Off-Road Racing Secrets: BJ Baldwin’s Ultimate Guide | BJ Baldwin DSH #632

tearing your body like right you know 50 miles from the finish line of the baja 1000 when i won in 2012 i i could see dead people damn you're hallucinating yeah my my shoulder blades uh were bleeding the inside of my thighs were bleeding um so it wears you down quite a bit it's a very very brutal form of race car driving yeah that's insane i complain about driving to la man but you're doing that times 10 probably yeah

all right guys you got bj baldwin here today he's brought the dog.

Thanks for coming, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, one of the most trained dogs I've ever seen.

Well done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

A little bit of work in there.

Yeah.

So how'd you learn how to start training dogs and all that?

You know what?

I've had pit bulls my whole

life.

And I worked with a lot of people a long time ago that trained dogs

and learned quite a bit about it.

They're just, they have so much more life and, you know, so much more fun.

You have more fun with them when you have a dog that does what you ask it to do instead of something like

you know a lot of pit bulls are very very high energy i've had i've had some like that so it's like firing a gun inside of a tank you know if you don't have them trained yeah appropriately like like it is with most high energy dogs um

so but they're they're really really game they're very social you know when you want them to be he's he's a little bit anti-social he's one of the few ones that i've had that just kind of keeps to himself and and does what I tell him to do.

So he's a good dog.

Yeah, that's cool to see because pit bulls get a bad rep, man.

Yeah, yeah, some of them.

Some of them.

Every dog fight at a dog bark, there's usually a pit bull involved.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to have him sorted as

a puppy and get him trained a little bit.

Really, with any dog.

I mean, if you're lazy, you know, with them as a puppy, then

you go their whole lifespan with a dog that doesn't cooperate, doesn't behave.

You know, I've got him, he does, it's strict obedience.

He's reactive as a as it relates to like defense and stuff like that.

But he does A, B, C, and D, whatever I say.

And I've got him trained.

Like, you turn like the volume up a little bit every time you train when they're a puppy.

Like, if it's just you and the dog in the room and you tell the dog to sit, and he figures out what you want him to do, and he sits.

Like, that's one accomplishment.

Okay.

Now you have your friend in the room and it's two people in the room.

And then that's the volume up on the mayhem a little bit more.

And you tell him to sit and he does it.

And then you have consistency, and he does it every single time.

Now you have like a whole party of people in your house, and there's a bunch of distractions, and then you tell him to sit and he does it.

That's another accomplishment.

Now, like with him, like I can shoot at him, he can be down range

and not shoot at him because obviously I'd hit him.

I'm pretty good.

But he can be like downrange at the gun range in the desert, and I could be cranking off rounds at steel where he's safe, but he's downrange, and there's gunfire, and he will still do what I want.

I wanted him to be really, really dialed like that, specifically this dog, because of

events in the last couple of years.

You also came without a leash.

Yeah, the leash is for everybody else.

He's

really, really dialed.

He does whatever I say.

I've kind of had him be a little bit antisocial.

So he doesn't really mess with anybody.

He's not really excited to see anybody or any other dogs.

Like you could have a dog that's not trained trained and ricocheting around the room and he won't even mess with them until I tell him to.

Wow.

What if a dog starts barking at him?

He'll just sit there.

No, he won't.

Unless it's a, if it's a bigger dog, then there's blood and hair everywhere.

But if it's smaller, it's on site.

Yeah, it's on sight.

But if it's a smaller dog,

he'll just sit there.

Like I had a situation at,

I think it was like at the

mall or something like that,

about six months ago.

They had these little white,

I don't know what kind of dogs they are, but they're

yeah, like a Maltese.

And there was like six or seven people that were in in like a family and they saw him.

I was I was walking out to uh out of the restaurant.

Um and it was just me and my my fi my kids were inside and and he's off leash and these dogs just went bananas.

They got out of their harnesses, both of them, and started sprinting over there.

And these six or seven people were like, oh my God, like he's going to kill my dogs right in front of me.

And I just told him to sit and he sat there and the dogs just went bananas right there and everybody was like shocked.

Yeah, that is great, man.

A lot of dogs would have gotten defensive.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's pretty good at knowing what's a threat and what's not.

