waythe shocks bound and rebound.
'cause they're all part of thatmechanism when it's impacting a
stone or whatever it is, right?
(20:51):
Yeah, actually.
So, we'll, we'll mess with horsepowerdepending on what race we're doing.
Like for King, the Hammers,we'll run about 25 pounds.
You're going fast and you're goingslow in the rocks, so you don't
want the rocks beat you up, but youdon't want to bust a tire if you
hit something part of the desert.
But like this last Moab race thatI did was mostly a rock race,
and those rocks are harsh, so Ibumped mine down to 22 pounds.
(21:13):
Just to give me a little bit more cushion.
Playing with that goes into it a lot,and it depends on what we're doing.
If we're just running out in thebackyard doing laps in the desert, we'll
bump it up to 25 and keep it there.
Do you see any change in tirepressure like the road racers do,
where you're out there and you'rerunning hard, you're in the sun.
Do you see the temps and thepressure start to climb and then
you have to adjust or you're notreally paying attention to it?
(21:34):
After you said it, I'm notreally paying attention to it.
Like I, I don't whip out a tiregauge when I'm out in the middle of
nowhere to check the tire pressures,but we do kind of compensate for
it a little bit when we're racing.
You know, it's something we keep in mind.
It's not like driving onasphalt where you've got that
constant tension and traction.
You're not building that kind of heat.
You know, you've always got a little bitof slip under the tires with the dirt.
Kind of keeps it.
Cool.
(21:54):
Kinda switching gears a little bit,let's talk about the human side of this.
'cause we talked a lot about the carand the prep and it gets beat up and
shock adjustments and stuff like that,but you're getting beat up in the car.
There's a lot of prep you gotta do.
And when I sit down and talk with prodrivers in the road racing world, they
always talk about, oh, I jump on thesimulator and it's all about hydration.
And what's the prep likementally and physically.
(22:16):
For off-roading, but this is the thingthat I love the most is off-roading.
It's wheeling and rock crawlingand that kind of stuff.
So for me it's super easy to just getinto it and just love every minute.
All of the prep that Ido, I kind of love too.
In the last year or so, I've actuallystarted, I lift weights like two or
three times a week, and I'm tryingto get a cardio machine so I can, you
(22:37):
know, increase my stamina a little bit.
And then I've gotten really hardon my snack game and my hydration
game in the car, and that'ssomething that I'm constantly.
Tweaking and tuning on with thelast couple races that I've done
is just staying fed and hydrated.
'cause yeah, we wear this fitnessmonitor just watching what your body
does, or at least me an hour before Iget in the car, my heart rate raises
(22:57):
and just stays there, the whole race.
So I have to keep feeding mybody so that it performs like
I need it to, or else I crash.
My brain stops working.
I can't think straight andI don't perform as well.
I gotta remember to hydrate, eatsnacks and just keeping calm.
And I've been told and kindof experiences for myself that
(23:18):
running off the adrenaline is not.
A safe or good idea.
So you kind of keep your heart ratedown, stay calm, twist, throttle.
You're not slamming Red Bulls and just,
yeah.
But I mean, it's still, uh, the wholetime I'm in the car, but I've been
working on mitigating that in yoursamurai older car manual transmission.
(23:41):
More rowing of the gears,working the clutch.
Even at low speed, you're a lotmore physically active in the car.
I can assume if it's anything like someof the ATVs I've been in, especially
the high speed ones, floppy paddlegearbox in your bomber automatic
transmission, it's a little less physical.
And I'm not saying it's any lessphysically demanding, but you're
not as active behind the wheel.
(24:01):
Am I wrong about that?
Well, I mean, if you're comparing thesame ride of the bomber figure, I'm
probably more active behind the wheel onthe bomber just because I'm going faster.
Well, I am using my clutch foot on thebrake pedal now just in a different way.
And then I'm still shifting gearsbecause it's turbo 400 transmission.
So I'm still shipping 1, 2, 3in reverse whenever I need it.
But it's a lot less of patyour head, rub your belly, and
(24:24):
jump up and down on one foot.
