We sponsor what we'd do anyway.

King of the Hammers is the hardest single-day off-road race in the world. 200+ miles across the Johnson Valley desert and through the Hammer Trails — a maze of granite canyons in the Mojave that would destroy a stock vehicle in 100 yards. KOH is where reputations are made and wheels are broken.

Jake Torrance's brother Cody runs the #67 Torrance Motorsports Ultra4 car in the 4400 Unlimited class. Hingeback has been the wheel sponsor since 2023. The team runs HB-850 Lockouts on the pre-runner rig and during the desert sections of the main race. For the technical rock crawling sections (Chocolate Thunder, Wrecking Ball, Backdoor), they switch to true beadlocks at 5 PSI — which is below our Lockout's rated range, and we're honest about that.

What KOH gives us is the most brutal real-world testing environment on the planet. The desert sections run at 90+ mph with embedded rocks that hit like artillery. The crawling sections subject wheels to lateral impacts that no lab test can replicate. Every year, the #67 car comes back with data that goes directly into our next design cycle.

2025 Season Results

• King of the Hammers (February) — Finished 23rd overall out of 118 starters. Zero wheel failures across 11 hours of racing. Completed the Backdoor trail with Lockouts on the pre-runner for the first time (previously required true beadlocks).
• Ultra4 National Series, Round 1 (April) — 8th place. Ran the new Venom in Mojave Green on the desert car. No issues at sustained 85 mph on rough hardpack.
• Ultra4 National Series, Round 2 (June) — DNF due to transmission failure. Wheels survived; drivetrain didn't.
• GenRight Stampede (September) — 11th place. Tested prototype Warheads with revised spoke geometry. Passed with zero cracks over 150 miles of mixed terrain.

Pre-running the Baja 1000 course is 800+ miles of high-speed desert driving on roads that range from groomed hardpack to loose silt to embedded boulder fields. Pre-run teams make 3-4 complete passes of the course in the weeks before the race, mapping hazards and setting up GPS waypoints for the race team.

Hingeback sponsors a two-truck pre-run team that runs the full Baja 1000 course each November. The trucks (a built Tacoma and a Gladiator) run Hingeback Riots (HB-810) and Dunes (HB-780) at sustained speeds of 60-80 mph for 12+ hours per day. This is the high-speed endurance test that complements KOH's low-speed brutality.

The Baja pre-run program revealed a spoke resonance issue in an early Riot prototype at sustained speeds above 70 mph — a vibration that didn't show up on any dyno or lab test. We redesigned the mesh geometry to shift the resonant frequency above the operating range. That fix went into production Riots and also improved the Warhead and Venom designs.

The Baja program is unglamorous. There are no cameras, no crowds, and the trucks come back looking like they've been through a sandblaster. But the data is invaluable. High-speed desert running is where finish durability gets tested (rock spray at 80 mph is basically sandblasting) and where spoke fatigue over long distances shows up first.

The Moab Trail Alliance is a local nonprofit that maintains and protects the trail systems in Grand County, Utah. They organize trail cleanup days, advocate for responsible access with the BLM, and run education programs for new off-roaders who are discovering Moab's trails through social media.

Hingeback is a founding corporate sponsor. We donate $2 per wheel sold to the MTA (approximately $35,000 in 2025) and our entire team participates in four organized trail cleanup days per year. We also provide free wheel inspections at the MTA's trailhead events — we've caught cracked spokes on customer wheels (not ours, for the record) that could have caused failures on the trail.

This isn't performative. We live here. The trails outside our shop are the reason Hingeback exists. Moab's trail system is under pressure from increasing visitation, and the MTA is the organization doing the unglamorous work of keeping them open, safe, and clean. If you ride Moab trails, consider donating at moabtrailalliance.org.

2025 Initiatives

• Pritchett Canyon erosion mitigation — installed 12 water bars and re-stacked cairns on the upper section. Hingeback team provided labor for two weekends.
• Hell's Revenge trailhead kiosk — funded and installed an information kiosk with trail maps, difficulty ratings, and Leave No Trace guidelines.
• New-rider education — sponsored 6 "Moab 101" workshops teaching tire pressure, line selection, and environmental responsibility to ~200 new off-roaders.
• Trash cleanup — removed 2.4 tons of debris from Poison Spider Mesa and Kane Creek trails across four organized cleanup days.

We don't do traditional influencer sponsorships. Instead, we run a Trail Ambassador program: experienced off-roaders in key regions (Moab, Rubicon Trail, Ouray, Uwharrie, Oceano Dunes) who run Hingeback wheels on their personal rigs and provide honest, unscripted feedback.

Ambassadors get wheels at cost (not free — we want people who are invested, not people who want free stuff) and a direct line to our design team. Several production improvements have come directly from ambassador feedback, including the Dune's swappable ring concept and the Recon's 17"-only sizing decision.

We currently have 22 Trail Ambassadors across 14 states. If you're interested, email ambassadors@hingeback.com with photos of your rig and where you ride. We're specifically looking for ambassadors in the Pacific Northwest, the Ozarks, and the Southeast.