Like I said, he's very reactive as it relates to certain situations.

Absolutely.

You've been shooting a lot lately?

Yeah, yeah,

I shoot quite a bit.

My girlfriend's a 50.

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56-time champion, pistol shooter,

youngest shooting sports champion, male or female in history, Tori Nanaka.

So I shoot with her.

Sometimes I do defensive tactics training, like handgun training, you know,

at least least three times a month, sometimes four times a month.

So, and I have personal standards that I like to accomplish as it relates to balance of speed and accuracy, specifically accuracy in the last two years.

One of my exercises that I'm focused on the last year is C-zone steel is like a piece of steel like this,

and it's a balance of speed and accuracy.

accuracy drill first round on target from the draw.

I'm trying to have being able to have a a repeatable action of first round on target from 100 yards in under two seconds.

Holy crap.

And I'm 100 yards.

That's a football field, right?

Yeah, it's a ways.

It's not like, you know, it's not practical.

Yeah.

That's a far distance.

In a defensive scenario, it's not very practical.

And that's with a pistol, you said?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's with a handgun.

That is impressive, man.

It's not a lot of work for a rifle, but with a handgun.

Yeah, it's handguns, you got to be during a game.

You got a favorite gun?

You know what?

I had Glocks for quite some time.

And of course, you have like a Bone Stock Glock or any other striker-fired pistol.

And it's kind of like a Mustang.

First, you get exhaust, and then winds and tires, and then like all this stuff.

You know, you get trigger, slide work, barrel,

all kinds of upgrades on like a striker-fired pistol.

But then I started messing with 2011s about two years ago, which is a 1911-style handgun

that fires

9mm projectiles.

And

I'm not quite as fast coming out, like first round on target.

With a Glock, I used to be able to do 6,400 of a second inside of five yards.

I used to be pretty quick.

But with the 2011,

it's a little bit heavier.

It's about 1,200 grams as opposed to 630 grams.

And so it slows me down probably 2,500s of a second.

Two tenths, 2,500s of a second.

So I'm not quite as quick coming out, but in terms of managing specific objectives that I have out in the field placed up, random pieces of steel, once I get it out, I can deliver more energy a lot quicker

and my transitions are a lot quicker with a platform like that.

And it's a little bit more accurate,

a little bit more of a bond between biology and mechanics, like equipment.

It kind of favors,

you know, it's kind of tough to explain, but you just perform a little bit better with that.

And that design's 110 years old.

You know, 1911 design's 110 years old.

But,

yeah, I've shot Glocks.

I've shot a lot of different striker-fired handguns, but right now

I'm kind of

training with the 20-11 for the last year and a half.

That's impressive that you measure by the second like that, man.

That's some next level stuff.

Yeah, the clock is the only way you can measure progress, you know, with like a competition shot timer that I have.

So, so are you competing with that too?

No, no, I've uh I did like an accuracy competition when I was 12.

Okay.

Uh, with a revolver.

You were shooting at 12?

Oh, I was shooting at machine guns when I was nine years old.

Holy crap.

That is crazy.

Um, but yeah, I did the youth division at American Shooters

when I was 12 years old and

youth division was 12 to 17

and I think there was 60 competitors and then

overall there was like 240 former law enforcement military competitive shooters and all that.

Wow.

I got third overall and first in youth division with the crap 12 with coffee quits after that.

Yeah, that sounds like I'm undefeated.

I'm like done.

No, it was with a handgun, like a revolver that looked like it came out of Lake Mead.

I mean, it was like an old

Dan Wesson.

You still got third with that?

Yeah, it was just like basic accuracy.

There was no speed or stress involved.

Six rounds and 30 seconds.

And then like in 45 seconds, six rounds, reload six rounds at 50 yards.

So it was,

it wasn't like a high stress, like a regular IDPA or USPCA pistol competition where you have to race the clock to engage 18 different targets.

That's what your girlfriend does.

Yeah.

I think I've seen those.

Is that what Keanu Reeves does?

He doesn't compete, but that's the type of training he's done.

Actually, Tori was one of the first people to train Keanu for

John Wick, a long time ago.