Kind to think with theautomatic transmission.
But I kind of love that about theclutch too, 'cause I got so good at it.
My samurai just.
Became second nature and with the threepedals set up a skill that translates
from road racing to off-road is knowinghow to heel toe, because you need to be
able to hold the car, slip the clutch,give it a little all at the same time.
It's like, wait, I gottwo feet and three pedals.
(24:46):
How the heck does this work?
Yep.
It's something we try to drillinto our students in road racing,
but I think you guys kind ofpick it up almost intuitively.
Yeah, you, you have to.
There's a stuff, especially with theSamurai, that it just won't do clutch.
A dirt bike, clutch.
Beat the crap out of it to makeit do some really cool stuff.
And that's what I reallyloved about that thing.
(25:07):
That was a fun part.
You're taking the biggest beating out ofeveryone who you're working with, but do
you expect your crew to be able to havesome sort of level of fit as you to be
able to, you know, replace a half shaft?
As fast as they can.
Those tires are likeover a hundred pounds.
(25:28):
They have to pull disassemble, suspension.
So is there a a requirement forthem to be just as capable as you?
I mean, I don't expect my pickcrew to be as physically capable.
I know they are thoughbecause I'm 130 pound chick.
If I can do it, these dudes on my pitcrew, they could definitely do it.
And so that was actually a. Thing thisyear with me and my co-driver, because
(25:50):
I busted a tire going into one of therock sections at Hammers this year.
I didn't realize it at the time, but Iwas so exhausted and gotten tasked for
water when we came for our main pit stop.
So I was exhausted, I wasdehydrated, and I busted this tire.
I couldn't have gotten that done by myselfif my co-driver had been there to help me.
Like we even had a hard timejust getting the lug nuts off.
(26:12):
They've been toed on so tight,which is something that I'm
now fixing going forward.
I know that I can't pick thosetires back up, put them back
onto the rack on the car.
Having my co-driver physically fit isa requirement, and I know that most
guys are able to lift those tires.
I just can't.
As far as the crew goes, youalways hope for the best.
Right?
(26:33):
You know, if we breaks something major,like a link mount rips off or something
like that, we'll just call the race.
This year at Hammers on Randy'scar, we had a diff failure for him.
It was me and a couple guys tryingto get the thing changed out.
It was no problem for any of us.
You know, these partsaren't big and heavy.
It's just a matter ofknowing how to do it.
Well, you brought upsomething really interesting.
(26:54):
You said the word co-driver.
Immediately.
I fall back to growing upwatching World Rally and.
Stuff like that.
You know, again, very centered in Europeanracing, but in the rally world, co-drivers
are there with their hieroglyphs and theirnotes, and it's all pace notes, how much
to the next corner, how fast you can go.
They do a lot of sighting and trying tofigure out where the course goes, even
on those long stages that they havethat are tens of twenties of miles.
(27:17):
So what is the expectation ofa co-driver at King of Hammers?
What are they there to do for you?
Are they giving you those same pace notesand that, or they there to help you,
like fit the vehicle through an area?
What, what's.
The deal.
Yeah, so it's not so much PaceNotes is like, we have a low
risk GPS in the car and it's gotthe course downloaded onto it.
So it's basically just tellingme, you know, there's a corner
(27:37):
coming up, turn right, turn left.
And then this year they've beenreally hard on rock checkpoints.
RCPs and vcps virtual checkpointsthat our GPS points are exact.
So these are points on the course, andyou have to hit the vcps within, I think
125 feet and the RCPs within 50 feet.
So we basically have to navigatefrom point to point to point.
(28:01):
Like it's not like Rally whereit's just point to point.
You have to figure out how to get there.
The course is kind of set up for us.
We just have to hit those checkpoints.
So that's the biggest job of theco-driver is just to wash the
map and make sure we hit those.
Also, like I mentioned earlier,when you bust a tire, they
need to get out and help.
We got stuck a couple times in therocks, and so the co-driver will hop
(28:24):
out and either winch or try to get thecar unstuck or something like that.
