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

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

www.youtube.com/@bjbaldwin97🚀 Get ready for an adrenaline-packed episode of the Digital Social Hour! Off-Road Racing Secrets: BJ Baldwin’s Ultimate Guide takes you deep into the world of off-road racing with the legendary BJ Baldwin. 🏆 Join Sean Kelly as he uncovers BJ's thrilling experiences from winning the Baja 1000 to training highly obedient pit bulls. 🐾   You'll be captivated by BJ's insane stories of racing through brutal terrains, navigating life-threatening obstacles, and pushing the limits of human endurance. 🏁 Whether you're a motorsport enthusiast or just love a good adventure, this episode is packed with valuable insights and jaw-dropping moments.   Tune in now to discover BJ's secrets to success, from training world-class dogs to mastering the art of off-road racing. Don't miss out on this exclusive conversation with a true legend in the sport.   Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Join the conversation and be part of our epic journey! 🏁   #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #Podcast #ApplePodcasts #Spotify #BJBaldwin #OffRoadRacing #Motorsports #Baja1000 #DogTraining #Adventure #InsiderSecrets   #AdrenalineSportsInsights #TrophyTruckRacingTips #PerformanceRacing #HighspeedRacingTechniques #OffroadDrivingTechniques   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:35 - Dog Training Techniques 04:44 - Babbel Language Learning 05:56 - Gun Shooting Safety 12:47 - Hunting Tips and Techniques 13:53 - Off-Road Racing Adventures 17:14 - Trophy Truck Design Insights 18:46 - Baja 1000 Race Overview 23:07 - Night Racing Strategies 25:00 - Course Navigation Tips 31:00 - Racing Preparation Essentials 33:31 - Solo Racing Challenges 36:58 - Finding BJ in Racing 42:05 - Closing Thoughts on Racing 42:30 - Thanks for Watching!   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: BJ Baldwin https://www.instagram.com/bjbaldwin https://twitter.com/bjbaldwin97 www.youtube.com/@bjbaldwin97   SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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see dead people damn 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 uh you know what i've had pit bulls uh my whole my whole life and i work with a lot of people a long time ago that that train dogs um and learn quite a bit about it they're just they have so much more life and 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... A lot of pit bulls are very, very high energy. I've had some like that. So it's like firing a gun inside of a tank if you don't have them trained appropriately, like it is with most high-energy dogs. But they're they're really

really game they're very social you know we 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 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 park, there's usually a pit bull involved. Yeah, yeah, you got to have them sorted as a puppy and get them trained a little bit. Really, with any dog. I mean, if you're lazy with them as a puppy, then you go their whole lifespan with a dog that doesn't cooperate, doesn't behave. I've got him.

He does. It's strict obedience. He's reactive as a race or really like defense and stuff like that. But he does A, B, C, and D of 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 he figures out what you want him to do and

he sits like that's one accomplishment okay now you have uh 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 you tell him to sit 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 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 um but he can be like down range at the gun range in the desert and i could be cranking off rounds of 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 years. That's impressive. 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. You could have a dog that's not 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. room and he won't even mess with them until i tell him to wow what if a dog starts barking at him uh he'll just sit there oh he won't unless it's a if it's a bigger dog then there's blood and hair everywhere but but it's on site yeah it's on site um but if it's a

smaller dog um he'll just sit there like i had a situation at uh i think it was like at the at the mall or something like that at about six months ago they had these little white um i don't know what kind of dogs they are but they're all maltese yeah like a maltese and there was like six or seven people that were in like a family and they saw him i was was, I was walking out to, uh, out of the restaurant. Um, and it was just me and my, my, 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 and yeah yeah he's he's pretty good at knowing what's a threat and what's not yeah like i said he's very reactive as it relates to certain situations absolutely you've been uh shooting a lot lately? Yeah. Yeah, I shoot.