And Taryn Butler.

from Taron Tactical, he's a really good friend of

ours and helped train Tori, helped develop her skill set.

But yeah,

all that training came from competitive pistol shooting.

That is cool.

Shooting at nine years old.

Got some cool parents, man.

Yeah.

I remember I shot a shotgun when I was like 14,

flying back.

They're no fun.

Shotguns?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I wasn't a fan.

It scared me, honestly.

Yeah.

The recoil impulse is just incredible.

And I have some really cool shotguns, but I don't like...

I don't like messing with it.

Your parents, man.

Your shoulders just messed up.

Yeah.

I go through when I go shooting, you you know, or I go training like on a Saturday or Sunday, and I got my target set up.

I'll go through a thousand rounds.

Holy crap.

And it's like,

you know,

90 minutes or something like that.

And it's not like a big deal, but you could never go through that with a shotgun unless you were like an Olympic competitor shooting low recoil impulse shot shells and stuff like that for clay pigeons and stuff.

But absolutely.

With

buckshot and slugs and for defensive use, like you would never want to.

Yeah, that's that sucks.

For sure.

You ever go hunting?

Yeah,

I went

bird hunting for quite some time with my family grown up, with my father.

That sounds hard.

Yeah,

I never really

practiced with a shotgun.

I was always really, really good with a handgun.

But we used to hunt dove, quail, duck, pheasant,

geese.

My dad was always really, really good.

I've been hunting birds with my dad

since I was a kid, like eight or 10 years old.

And he doesn't practice at all, but he knocks everything out of the sky.

Wow.

He's really, really good with a shotgun.

That's impressive because you've got to predict where they're going, right?

Yeah, you got to have them run into the pattern in order to bring them down.

And then we cook that stuff like the same day at this, at Mandeville Island,

which is a duck hunting launch.

Yeah.

And we we cooked that stuff the same day, and it's like amazing.

Duck's good.

I love duck, man.

It's so good.

Duck is one of my favorite birds to eat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Duck's awesome.

Are you still doing the racing too, the off-road stuff?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Still doing trophy truck racing.

Won the championship last year.

Damn.

And it's our eighth championship.

So

we just did the Mint 400

and got a solid top 10 finish at the Mint 400, but we had some problems at that race.

What happened?

That particular race for my truck, because it's so rough and the terrain is very square.

You know, the bumps are like three feet tall.

Holding.

We're trying to go over them at like 80 to 110 miles an hour.

Damn, that's half a body.

That's a big-ass bump.

Yeah, it produces a lot of shock load in the transmission.

Based on how my geometry is set up in the rear end, it has a lot of forward forward bites, so it accelerates really well for a truck that's so heavy.

Yeah.

But we lost a torque converter, but that's pretty typical for that particular race.

About 70% of the class ones or unlimited trucks or trophy trucks at that particular race have some kind of mechanical failure because it's such a rough course.

That is insane.

Yeah, so we lost a converter on the second lap, had to change transmission and got back out and finished.

How many laps was it?

It was four.

Oh, gotcha.

383 miles, something like that.

Oh, so they're huge laps.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're

80-something miles or something like that.

Holy crap, yeah.

It's not like NASCAR where it's just like a little.

No, yeah.

Usually, like the type of racing that I do,

it's usually point to point.

So you have one opportunity to hit this corner, you know, at

the maximum speed that you can hit it without

going too slow and losing time or being upside down and on fire.

You know what I'm saying?

Like with a road race, you get to do

80 laps with the same five or six corners, but none of my corners look the same.

Got it.

And it's not just corners, that's like big bumps, big ditches, holes, jumps, blind rises, cliffs, sweeping corners, differences in speed from 15 miles an hour to 153 miles an hour.

So

it's definitely a different dimension from regular road racing, if that makes sense.

Yeah, there's a lot more factors to

yeah,

yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I didn't even know off-road racing was a thing until I started studying you, man.

Oh, thanks.

Yeah, it's really interesting to me.

It's a lot of fun.

Is it a newer kind of racing style or has it been around for a while?

No, it's been around since 1968.

I'm pretty sure that's when the Baja 1000 started.

And then the Baja 1000, the Baja 500, San Felipe,

250.

There's the Baja 400.