Shout out to my co-driver, Tom, this you.
He did a great frigging job.
We got stuck more timesthan I'd like to admit.
Had a ton of issues with at one point.
I was almost with mysteering ram into a rock.
So we couldn't winch forward,couldn't pull ourselves backwards.
I was ed on a rock and we had to get thehigh lift jack off, and he tried to jack
(28:45):
up every corner of the car, get sometraction somewhere to get it unstuck.
It finally worked, but just the high liftsdidn't wanna cooperate most of the time.
So that's pretty much co-driver duties.
So Drew, this goes back to what you'vealways told me, which is never go offroad
in a low, never in front of camera.
Drew opened the door to talk alittle bit more about how much
(29:06):
the team plays into your success.
We've heard from drag racers what it'slike behind the scenes, and they come
in from a run and they got a thrash andyou know, tear motors down and replace
clutches and all this kind of stuff.
What's the dynamic like on anoff-road event behind the scenes?
Oh, it's definitelystill a thrash sometimes.
And so we try to prep these cars asbest we can while we're at home in
(29:28):
the shop where everything's nice,but sometimes things do break out
there and you do have to come backand absolutely thrash in the car.
The night before the race a coupleyears ago, Randy brought two cars.
He had a 4,400 unlimited car and a 4,800limited class car that he was racing.
One of them blew a transmission andthe other one cracked the axle housing.
(29:49):
Thrashed to get those things ready.
One of 'em was the day beforequalifying, and the other one was
like two days before the actual race.
Sometimes you pull the car intothe tent from pre-running and find
something's absolutely broken andneeds to be fixed right now, and you
just don't go to bed until it's fixed.
And then you try to get as muchsleep as you can until the next day.
(30:11):
And then either you gotta aqualifi or you got a race.
Sometimes it's like that.
Thankfully it hasn't been likethat in the last couple years,
and I like to keep it that way, soI'm gonna keep prepping my cars.
Well, but yeah, and, and that's kindof the beauty of hammers too, is if
you camp close to Hammer town, you'llhear grinders and cars revving and that
kind of stuff going all night long.
(30:31):
And it's kind of part of our culture,if you wanna put it that way.
Yeah.
Even just in rock crawling andoff-roading in general, you know,
if you break on the trail, sometimesyou're out there fixing it after a
and all the way through the night justto get home the next day, go to work.
And that's why we tow our rigs in.
Yeah.
No help.
(30:52):
Well, this might be intimidating toa lot of people that look at this
stuff and they don't have any cluelike what goes on in the background.
What are some of the biggestmisconceptions people have
about off-road racing?
Everybody thinks it'sdirty, and it definitely is.
Probably the biggest one, is thatwe don't care about our public
land and we're just here to mess itup, which is completely not true.
(31:13):
You know, it's this balancewhere we love what we do and
we have to keep the land Nice.
To keep doing it.
It's really funny.
They were really hard on the RCPs, therock check points and stuff this year,
and they told us we have to hit thembecause they didn't want us blazing other
trails next to the actual rock trail.
They wanted us to stay in the rock trail.
(31:35):
And so we do things like that tominimize the impact on the environment.
There's also suns of smokey andtread lightly will come out and do
trash pickups every night becausethe place does get pretty trash.
I know King of the Hammers worksa lot with the BLM, especially
throughout the year to keep thetrails nice and keep Johnson
Valley OHB good for the rest of us.
(31:57):
But there's a lot of stuff that I dotoo with Rubicon Trail Foundation,
for example, is trying to set a goodexample of people that need to be out
there and keep our trails nice and don'ttrash the place, don't drive off trail.
And you know, it's just, it'slittle stuff that seems like
it should be common knowledge,common sense, but it really isn't.
And I've seen that side of it.
(32:18):
It's just a matter of teachingpeople when you come out here,
we have to treat this stuff withrespect or else we're gonna lose it.
All of us have to do our part to treatit with respect and act responsibly
and teach others so that we cankeep having fun out on public lands.
I, I don't think people understand,like you said, when you gotta treat
these lands and trails with respect.
