Dave Cole doesn’t like shoes. Coming down the stairs from the second story of a massive steel and concrete warehouse that he calls home, his lack of footwear was the first thing I noticed. The room is filled with four-wheel machines that fulfill every obsession.
There’s a 1969 Chevy Malibu SS under a tarp, a weathered rock crawler, an old Jeep CJ5, a Class 11 Volkswagen that’s slowly being assembled by kids from the local high school’s automotive elective, a 4400 race truck, and nearly a dozen side-by-sides.
Dave is the founder of King of the Hammers, a weeklong off-road racing event that’s intended to test both driver and machine against the brutal terrain that surrounds his warehouse in Johnson Valley. It’s been described as the Burning Man for off-road enthusiasts, and after attending KOH a handful of times, I can attest the analogy is not only correct, but that Hammers is a spectacle every off-road racing fan should witness once in their life.
In the center of Dave’s warehouse is a state-of-the-art off-road racing simulator, with three massive monitors staring back at a steel tube chassis floating atop hydraulic pumps that mimic the terrain you’re driving across. LiDAR technology has been used to replicate the landscape of Johnson Valley, almost boulder for boulder. It’s groundbreaking stuff, really, and Dave’s passion project, which he hopes to share with the world at some point.
But I’m not here to test simulators or ride in rock crawlers. I’m here to see how the South Racing Can-Am team is preparing to take on the Dakar Rally, namely the two American drivers that will compete in Saudi Arabia—Hunter Miller and Kyle Chaney.
Miller has been once before, taking home a tenth-place finish in the SSV class general rankings in 2025. Kyle Chaney, though, is green to the world of cross-country rally racing, having competed in only one roadbook navigation event thus far, the Rallye du Maroc, which took place this past September. The Can-Am team is here at Dave Cole’s not-so-secret compound in Johnson Valley to test a theory.
Can Chaney’s skills behind the wheel of both a 4400 car and a UTV translate to success at the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia?
Last year, Kyle Chaney became the first UTV driver in history to earn the Race of Kings crown at King of the Hammers, besting a field of 4400 race trucks in his Can-Am Maverick R. Chaney’s victory in 2025 came after an epic finish at last year’s King of the Hammers, where the Ohio racer lost his front suspension after taking the lead just before the finish. A crushing defeat that lit a fire under Kyle’s ass, apparently.
But desert racing in Southern California isn’t the same as navigating the sand dunes and desolate landscape of Saudi Arabia, guided only by a roadbook filled with French notations.
The South Racing Can-Am team came to Johnson Valley to run roadbooks, preparing Miller and Chaney for the tricky navigation that awaits them. The vehicles they will use to compete in the Dakar Rally are already in transit to Saudi Arabia, though, loaded into a container aboard a cargo ship that departed from Southern France. So, pre-runner vehicles were shipped to Southern California and prepped at Dave’s compound. Two Maverick Rs were idling out front of the warehouse when I pulled up in my van.
It was 6:30 am, and the sun had just rolled over the horizon, shedding light and casting shadows across an otherwise desolate landscape. Hunter was the only one awake, or at least the only one waiting at the dining table, coffee in hand, a sleepy glaze hanging over his eyes. We chatted about the day ahead, his excitement to return to Saudi Arabia, and the preparation he’d been a part of leading up to his departure. It was the quiet before the storm.
Johnson Valley is not only home to King of the Hammers, but also a playground for any 4x4 enthusiast within a few hundred miles. The trail systems snake through the desert in all directions, punctuated by steep rocky mountains, rolling hills, open valleys, dry lake beds, and sandy washes. Elevations range from 4,600 feet at Hartwell Hills to 2,300 feet at Melville Dry Lake. It’s a 96,000-acre off–highway recreation area that offers the South Racing Can-Am Team the perfect playground to test their roadbook navigation skills in a landscape that is eerily similar to that of Saudi Arabia.
Kyle Chaney is quiet. His broad shoulders and that thick skin on his hands tell of a man who’s spent many nights wrenching on a rig. His off-road racing career began on a dirt bike at the age of 11. He transitioned to four wheels in 2011, shortly after he turned 25. The Ohio native has collected victories and championships across multiple series, including the Grand National Cross Country (GNCC) and short-course competitions.