And then there's a bunch of races stateside, Vegas Corino,

some races in Laughlin.

But we've had some pretty good success.

I've won the Baja 1000 twice, won the 500, won several score championships.

So we've done pretty good.

But yeah, it's definitely a very unique form of motorsports.

You know,

I always say like, you know, race car, you have 60, 70, 80 people that are designing this platform to accelerate well, turn very well, and slow down very well, regardless of what form of motorsports it is.

They're all designed to do those three things very, very well.

Except for like maybe like drag racing is different, obviously.

My truck doesn't do any of that.

My truck's 7,000 pounds.

It makes 1,100 horsepower.

Tires weigh 136 pounds.

Wow.

So it doesn't accelerate, decelerate, or change direction.

But what makes it really unique and special is it can go really fast through really rough terrain.

Like my test section is, you know, a mile and a half long.

It's where we do suspension testing and development.

And,

you know, like a Ford Raptor would go through there at like 25 or 26 miles an hour.

My trophy truck goes through at like 118, 118.

Holy crap.

16, 118.

And it's not like a challenge of like, am I going to be able to hit this bump so fast?

It's like, how do I keep the thing straight?

Because it's barely skipping across the ground.

How do I keep it straight and keep the aerodynamic platform as small as possible?

So it's not scrubbing aerodynamically or scrubbing the terrain.

And you want to keep it straight and get the power down as much as possible to get through certain rough parts of the course very quickly.

Wow, that's insane.

And the Baja 1,000 is 1,000 miles?

They have a loop race that's about 900 miles.

It's very, very rough and technical.

And then the point-to-point race is

a little over 1,100 miles.

Some courses are about 1,300 miles.

Some are 1050.

Yeah, so you got to make pit stops and everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

People ask me if I get breaks on a 20-hour race.

Oh, it's 20 hours?

Oh, yeah.

When I won it in 2012, it was 20 hours and 14 minutes and 58 seconds.

That's insane.

And they asked if I get brakes.

I was like, yeah, I get five fuel stops.

You know, my 28 seconds, I get fuel and tires.

I do that five times and then I'm back on the road.

Damn, I did not realize it was that long.

So you're locked in for 20 hours.

Yeah, and you really got to, you know, especially, you know, there's not too many people that have won the Baha'un, like doing.

the whole race in the last 15 years.

You really got to be able to conserve your energy and lower your respiration rate, heart rate, blood pressure, and not get super excited because you kind of run yourself out.

Adrenaline wears off, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't really have too much adrenaline when I'm racing.

I'm actually pretty relaxed.

Yeah.

That's impressive because you're going 100 miles per hour on all this rocky terrain and you're super calm.

Yeah, I try and stay, you know, pretty calm.

I tend to, I've learned over the years that like I'll last longer.

I'll have more energy if I have to

say if on corrected time,

somebody's, I'm chasing somebody down

and I'm in a position to lead the race on corrected time or I have to get in front of somebody by so much time to get into a fuel pit and I have to run a little bit harder than I'm comfortable with,

then that's going to consume some energy because that's when I start to get.

uncomfortable, you know, like I'm taking a substantial amount of risk.

So in 20 miles, I can get in and out of the fuel stop in 28 seconds without having

some savage driver because they're all world-class drivers.

Half the field are savages, really, really good drivers.

Luke McMillan, Bryce Menzies, Rob McCacron, Robbie Gordon, like all these guys.

So really intense battles like that consume energy.

So I try and stay as calm as possible.

I find I make the best decisions in terms of entering this corner, that corner, going over this rise.

When I'm

calm, cool, and collective, I could typically drive pretty good, pretty fast.

Yeah.

Dude, that's impressive because you're basically fighting your biological senses of pumping adrenaline and all this stuff in your body, and you're just mentally pushing that to the side.

Yeah, yeah,

it's definitely something that I've had to learn.

And I've learned from some of the best guys in the sport early in my career, Larry Raglan,

learned a little bit from Robbie, Robbie Gordon.

and I just picked up all the information like

to the point where like I don't really believe in talent I think it's kind of like a myth you know

everybody that's good at everything has not loved something and they've been obsessed with it so that level of obsession has fueled you know their motivation to to get to work and learn as much as they can about any particular subject.