(32:39):
Because once the government getsinvolved or any local municipality and
they take it away from you, that's it.
There's no getting it back.
You can petition.
You can go and talk.
It's happening all over the country wheretrails and lands are getting shut down for
recreational use, so it's very important.
One of the first things I talked aboutwhen I was being interviewed was to
(33:03):
make sure you clean up after yourself,any fluids, dirty water, trash.
Fire pits clean up.
I always like to say, leaveit better than you found it.
Absolutely.
Leave it better than when you found it.
Yeah.
So what are some of the moments andthings that didn't go as planned
during a race that's like, goshdarn it, and did you learn from it?
(33:25):
Did you have a after actionreview and say, all right.
This is fixable.
This is what we'll do going forwardto not let this happen again.
So the second year that I raisedKing the hammers in my samurai, I had
finally made it to the rock trails.
I made it down the first rock trail andI started heading up the second one.
And I was so stoked to finally beout Rock crawl, and we got maybe
(33:45):
a hundred feet into this trail.
And came up on six or seven cars, eitherbroken or stuck, basically in this
trailhead completely blocking me fromgoing forward and completing my race, and
there was nothing I could do about it.
I was so pissed off in that moment.
I was literally looking at thesecanyon walls thinking I could
(34:06):
attach my winch up there, justlike Spider-Man across the cake.
That thought seriouslycrossed my mind and after.
But, so the lesson that I learned fromthat was staying ahead of the traffic
because king of a Hammer's, like Isaid, there's an 85% attrition rate.
85% of the cars don't finish.
Traffic happens and it's a big deal.
(34:27):
Strategizing in a way to stay aheadof the traffic is a huge priority
in my book now, and that's part ofwhat led to my success this year.
So I actually took second place.
In overall in the Everman this yearI finished physical first and I
was the first female to take thephysical first overall finish in
(34:48):
the Everman Challenge this year.
And I was knocked down to secondplace due to missing a couple RCPs.
So those are time penaltiesworth 15 minutes a piece,
and I missed three of them.
So I got knocked from first to second.
That was my second official finishat King of the Hammers, and obviously
my best one yet, so next yearit's just gonna have to be better.
(35:09):
By the time I was finishedwith Lap one, I started in 30th
position and I moved up to six.
So there were only six carsahead of me going into the rocks.
Six cars is totally manageable.
Even if all six of those carsbroke down in the same spot, I
should be able to get around them.
But if you are last in a field of 120 carslike I was in the Samurai and you've got a
(35:32):
hundred cars broken in front of you alongvarious points in the course, it's gonna
be really hard to get through those spots.
That was a big frustration.
They are then the obstacles.
Yeah.
They, we like to say, uh, if you'renot moving on the race course,
you're part of the race course.
That's like, you are not in traffic.
You are traffic.
Yeah.
Earlier you mentioned you werethe, uh, only female at the time
(35:56):
racing a stock class Samurai.
Did you have any goals or aspirationsto be like a. Figure for other women
or other rebels to choose vehiclesthat not necessarily the gold standard.
Yeah.
As far as goals of being arole model for females in the
sport, that's been a thing too.
(36:17):
And I've been working a lot with theJesse Combs Foundation, bringing new
girls into King of Hammers 'causethey have a scholarship program
for girls going into the trades.
It's not just a scholarship.
They also really try to immerse thesegirls in the whole community and the
industries that are involved too.
So they'll bring the scholarshiprecipients, they'll grab a group of
(36:38):
them and they'll bring 'em back to Kingof the Hammers or SEMA or PRI show,
or Easter Jeep Safar, another one.
You know, they.
Bring these girls out and introduce usto us, and I show 'em around our pit
and show 'em what it takes to go racing.
So that's been really cool too.
Oh, that's really cool.
The Easter Jeep Safari stuff.
So they bought a new Jeep andyou show 'em like, Hey, if you're
(37:00):
interested, there's levels to this.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
I love that part.
This past year has been reallyinteresting because we have looked
at a lot of different disciplinesof motorsport investigating
the gender parody that exists.
