Winter boredom does not need to exist for gearheads who are within a reasonable drive from Bowling Green, Kentucky. The King of the Heap racing series, sponsored by Mr. Gasket, has kicked off for the 2018-19 season and already, we’re impressed with the variety of $1,000 beaters that showed up to party! Twenty-six teams rolled out on a rainy Saturday morning ready to party, regardless of whether or not there was a pond of water out on the racing surface (spoiler alert: there was.) Several vehicles returned from last year, including the Dang, Bros. Marlboro-liveried Cavalier that replaced the Camaro convertible that they folded up into origami last year, the Yellow Submarine Toyota Celica, and the infamous two-wheeling Team Whop-A-Peelie Mustang that became a star after a frozen hay bale nearly rolled it over. Then there were the new arrivals, which included a pillow barge of a Buick Roadmaster, a Ford Contour SVT courtesy of the guys at MCR Tuning that made all of a blistering 119 wheel horsepower on their dyno, and a 1990s C4 Corvette that had some serious bark…and serious mechanical issues. And let’s not forget the BangShift-sourced entry, the Cadillac that zigs leaks sucks major hind end managed to survive the road course and that’s about it.

For this year, the rallycross portion of the KOTH schedule had to be put on hiatus due to ongoing construction, so the replacement fourth event was to be an “autocross relay”…Each driver takes a lap, stops in the stop box, a driver switch is performed, and the time is marked when the fourth driver crosses the finish line. Unfortunately, some heavy-duty thunderstorms rolled through and thoroughly soaked down the property, so the Heapers all took shelter and ended up just enjoying one large autocross session that might have put a car or two out of commission (looking right at you, RX-8 drift missile!) Some cars got swallowed up by the pond near the sinkhole (I watched a Mitsubishi Eclipse almost immediately pirouette into the grass once it hydroplaned) and several cars surprised many on the autocross course, including a Chevy Aveo that was hanging a rear tire half a foot in the air under hard cornering. Nobody was babying their cars in the least!

The goal of King of the Heap isn’t so much to win or to accumulate points, but to have a ball in cheap beaters during the winter season. And it works…last year we had some damn cold race days and people still showed up in droves. This year is off to a great start for the series and we will be present one way or another to cover the action!

Be sure to click on a photo below to check out more of the rides from the first round of the King of the Heap racing series!