And that's, you know, that's what

John Jones and Michael Jordan and Kobe and all these world-class athletes,

they're the best in the world because of obsession.

I've always been obsessed with the sport because it's so different from any other form of motor sports.

Wow, that's an interesting take because a lot of people do say that word talent, right, with sports.

Yeah.

And they say that guy's talented.

But it's really the work ethic.

It really is.

It's really the work ethic and how much you love it, you know, that will produce

your journey through life and whatever it is that you're interested in and in a certain level will yield a certain amount of skill set in that particular thing.

And if you're obsessed with something, your skill set's going to go through the roof.

Like some of the all the most world-class athletes in the world and all their wide variety of different sports have been obsessed with this particular subject.

So they wanted to become subject matter experts in it.

And that's how they became the best in the world.

It's my former, anyways.

You probably hate just driving on the regular streets, son.

I actually love it.

Oh, you love it?

Yeah.

Okay.

I love it i just wish i thought it'd be too slow for you uh no it's not too slow i just wish you know laws were different and we can contact other vehicles and traffic that would be a lot more contact like a little bluetooth like button no like push them the fuck out of the way

That'd be fun, yeah.

Sometimes I want to, man.

Yeah, it's like that sometimes.

Especially like when you were in Cali for quite some time, the traffic must have been awful.

Still is, but it's starting to get bad out here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's in the last three years.

Yeah.

It's it's been a little bit worse.

Yeah, when I first moved here three years ago, I could go anywhere at any time and never be in bumper-to-bumper.

Yeah, it's very quick.

Yeah, now whenever I go to the next one, compared to LA, yeah, yeah, well, hopefully, it never gets to that point.

Yeah, let's hope so.

Oh, man.

So, these 20-hour races, does it ever get super dark outside?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Um,

we uh, we don't go fast enough to follow the path of the sun one day.

Let's hope it let's hope, but uh, yeah, it's usually the thousand starts at uh 10 o'clock in the morning and then sunsets around 4.30 or something like that or

somewhere around there.

So a lot of the race is at night,

sunrise is at 6 a.m.

But yeah, that's an added challenge.

Most of the, like I was saying about my performer motorsports, trophy trucks don't slow down.

They take forever to slow down.

Like if you hit the brakes on

and you're going 130 miles an hour, it takes eternity to get that thing slowed down to 50.

Wow.

You know, because

it's not maintaining 100% contact with the ground at all times, specifically in Baja or in some of the rougher courses out here in Vegas.

That makes sense.

So it's

bouncing around.

So you really have to have a good understanding of what's coming up.

And that's where navigation comes into play.

We have two onboard GPSs as well as a bunch of other stuff, a bunch of other electronics in the truck that monitor all the systems.

But

yeah, so what we do is we pre-run, which means we will drive around the course before the race, and then we will put in course notes like, you know,

crest 200 left three tree outside, whatever.

That will tell me that you can't see over the top of this hill, but don't let off the gas because there's nothing on the other side, even though it looks like you're going to the moon.

But,

you know, it's going to be 300 yards, and then there's going to be kind of a sharp left-hand turn.

There's a tree on the outside, so you want to make sure and decelerate enough to make this corner.

Wow.

So we have all these notes in the GPS and a monitor on the passenger side of the vehicle that navigation will read to me to refresh my memory as it relates to what's coming up.

Oh, wow.

Read it out loud to you while you're driving.

Yeah.

And we have we have like full-face helmets.

There's no windshield in my truck.

It's really all open.

Holy crap.

And that's what feeds the cooling systems.

You don't have the coolers in the front because the rocks from passing other vehicles would puncture the radiators.

You'd be screwed.

So

full-face helmets.

And we have intercom between both of us.

So we can talk to each other just like this.

Got it.

And it's pretty cool.

There's a little bit of motor noise from hundreds of people.

You got to really trust our motor.

Yeah.

You got to really trust the guy telling you what to do then.

Yeah, that's very, very important.

Navigation is very, very important.

And, you know, being able to interpret

the course through your notes.

And most importantly, like for me, like I always say, I'm not a world-class driver.