In some motor sports and not in others.
And so NHRA drag racing is at the topwhere it's almost 50 50 men to women
(37:21):
and you kind of come down into shorttrack racing and things like that.
So how do you see the off-roadinglandscape, at least in your area?
What does it look like in termsof, you know, men to women ratio?
Are you seeing more womengetting involved in off-roading?
Oh yeah.
Definitely seen a lot more womengetting offroading, especially since
I was a kid, which is really cool andI attribute most of that to Jesse.
(37:43):
Tom.
She was a big driving force and havingwomen offroading and wrenching and
wheeling and welding and all that stuff.
I'd say around here it's probably15 to one men to women, and then
also with King of the Hammers.
This year I was the onlyfemale to race in 4,800.
Although I had other femalefriends racing in 4,500 modified
(38:06):
class, 4,600 stock class.
So I think total in the everymanchallenge, there was five or six.
Females racing, the every man challenge.
I know there was exactly one femaleracing in the 4,400 unlimited class.
That was Bailey Campbell this year.
And I've actually become friendswith a lot of the females that have
started racing after me, and a lotof 'em that came before me too.
(38:29):
So it's fun to have that littlefriend group and we all bring each
other up and help each other out.
So what do you think off-roading could doto make the sport more inviting to women?
That's a good question because ingeneral we don't like to get dirty
and it's a really dirty sport.
The thing that really drew me toit was the independence of it all.
(38:50):
First of all, like when I was a kidand having my own car, being able to
drive places and take myself places was.
Awesome.
That was paramount.
Getting into off-roading andlearning how to fix your vehicle
when it breaks, how to maintenanceyour vehicle so it doesn't break.
Taking yourself out into the wildernessconfidently and just knowing that
you can take care of yourself,you know, whatever happens, you're
(39:10):
not gonna die for the most part.
Just having that confidence to be ableto go out and do these solo trips.
It's been a building block for me ina way, just like a pushing factor.
You know, when I'm out by myself,I can go out by myself first and
foremost, and then when I am outby myself and something happens, I
know that I can get myself outta it.
Circling back to your question,and this is something that I push
(39:32):
for, is showing people, especiallywomen, that these are attributes.
That they already have in them.
It's just a matter of knowing that youcan do it, whether you think you can
or you think you can't, you're right.
Do you think having representationin organizations like Women in Motor
(39:53):
Sports North America, or Shift Upnow, or some of the other groups out
there that represent women racers,would that help with inviting more
off roaders in especially young girls?
Oh yeah, for sure.
Jesse Combs was the whole reasonI started racing, and if I hadn't
seen her in Extreme four by fourwhen I was a teenager, you know,
(40:13):
she was on that TV show, extremefour by four, and we would watch it
every Saturday morning on Spike tv.
So seeing Jesse do these things.
That mostly guys would do mademe think to myself, well, if
Jesse could do it, I could do it.
And so I've had this conversation witha friend before about how people are
inspired to do new things when theysee someone that's like them doing it.
(40:34):
Having women out there representingthe sports is a big deal.
Well, you've been at this now forover a decade, and whether you have
acknowledged it or internalizedit, you're now a role model.
Four young girls looking to get intoMotorsport, like my two daughters.
They're of the age where they're going.
I see myself as you said, see me.
Then I can be there, sort of thing.
(40:55):
Let's say one of my daughters walked upto you and said, Amber, why race off road?
What advice would you give them?
How would you tell them to start out?
Probably biases you, Sam, I oryou commander or a Jeep commander.
She says, begrudgingly.
Yeah, because that's kinda how I gotstarted was when I bought my Samurai
(41:17):
and I just kind of dove into it.
I just wanted to learn allthis stuff that I could.
Would it be worth coming in andbasically shadowing by maybe starting
out as a co-driver or something?
Yeah, that is another way.
So.
If we go all the way back,if came to me and asked, how
do I get into offroad racing?
I would tell them, get on with pit crew.
Find a friend who races.
I'm a friend who races here, comehere, be part of my pit crew.