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male or female in history, Tori Nonaka. So I shoot with her her sometimes i do defensive tactics training like handgun training you know at least at 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 um one of my exercises that i'm focused on last year is uh c-zone steel is like a piece of steel like this and it's a balance speed and accuracy accuracy uh drill first round on target from the draw i'm trying to have being able to have a repeatable action of first round on target from 100 yards in under two seconds holy crap and i'm like 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 but uh and that's with a pistol you said yeah wow yeah yeah that's that's what the handgun that is impressive man it's not it's not a lot of work for a rifle but with a hand yeah it's definitely harder game you got a favorite gun um you know what i had glocks for quite some time um and of course you have like a bone stock clock or any other striker fire fired pistol and you it's kind of like a mustang first you get exhaust and then tires and then like all this stuff um you know you get trigger slide work barrel um 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 nine millimeter ninemm 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 64 hundredths of a second inside of 5 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 2,500ths of a second. it slows me down probably 25 hundredths of a second to two tenths 25 hundredths 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 uh and my transitions are a lot quicker with

with a platform like that and it's it's a little bit more accurate um a little bit more of a bond between biology and mechanics like equipment yeah uh 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 2011 for the last year and a half.

That's impressive that you measure by the second like that man that's that's some next level stuff yeah the clock is the only way you can measure progress you know with with like a a competition shot timer that i have 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 machine guns when I was nine years old. Holy crap.

That is crazy. But yeah, I did the youth division at American Shooters when I was 12 years old. And youth division was 12 to 17. i think there was 60 competitors and then uh overall there was like 240 formal law enforcement military competitive shooters and all that well i got third overall and first in youth division holy crap at 12 when you called the quits after that yeah that's like i'm undefeated i'm like done, 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 revolver. And you still got third with that?

Yeah, it was just like basic accuracy. There was no speed or stress involved. Six rounds in 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,

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.

Wow. A long time ago. That is cool. And Taron Butler from Taron Tackle. 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, sent me flying back. They're no fun. Shotguns? 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 messing with them. It hurts, man. Your shoulder's messed up. Yeah. I go through, when I go shooting, or I go training 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,

you could never go through that with the shotgun unless you were like an Olympic competitor shooting low recoil impulse shot shells and stuff like that for, for clay pigeons and stuff. But absolutely with, uh, pulls shot shells and stuff like that for for clay pigeons and stuff but absolutely with uh with uh buckshot and slugs and for defensive use like you would never want to yeah that's that sucks for sure you ever go hunting uh yeah i've uh i went uh bird hunting for quite some time with my family growing 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 uh since i was a kid like eight or ten years old and he doesn't practice at all but he knocks everything out of the sky like wow he's really really good with a shotgun that's impressive

because you got to predict where they're going right yeah you got to have them like 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 um which is a duck hunting lodge yeah we cook that stuff the same day and it's like amazing 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 uh still doing the the racing too the off-road stuff yeah yeah still doing uh trophy truck racing won the championship uh last year and it's our eighth championship so um we just did the mint 400 and got a solid top 10 finish at the mint 400 but we had some problems uh at that race what happened um that particular race for my truck because it's so rough and the the terrain is very square you know the bumps are like three three feet tall holy crap trying to

we're trying to go over them at like 80 to 110 miles an hour that's half my body that 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 bite, 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. Okay. About 70% of the Class 1s or Unlimited trucks or Trophy trucks at 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, okay. 383 miles, something like that.