A four-time winner of the UTV Hammers Championship, Chaney made history last year by becoming the first driver ever to win the 4400 Unlimited Class overall in a modified Can-Am Maverick R. Following Sara Price’s move to the Defender program, the Canadian brand offered Kyle her seat. Despite having no prior experience in rally-raid events, Chaney earned a 5th-place finish in his Rallye du Maroc debut earlier this year.
But how does he feel about his Dakar debut?
During an interview with the ASO, Chaney said that “Dakar is something new to me, I never thought I would race it, but I had the opportunity to go and I took it. It was Dakar or Baja 1000, and I’ve pretty much raced everything in the United States, so that was the next big step. I’m glad I did Rallye du Maroc before going to Dakar, we learned so much there because it was way different than I expected. Just the amount of time you’re racing: multiple days, not just one. You have to take care of the car and make sure you finish. We have a good team with Can-Am, I have a really good navigator, and I think that if I do my job, we have everything we need to win. I’m definitely not coming for second place, that’s for sure.”
That last sentence pretty much sums up the attitude and enthusiasm that Chaney exhibited when I met him that morning in Johnson Valley. He seemed calm and collected, working diligently to swap the wheels and tires on his pre-runner ahead of the days ride. When I asked him whether he had any concerns ahead of his debut at Dakar, he replied, “Not really,” with a casual shrug, “I know it’s going to be difficult, but that’s why I want to go.”
Dakar is different, though. The hours can feel like days, especially those that stretch out endlessly right before the rest day, halfway through the race.
But Chaney is as ready as he can be—his list of accomplishments speaks for itself, and the skills needed to survive two weeks in the desert seem to be second nature for the Ohio native. The South Racing Can-Am team is ready, too. A slew of engineers were hunched over their laptops all afternoon as Chaney and Miller drove circles in the desert, collecting waypoints and checking their cap headings. Their team manager rode shotgun in a chase rig, keeping track of the two American drivers who would soon depart for Dakar.
If it takes a village, the South Racing Can-Am team is an entire county.
Dave Cole wandered casually around his warehouse that afternoon, still shoeless. His attention was pulled in all directions, with the local high school working on their Class 11 race car, his team of IT engineers testing the off-road simulator, a friend with a 4400 car doing some suspension tuning, and the Can-Am crew coming in and out throughout the day.
He and I chatted a bit about Johnson Valley—what is essentially his backyard—and its significance in the development of off-road racing both here in the States and abroad.
There are few places like it, offering a diversity of terrain and conditions, accessible to anyone with an OHV sticker or a license plate. It’s served as the backdrop for King of the Hammers since its inception and is utilized by teams like South Racing Can-Am to test, train, and prepare for the ultimate adventure, the Dakar Rally. Dave has spent the better part of his life in this desert, exploring, cataloging, developing, and hosting what has become the biggest off-road cultural gathering in the country. His work has paid off. KOH sets a precedent for off-road races, both here in the US and worldwide.
The green flag waves at the Dakar Rally on January 3, 2026.
It concludes following 7,999 kilometers, including 4,845 kilometers of timed Special Stages, on January 17 in the coastal city of Yanbu. For those unfamiliar, the Dakar Rally is nothing short of brutal, pushing riders, drivers, navigators, and race teams to their absolute limit over the course of two weeks. Sleep is a luxury, meals are consumed on the fly, and long days in the desert become a blur for everyone involved.
This year’s race matches the longest competitive distance of the rally’s Saudi era and will transport competitors through some of the Kingdom’s most varied and demanding landscapes, from the Red Sea to the rocky terrain of the Shammar Mountains and back again. It will break you and your machine if you’re not prepared.
Can-Am hopes that the testing and training Hunter Miller and Kyle Chaney have been doing these past few weeks leading up to their departure will be enough to prepare the two Americans for the test. But as I’ve seen at Dakar so many years before, you don’t know how difficult it really is until you get there, and the desert has a way of disguising its difficulties, the massive rock formations of AlUla casting shadows over the future of those that dare to race Dakar.