(41:38):
Just hang out with us at the campfire,like see what goes into this.
And that's kind of how Igot started in racing too.
So 2014 was my first king tohammers and me and my family all
volunteered the whole first yearand we volunteered every year since.
So having that behindthe scenes perspective.
Of the whole eventreally helped a lot too.
(41:59):
That would probably be my number onepiece of advice to any regular Joe or
Jody out there looking to get into thesekinds of events is volunteer first.
You know, they're alwayslooking for volunteers.
It's a great behind the scenes.
Thing to do.
You really see the innerworkings of the whole situation.
And then from there you're gonna meetpeople, you can get on a pit crew,
(42:19):
start seeing what picks to be on pitcrew, go from there to a co-driver.
You just work your way up.
It's kind of like I startedwelding, you know, start sweeping
floors, same kind of thing.
You work your way up.
What's next for you?
When will we see yourunning the Mint 400 or.
Maybe NASCAR is in your future.
Dirt oval.
Yeah.
(42:39):
A little bit more flatter,straighter, softer.
Oh gosh.
What's next for you?
What's coming up?
So the next thing for sureis King of Hammers next year.
That's all I've got planned for sure.
May or may not risk.
Vegas to Reno this year, whichwould be a big one for me.
That's a bucket list.
That would be a fun thing.
And that's about it.
That's about all I've got planned.
I try not to plan too far in advance,but you know, if opportunities
(43:02):
pop up, sometimes I say no.
It's sometimes the stupidest thingI ever say, but I catch myself or
I go back and say, yes, we're gonnasee you on, I be rooting for you.
Hundred percent.
We can get some stickers on herrig at least if nothing else.
Matter fact, I wanna see that thebarbecue hut that you guys got,
(43:27):
where you do catering and stuff likethat, just putting it out there.
Oh gosh.
So in my camp we actually do havea building that one of our friends
brings that's like a four orfive-sided wood building from Burning
Man that they bring out and set up.
And that's our kitchen like tent area.
Okay, that's interesting.
So my mom gets there about amonth ahead of the event, ropes
(43:48):
off a big old area for us.
And so we set up this kitchen tentand the whole camp area pitches
in for meals and cooks together.
And it's, it's a big communityeffort and it's a lot of fun.
We may or may not alsohave pyrotechnics up there.
Well, I'm glad you brought upcamping, like outside of getting in.
Your bomber and your Suzuki and andracing for a living, what do you like
(44:12):
to do outside of the motor sports space?
Do you still like to be anoutdoorsman type, recreational
off-roading or anything like that?
Oh yeah, for sure.
I wanna say this.
Racing thing is kind of thefull-time thing for me because
if I have a free weekend, I'mup on Rubicon Trail Rock Crawl.
If we've got another free weekend,we'll take the race cars and
(44:33):
go head out to the desert, do acouple hundred miles in the desert.
I've also got a 22 Tacoma,and I take that camping.
I did.
Three days in Death Valley last yearby myself actually, so funny story.
When I was a kid, I didn't like camping.
We would go to Jone Canyon in test onCalifornia, so my dad and my brothers
could go dirt bike riding every year,and I would sit and play on my game.
(44:57):
He kinda snowballed.
But yeah, I also ride dirt bikes too, sowe'll go out and do that behind the house.
I just love every part of thestuff I get to do every day.
I get to.
Come in and work in the shop and buildcool stuff and make customers happy.
And then after work, I go outand play in the hills and go
to the river and go camping.
Stuff like that.
Well, I gotta tell you, one of my bucketlists is to get out to the Rubicon
(45:20):
trail and experience that whetherI'm driving or be in a passenger.
I've always wanted to see that andgo on top of the mountain, wherever
that, I call it a river lake, but it'sa big old lake on top of a mountain
somewhere, and people jump into thatlake all the time from like a big
boulder, and it's on a Rubicon trail.
It might be Buck Island Lake incase you ever do wanna come out.
(45:42):
I run an event called Zuki Con.
It's mostly for Samura,but I let anyone come.
