For some racers taking on King of the Hammers is a life goal and dream. Working tirelessly to get the vehicle built and prepped in order to take on the harsh rocks and course in Johnson Valley, California. For Jason Blanton, it was a race in a rental car.

Blanton is in the process of building a new racecar that did not make the deadline for the race. His sponsor Jimmy’s 4×4 built a trail car for the Top Gear TV show to film with that finished on the day before qualifying.

The team had to swap out the transmission and get it ready to race. “I only had time to practice the course once,” Blanton said. “Having a third the horsepower as my normal car and basically nonexistent suspension we still managed to place 53rd out of 150 cars in qualifying.”

On race day they got beat up in the desert. “We finished and ended up 31st,” Blanton explained. “Pretty good for a junkyard engine rental! We had a couple issues that set us back a few hours. If it wasn’t for those we would have done really well. Plus we blew a tire and ran on it for five miles to the pit and even lost a brake caliper.”

“Our Optima Batteries worked awesome and did not have one issue with them,” Blanton explained. “When we had the fuel system leak I had to start the car 30 or so times in a row to limp it three-quarters of a mile to the remote pit.”

“We had no problems in the rock trails, we kept taking over positions,” Blanton continued. “On the second lap after Wrecking Ball, we had the fuel system issues. The car would run, I closed the return line on the fuel system and jerry-rigged it to run. We limping it to pit and got the leak fixed, but lost about 1.5 hours.”

“We ran into some log jams in Spooners, but managed to wheel an alternate rock section around them passing four cars at once,” Blanton said. “Outer limits and Jackhammer were a breeze. The only time we had to pull winch was when I tried to pass three cars on Aftershock. I got bellied on a random rock I didn’t see, whoops!”

Blanton finished in a car that no one thought would make it past the first lap. Placing 31st may not have been what he would expect in his new car, but is respectable in a junkyard powered rental car that was built in three weeks as a demo vehicle. “If we didn’t have the fuel and tire/brake issues it would have put us in the top 15, but that’s racing,” said Blanton. “I know that a car with more horsepower and more suspension would do really well at King of the Hammers. It’s a race that will take you down in a second. Just finishing is an accomplishment.”

On the lighter side of things, Blanton told us of the funnier side of racing. “The car was built for a tall guy so not only did I put on a seat riser, but I also had to sit on a pillow we borrowed from the RV,” Blanton laughed. “My pee tube fell off on the first lap so I might have had to pee on that pillow for the rest of the race.”

We look forward to seeing how Jason Blanton does in his new car at the remainder of this year’s events and at King of the Hammers next year.