I'm world-class at

fixing bad situations in the truck.

So,

you know, say I came into a corner like way too fast.

I didn't hit the brakes quick enough and I'm not going to make this corner.

Okay, what can I hit that doesn't involve human tissue?

That's the softest thing.

Like,

should I hit that car?

Should I hit that rock or that tree that

hasn't seen any water in six months?

What's going to do the least amount of damage?

And being able to make that decision on the fly, compartmentalize fear, access a solution.

Because even if you blow a corner and you're not going to make it, you still have a little bit of control over what you're going to destroy.

You know, and obviously

you don't want to

come in contact with fans or some other car.

Oh, there's fans just on the side.

Oh, God, yeah.

Like at the thousand, there's, I don't know, a

million people scattered around the course.

Like

all the way down, yeah.

Damn, this shit is huge.

Yeah, they set up, some of them party a little bit, set up booby traps, and light the course on fire.

They stand in the middle of the course while you're going through the bumps.

Wow.

And, you know, take pictures and video.

And

I had

a situation at, actually at my first Baja 1000 years and years and years ago, where I had a two-driver team, two-driver, two-navigator team where

I drove three-quarters of it, a little over half of it.

And then I had another team get in and drive my truck to the finish line.

We ended up getting fifth.

It was actually my first Baja 1000, but through a town called San Felipe, they were going through there at 11.30 at night.

They were going through big bumps at a high rate of speed.

And there was some fans that were a little henry and drinking a little bit.

And one of them like lobbed a rock like this big into the truck.

It skipped off the hood and hit the navigator in the helmet.

Oh my God.

Broke his jaw.

knocked one of his teeth out.

He had to have 27 stitches.

He had to go to the emergency room in San Felipe.

Holy.

And somebody else ended up getting in the truck.

And

while he got fixed up, and we actually still got fifth at the same time.

Yeah, I was leading it for probably six or seven hours.

And then that happened.

And then

I had some brake troubles with the truck.

We bled the brakes at the fuel pit.

And then he got in.

I think he went 100 miles before that emergency happened.

You might have even won if that didn't happen.

Maybe.

I think, you know, looking back, that was 20 years ago.

Oh, wow.

So I was, you know, I was 23 or 24 years old or something, 23 years old.

And I was a little henry.

So you only have so much truck, you know, to use.

If you beat the piss out of the truck, you know, for a certain amount of time, you're not going to have that much truck left.

Like the brakes could be smoked.

The transmission could lose third gear, second gear, first.

You know, you could have the shocks be worn out or a wide variety of different problems can happen.

So you have to be really, really perfect so that in the last hundred miles of whatever race or the last 20%

of whatever desert race you're at, you have a sword that you can cut people with, if that makes sense.

You know, so you really want to take care of the truck and desert racing because it's not like road racing.

It's not like drifting.

It's not like drag racing, no disrespect implied or intended on any of those forms of motorsports.

I think they're all awesome.

I'm a fan of all of them.

Yeah.

But they're not quite as brutal as going through three-foot bumps at 110 miles an hour for 20 hours.

For sure.

You said you can't even break, man.

I'd be shitting myself.

Yeah, yeah.

For real.

If I can't break.

Yeah, that's, I'm glad you brought up defecation.

That's another thing that we don't.

have the ability to do.

You know, I wear an external catheter.

It's like a condom.

Yeah.

And it's a hose that runs down my leg.

Oh, gosh.

So we don't pull over to go to the bathroom or anything.

You don't have time.

No,

it's a lot faster if you don't get out of the truck.

Yeah, you can probably save because if you shit twice a day, I mean, save like 20 minutes, I guess.

Well, I'll do like, I have like a bunch of tricks with my body.

I've learned a lot about human performance

and vitamins and biohacking and all that stuff throughout my entire career.

I'll do half a dose of Peptobismo.

Like, it's one thing, like, if you got an upset stomach and you're having to go to the bathroom

and you take peptobismo, you're like good for a little bit.

But if you're fine and you take like half a dose, then it puts like a pause on your gastrointestinal system.

Oh, wow.

You know what I'm saying?

I don't know.

Yeah.

And then, of course, the following day, you got to deal with a few bricks.