Oh, so they're huge laps. Yeah. Yeah, they're 180-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 you know 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 you know 80 laps with the same five or six corners but none of my corners look the same got it and uh it's not just corners that's like big bumps big ditches holes jumps yeah blind rises cliffs sweeping corners differences in speed from 15 miles an hour to 153 miles an hour so uh 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 is it a newer kind of racing style or has it been around for a while no it's it's been around since 1968 uh i'm pretty sure that's when the baja 1000 started um and then the baja 1000 baja 500 san felipe uh 250 there's a baja 400 and then there's a bunch of races uh stateside vegas carino um some races in laughlin uh but we've had some it's a pretty good success i won the bahama 1000 twice won the 500 won several uh score championships yeah um so we've done pretty good but uh yeah it's it's different definitely a very unique form of motorsports you know it's i would 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 for maybe drag racing is different, obviously. My truck doesn't do any of that. My truck's 7,000 pounds. It makes 1,100 horsepower. Its 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's a mile and a half long it's where we do suspension uh testing and development yeah and you know like a ford raptor would go through there at like 25 or 26 miles an hour my trophy truck goes through like 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 1000 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 uh a little over 1100 miles some some courses are about 1300 miles some are 10 50 yeah so you gotta make pit stops and everything yeah yeah people ask me if i if i get breaks on a 20 hour race oh it's 20 hours oh yeah yeah when i when i won it in 2012 it was 20 hours and 14 minutes 58 seconds and they ask if I get breaks 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 gotta you know especially you know there's not too many people that have won the Bahamas, like doing the whole race in the last 15 years. Um, you really got to be able to conserve your energy and, you know, lower your respiration rate, heart rate, blood pressure, and not get super excited. Cause you kind of run yourself out. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really have too much adrenaline when I'm racing. I'm actually pretty relaxed. Yeah. That's impressive. Cause 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 um somebody's i'm chasing somebody down yeah and uh 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. 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, Rah cakran robbie gordon like all these guys

um so really intense battles like that consume energy uh 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 uh calm cool and collective 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 Raglin.

Learned a little bit from Robbie, Robbie Gordon. And I just picked up all the information. To the point where I don't really believe in talent. I think it's kind of like a myth. 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's john jones and and michael jordan and kobe and all these world-class athletes that's 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, that will produce your journey through life and whatever it is that you're interested in 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 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. You know, that's my theory 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, you know. 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 fun. Oh, contact, like a little Bluetooth? No, like pushing the fuck out of it. Oh, oh. That'd be fun, yeah. Sometimes I want to, man. Yeah, it's like that sometimes. Especially 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 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 personally 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 the path of the sun one day let's let's hope but uh yeah it's usually the 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 um sunrise is at 6 a.m but yeah that's an added challenge most of the like i was saying about my formal motorsports trophy trucks don't slow down they take forever to slow down like if Like if you hit the brakes and you're going 130 miles an hour, it takes eternity to get that thing slowed down to 50. Wow. 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 like bouncing around um so you really have to have a good understanding of what's coming up and that's where navigation comes into play um we have uh two on board gps's as well as a bunch of other stuff a bunch of other electronics in the truck that monitor all the systems but uh 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 uh 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 um but uh 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 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. Will it read it out loud to you while you're driving? Yeah, and we have like full-face helmets.

There's no windshield in my truck. It's 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 yeah you gotta really trust our motor yeah yeah you gotta 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 uh interpret uh 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 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 been 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. 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. Wow. Like at the Thousand, there's, I don't know, a million people scattered around the course. That many people? All the way down, yeah. Damn, that shit is huge. Yeah, they set up, some of them party a little bit, set up booby traps and light the course on fire.

And 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 that actually at my first ball in thousand years and years and years ago where i had a two driver team two driver two navigator team where i drove uh 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 1130 at night. They were going through big bumps at a high rate of speed. And there was some fans that were a little ornery and drinking a little bit. And one of them lobbed a like this big into the truck. It skipped off the hood and hit the navigator in the helmet. Oh, my gosh. Broke his jaw and 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 while he got fixed up. And we actually still got fifth that's impressive yeah i was leading it for probably six or seven hours and then that happened and then uh and then i had some brake troubles uh with the truck we bleed we bled the brakes at the fuel pit and then he got in i think he went uh 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 ornery. So you only have so much truck you know to 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 the transmission could lose third gear second gear first yeah 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, of,

uh, of the truck truck in 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.