I gear it towards new peoplecoming to the root Con.
If you ever want to, you're invited.
We could dress up your GWA tolook like a Suzuki Samurai.
I don't think so.
Well, I got some things I wanna do tothat thing first before I even think
about hitting the actually stock.
(46:02):
I think that thing couldtackle the Rubicon trail.
It's a fricking tank whenyou get up under them.
They are so simple.
They have radius armsand they're just beefy.
They don't have control arms or aleaf spring or anything like that.
A SE coil and a big metal armdirectly connected to the body.
I have yet to see a Gwagon out on Rubicon.
I'm gonna be stoked the day that Ido see one out there, but I think.
(46:26):
Either way, get some arm under it or elseit ain't gonna be the same coming out.
Maybe, uh, we can trade some informationand I'll send you some photos.
And I have a YouTube channel as wellwith videos of me scaling walls.
Oh, cool.
Nothing like what you do.
That would be super cool to see.
All right, Amber, we've reachedthat part of the episode where
(46:48):
I'd like to invite our guests.
To share any shout outs, promotions,thank yous, or anything else
that we haven't covered thus far.
If you want to reach out to me,if you're interested in my event,
Zuki Con, or you want to learn moreabout Bomber or King of the Hammers
or any kind of off road racing, youcan reach out to me on Instagram.
My handle is.
The Bur D-A-B-U-R-R-S, and if youhave to ask, it kind of sounds like
(47:12):
my name, Amber Da Burrs, or you canlook up two stone racing on Facebook.
Check us out.
All right, folks, that wraps up anotheradrenaline fueled episode of Break Fix.
We had an absolute pleasure divinginto the dirt, grit, and glory of
off-road racing with the unstoppableAmber Slauson from her early days
behind the wheel to the high octanechallenges that she tackles today.
(47:33):
Amber gave us a powerful glimpse into whatit takes to thrive in one of motorsports.
Toughest arenas.
Her passion, resilience, and driveare nothing short of inspiring.
Not just for racers, but for anyonechasing the dream off the beaten path.
And with that, Amber, I can't thankyou enough for coming on Break
Fix, sharing your story with us.
And we wish you the best of luck.
We wanna see more trophies inthe trophy case for you from
(47:53):
King Hammers and other events.
And I wanna see you at the Mint.
One, we're gonna be rooting for you.
I've been to the men,just haven't raced it yet.
Let so I'll see it there.
We wanna see you in it.
Not at it.
Okay.
Maybe calling, but yeah, pleasetell me you got your inspiration
from the police car episode of TopGear when Richard Hammond built one
with the spike strip in the front.
You remember that withall the glowy lights.
(48:14):
And the pink foo trim and all that.
Gosh, I don't know if I've seen that one.
Oh yeah, it's a classic.
Gosh, I think that's the last timeI've seen a Suzuki Sam ride was
on top gear like 20 years ago.
There was a second time I saw a Suzuki Samride and that was also on top gear, and
they used one in their Bolivia special.
James May drove one, and I rememberhow slow it was compared to the
(48:36):
Range Rover and the FJ and allthis other stuff that they had.
But at the end, it was the most reliable.
It made it through that wholejourney that they took, which
was like 1200 miles or so.
Okay.
I gotta go back and bl that one now.
Go ahead.
I don't know why when you said BurningMan, I immediately, my mind shifted to
the Fyre Festival and I imagined this guystanding there with nothing around him.
(48:57):
And that was the kitchen.
I'm sorry.
It's just like my mind was wandering.
Mine's a fire needle going the kitchen.
And on that bombshell.
It's time to end.
Amber, thank you for your time.
I enjoyed the Good luck.
Thank you guys.
We hope you enjoyed another awesomeepisode of Break Fix Podcasts,
(49:19):
brought to you by Grantor Motorsports.
If you'd like to be a guest inthe show or get involved, be sure
to follow us on all social mediaplatforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
If you'd like to learn more aboutthe content of this episode,
be sure to check out the followon article@gtmotorsports.org.
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(49:40):
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!