Yeah.

That's a good trick, though, because I didn't even think about this, but some people probably get nauseous from just bumping up for 10, 20 hours.

Yeah.

So you don't even eat probably beforehand, right?

I eat

animal protein, animal fat for

breakfast.

And I have

a certain diet that leads up to the race, but I try and eat like a

not a very like crazy breakfast.

Yeah.

Other drivers have different theories.

My

somebody I'm very close to,

I won't say his name, but he was getting in in Bay of LA, which is like halfway through or two-thirds of the way through the race.

And it was his job because he's like a murderer.

He's, you know, one of the, he's probably the best in the world.

One of the best in the world.

He had a big breakfast and he was supposed to get in

for a big dinner.

He was supposed to get in at about 2 o'clock in the morning and drive to the finish.

So he's trying to pack on carbohydrates and get himself sorted to have plenty of energy.

Well,

he got sick about an hour into the truck and having to go to the bathroom in his number two and his pants.

And

when they got to the finish line, it was all like smashed up between his shoulder blades.

So we were all

on.

It was pretty funny.

He just went flying all over the car.

Yeah.

I didn't know you had a switch.

So is it a two-on-two sport?

No, I usually don't.

Most other teams have a couple drivers.

And I've had, for the thousand, I've had,

you know, two-team drivers for about half of it.

The other half, I've driven the whole distance, which is it's a unique challenge because you're not

going,

say if it's a thousand miles, the Baha 1,000, just for a round number.

If you go 500 miles and you get out and somebody else, another really fantastic driver drives the other 500 miles,

you have a fresh human being in there.

And they only had to be familiar with the last half of the course.

Right.

When you drive the whole distance, you have have to be familiar with the entire course.

So instead of seeing this part five times, every corner, every danger, every rise, every jump, every tree, five times, you get to, you only see everything like twice because of how much time it takes to pre-run the whole thing.

In addition to that, going 500 miles

in Baja is one thing.

It's very, very grueling.

Going the next hundred miles is the same amount of effort as the first 500.

So it's exponentially more difficult, you know, before you get to the finish line.

As it relates to fatigue and stress and wear and tear in your body, like, you know, 50 miles from the finish line of the Baja 1000 when I won in 2012, I could see dead people.

Damn,

yeah,

my shoulder blades were bleeding.

The inside of my thighs were bleeding.

The tops, knuckles of my toes were bleeding.

Holy crap.

Back of my shoulder blades, my elbows.

And

it's not like gnarly blood, but I'm just rubbed raw in certain parts of my body because I'm going like this.

My whole body is going like this for 20 hours straight.

And then you mix sand, silt, swamp water, dirt, all that stuff.

So it wears you down quite a bit.

It's a very, very brutal form of race car driving.

Yeah, that's insane.

I complain about driving to L.A., man, but you're doing that times 10 probably.

Yeah,

that's like a cross-training event for me

to drive to L.A.

I'll leave at like 11 o'clock at night in a speedy car.

Get there at 1.

Yeah.

I think my record from

South Vegas to East L.A.

was an hour and 58 minutes.

Holy crap.

So you actually did it in two hours.

I was joking.

Yeah, that was on, I forget which holiday it was on.

I think it was on.

Christmas Day or something like that, where there was no, everybody was off the highway.

And I was in a Z06 Corvette at the time.

And really,

like when I was doing that, I was young and silly.

I had radar detector, I was always very, very safe, and nobody said what I was doing.

The key to doing that safely or doing that in a certain period of time is the fuel consumption.

Because I can get from here to state line in seven and a half minutes, but I'm going to go through half a tank of gas.

You know, if there was no other cars on the road, so

if I had an 80-gallon fuel cell in a Corvette, something like that, obviously I could do a little bit better as it relates to traveling that distance in a short amount of time.

But I used to do that, but now

even late at night, traffic's quite a bit more dense, you know.

Yeah.

So, but yeah, I love all forms of driving.

I love it, man.

What do you got coming up next?

And where can people find out more about what you're up to, man?

We're kind of picking and choosing our races this year.

Like I said, we won a championship last year,

won,

you know, a third of the races that we competed in the last two years.