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 brake, man. I'd be shitting myself yeah yeah for real like if i can't break yeah that's i'm glad you brought up a defecation that's another thing that we don't have the ability to do you know i i wear a external catheter it's like a condom yeah um and it's a hose that runs down oh my gosh so we don't pull over to go to the

bathroom or anything you don't have time now uh it's a lot faster if down my leg. Oh, my gosh. So we don't pull over to go to the bathroom or anything. Because you don't have time. No. It's a lot faster if you don't get out of the truck. Yeah. You 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. Yeah. And vitamins and biohacking and all that stuff throughout my

entire career uh i'll do half a dose of pepto-bismol like it's one thing like if you got an upset stomach and you're having to go to the bathroom yeah um and you take pepto-bismol 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 didn't know that. 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 not a very crazy breakfast. Other drivers have different theories. 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 or two-thirds of the way through the race. And it was his job because he's like a murderer. 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, or a big dinner. was supposed to get in about two o'clock in the morning and drive to the finish

um 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 and his number two and his pants and oh man they got the finish line was all like smashed up between his shoulder blades so we were all laughing it's pretty funny just went flying all over the car yeah i didn't know you had a switch so is it a two-on-two sport uh no i i usually don't most other teams have a couple drivers and i've had for the thousand i've had uh you know two team drivers for about half of it the other half i've i've driven the whole distance which is it's a unique challenge because you're not going uh see if it's a thousand miles

the ball one thousand 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. When you drive the whole distance, you 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 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 100 miles is the same amount of effort as the first 500. So it's exponentially more difficult before you get to the finish line.

As it relates to fatigue and stress and wear and tear on your body, like 50 miles from the finish line of the Baja 1000 when I won in 2012, I could see dead people. Damn, you're hallucinating. Yeah, my shoulder blades uh were bleeding the inside of my thighs were bleeding the tops knuckles of my toes were bleeding holy crap uh back 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 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 la man but you're doing that times 10 probably. Yeah, that's like a cross-training event for me to drive to LA. I'll leave at like 11 o'clock at night in a speedy car. Get there at one. Yeah. I think my record from South Vegas to East LA was an hour and 58 minutes. Holy crap. You actually did it in two hours. I was joking. Yeah. That was on a freaking 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 silly i had radar detector i was always very very safe and obviously i knew what i was doing um the 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 gonna go through half a tank of gas you know there was no no other cars on the road so uh if i had a 80 gallon fuel cell in a corvette something like that obviously i could i could do a little bit better as it relates to traveling that distance in a short amount of time but yeah i used to do that but but now uh

even late at night traffic's quite a bit more dense you know yeah so but yeah i love 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 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 some gear ratios in the truck and developing some powertrain stuff and always trying to get better you know my my truck uh 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 yeah uh 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 have to pull upper and lower control arms, uprights, all the four-link in the back, all the suspension, the rear-end housing, 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 leak down then it has to get completely reassembled and go to the chassis dyno which is basically like a treadmill for i'm sure you've seen that with hot rod cars that go on the chassis my truck goes to the chassis down it gets tuned by dugan's racing engines uh chris allen motorsports does all the prep and uh then we have a separate

community of pit guys that that help us you know throughout the races uh 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 um but yeah my race trucks usually only together about 25 days out of the year holy crap this is an inexpensive sport i didn't realize you had to replace it every race yeah a lot of parts uh just need to be pulled apart and inspected yeah um our motors our motors like 125 000 big block holy crap just for the motor just for the 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. Next time I'm testing, you should come out, I'll take you up the block. I've never taken anybody for a ride. I don't think I would do that. 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 get it done in about 10 and a half minutes um 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 five 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 decel to make sure you don't come unplugged if we crash fresh air system intercom like all this bullshit that that you have to put on to get in this thing that doesn't have doors or windows um that's supposed to go 118 miles an hour through three four foot bumps so there's anxiety related

to that event when i 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. And so I get to like 30 or 50, which is like 15 seconds maybe. 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, especially people that drive like Jeeps or Raptors or something like that, 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 and 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 absolutely 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's 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 at BJ Baldwin 97 on Twitter BJ Baldwin 97 on YouTube Facebook is Ballistic BJ Baldwin and we're excited about the rest of our season so thanks for having us

of course man thanks for coming on thanks for watching guys see you next time