So, I think we're planning on going to the Baja 400.

We got some data collection, some testing that we're going to do with the truck in the next month.

And

we're constantly evolving our team.

Right now, we're doing suspension development.

We're changing segure ratios in the truck and

developing some powertrain stuff.

Always trying to get better.

You know, my truck,

every trophy truck, after a race, they come completely apart.

So most of the time, the truck is not on the ground.

It's on jack stands.

It looks like a very small jungle gym on a playground.

Because it gets beat to death every single race.

Even if you have a race that's,

you know, you didn't have any contact with anything or another truck or didn't blow a tire off and you don't have any particular stress points that you remember that you have to have looked at and everything went smoothly, you still have to pull, you know, upper and lower control arms, uprights, all the four link and the back, all the suspension, the rear end housing,

you know, pull the whole thing apart and inspect every joint

that is welded together, make sure there's no cracks.

gear sets and transmissions get rebuilt, the motor gets a leaked down, then it has to get completely reassembled and go to the chassis dino, which is basically like a treadmill for, I'm sure you've seen that with the hot rod cars that go in the chassis dino.

My truck goes to the chassis dino, gets tuned by Dugan's racing engines.

Chris Allen Motorsports does all the prep.

And then we have a separate community of pit guys that help us throughout the races.

Chris Allen does a fantastic job on the truck.

He's built the most reliable version of my truck that I can lean on.

Like I said, a blade that I can cut the competition with.

But yeah, my racetrucks usually only together about 25 days out of the year.

Holy crap.

This is an expensive sport.

I didn't realize you had to replace it every race.

Yeah, a lot of parts just need to be pulled apart and inspected.

Our motors, our motor is like $125,000 big block.

Holy crap, just for the motor?

Just for the motor.

Oh my, that's more than a car.

Yeah.

No, it's a million-dollar piece of equipment that throws rocks and makes dust.

Damn.

But,

like I said,

I think it's the greatest form of motorsport in the world.

I'm going to start watching, man, for real.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, next time I'm testing, you should come out.

I'll take you up the block.

I've never taken anybody for a ride.

Well, nobody that's gotten scared.

I've taken lots of people for rides.

Like, I have a test loop that's 13 and a half miles.

I usually get it done in about 10 and a half minutes.

It's very, very rough.

There's corners.

There's lots of stuff.

But I know it very, very well.

So it's absolutely effortless for me to go on my test loop at like Mach 5, you know, because I know it so well.

And I've never taken anybody for a ride when I was testing doing suspension and powertrain development, never taken anybody for a ride that's gotten scared.

I was just talking to my friend about this about 30 minutes ago.

No one has ever been scared to ride with me.

Really?

They're scared to get in and putting on their belts.

You have like a fire suit and a helmet and a D cell to make sure you don't come unplugged if we crash, fresh air system, intercom, like all this bullshit that you have to put on to get in this thing that doesn't have doors or windows

that's supposed to go 118 miles an hour through three, four-foot bumps.

So there's anxiety related to that event when I get the opportunity to take somebody for a ride.

But it's gone, like

about 20 seconds into me leaving our pit area, as soon as I start going down the course, because they're like terrified until I get to like 30 or 50, which is like 15 seconds, maybe.

Interesting.

So it's like public speaking.

Well, they're like, well, they're confused.

They don't understand

how it's happening.

Like how, like in their mind, especially people that drive like Jeeps or Raptors or something like that.

I think in their mind, they're like, if I was to do this in my truck, it would explode.

You know, because there's just no there's no way that I could do more than like 25 or 26 miles an hour here in my Raptor or my Jeep and we're going 126 like I don't quite they don't quite understand it so most people it's a very unique experience for them because the camera doesn't really capture how spectacular the trucks are and what they can do

so they're very special it's interesting anything else you want to close off with man it's been fun no thanks thanks for having me it was uh it was really cool to to meet you and be on your podcast and i appreciate it and uh everybody can follow me on instagram at bj baldwin uh at bj baldwin97 on on twitter uh bj baldwin 97 on youtube facebook is ballistic bj baldwin and uh

we're excited about uh the rest of our season so thanks for having us of course man thanks for talking yeah thanks for watching guys see you next time