Slow Baja - Bob Bower What About You?

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

At age 8, Bob Bower read about the Bill Stroppe Lincoln teams that dominated the 1953 Mexican Carrera Panamericana and later learned about the Baja 1000 race to La Paz. It became a fixation with him to be part of it someday.  Living the life of a Corvette enthusiast, Bower caught the eye of BFGoodrich at a time when the Brand was in the early stages of marketing performance tires to car clubs. He accepted the offer to go to work for BFG in 1977 and found himself at the Mint 400 as a pit volunteer. The fixation transformed into a deep passion for off-road. From that day forward, he would make a huge impact on the world of off-road racing in a variety of roles. Pit volunteer, chase crew, race team manager, pit manager, program manager, winning co-driver, winning driver, ESPN TV color analyst, and teacher. Bower’s goal was to have a positive impact on whatever he was doing. His philosophy of “be alert, listen to what people have to say and always use the truth” served him well. It was 1982 when BFGoodrich put him in the role of Off-Road Program manager. With very thin budget resources available, the challenge was to provide support for the contracted teams and win races. Bower’s race strategy was very straightforward… “You start winning rather than finish winning.” Bower’s vision was to establish a common direction on the race course and in the pits, and bring all the teams into one big BFG team. “The direction we’re heading is very, very clear.” “That is to be the best between the green and checkered flags”. Bower launched the BFGoodrich Pit Support program. To this day the BFGoodrich Pits are arguably the most successful and widely used pit service in Off-Road Desert Racing. The 1985 Baja 1000 ended early for Bob and his teammate Mike Randall in the Class 4 Honcho when they got off course and lost, ending up sunken to the frame in a tidal mud marsh. It took two days for the team to find and retrieve them. Bower swore, and promised his wife Necia, that we would never be lost like that again in Baja. He would make detailed maps of the race course, highways, and chase roads (KM mileage included), along with other information like fuel and food locations. The chase crews knew at any given time they could drive to the correct chase road and how long the drive should take. Teams raced with a higher degree of safety for their chase crews because of those maps. In the early 1990s Bower turned the map making over to BFGoodrich in order to make it available to the masses. By widely distributing the maps, all of the chase crews could support their teams with a higher degree of safety. Bob wrote “What About You?”, a powerful piece that has been included in almost all pit books over the past 20 years. It remains fresh and relevant today because of its absolute raw truth. “What About You?” is Bob’s heartfelt advice to everyone in off-road, about safety and taking care of yourself and those you are with during the race. Many are convinced “What About You?” has saved lives over the last two decades. Bob says he was “simply speaking from the heart.” Over the years Bob has shown his passion, humility and wisdom. They are matched only by his unshakeable ethic. There have been many young racers who have been helped along their way by Bower. He’s always been a champion of the little guy. Sometimes it’s a quiet conversation, sometimes a few hours of highway windshield time, other times simply introducing them to others in the sport who could help them get better. Young stars like Robby Gordon, Ivan Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Arciero, and Rob MacCachren all have had Bob help them along in their racing career in one small way or another. For Bob Bower, it has been a labor of love. “I never wanted to change things in our sport, I just wanted to do what I could to help it along.” -- Courtesy of ORMHOF More information on Slow Baja Adventures: https://www.slowbaja.com/adventures

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. You know, I've long said it, ask your doctor if Baja is right for you. Well, you've got to check out the Adventures tab

at Slowbaha.com. The Slow Baja rally is February 23 to March 3rd. It's a slow roll from San Diego down to Loretto and back. About 10 days long, we're going to have a couple of nights laying over in Loretto. I've got some ready-made adventures for you there. If you want to get off on a one-day mule packing trip or if the weather's good, you want to get out on the water, we're going to have a one-day water adventure. There's also going to be a one-day volunteer project for folks who might want to do that.

And if you've got some stuff that you need to address on your rig, well, we're going to have some hand-selected slow-boh-ha. approved mechanics, whether you need a welder or a tire shop or a mechanic transmission, whatever it is, we're going to have those resources for you. So it's going to be easy for you to get whatever you need addressed, addressed. You know, it's not the longest or the largest or the most miles. It's the slowest and the best miles and hopefully the most smiles. All right.

For more information, check it out. It's a Slow Baja rally at slowbaha.com slash adventures. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You can always reach me through the contact link at Slowbaha. Once again, that's February 23rd through March 3rd, 2024, the slow Baja rally. You know, I'm a minimalist when it comes to Baja travel, but the one thing I don't leave home without is a good old paper map. My favorite is the beautiful, and I mean beautiful, Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by benchmark

maps. It's an oversized 72-page book. It's jammed with details. It brings the peninsula's rugged terrain into clear focus. Get yours at Benchmarkmaps.com. In fact, get two. One for your trip planning at home and one for your Baja rig. Hey, big news.

Benchmark just released the second edition of the Baja Road and Recreation Atlas. They are always striving to improve these maps. And they've added a bunch of new features, bunch of places of interest, including the Chenet Legacy Lodge. It wasn't on the first printing of the map. It's there now. It's awesome. You can see it right there in Perseboo.

Get your brand new second edition of the Baja Road and Recreation Atlas from Benchmark Maps. And while you're at Benchmarkmaps.com, you've got to check out all their other atlases. I think they're up to 17 now, including British Columbia. They've got folding maps. They've got digital maps. They've got giant wall maps. My favorite, and I've got it up on my wall right here at Slow Baja HQ, is a 30 inch by 46

inch Baja wall map. It's so great to just look at one thing, see the entire peninsula there. I love it. Benchmarkmaps.com. Slow Baja approved. Well, hello. my heaping dose of gratitude today goes out to Bob Bauer. And in a hundred and something podcasts, I have never acknowledged the subject of my podcast as the subject of my heaping dose of

gratitude. But Bob is truly a unique and amazing individual. And I just want to call Bob out for his What About You letter that he wrote an open letter about reality check before crossing the border. And he wrote this specifically for crews that are going to go down and chase the Baja 1000. And We're just about at Baja 1,000 time here. People are pre-running right now. The race is going to start in two weeks from when I'm recording this. And, you know, I went down a couple years ago and I helped a photographer and I drove and I had two days, two all-nighters before I left. And, you know, then, of course, there's two all nighters on the race.

And then there's, you know, all sorts of stupid passes and not enough food and no sleep and any of that. And it's not stuff that I'm proud of. But you get caught up in the moment. and I think if you take a minute and I'll have this connected to the show notes and read Bob's letter, what about you? Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully this will save one person, one accident one. Anyways, without further ado, I'm going to read a couple lines from Bob Bowers. What about you?

Plan on getting to your destination late. Don't drink alcoholic stuff, period. Don't use drugs, period. ask yourself, are we important enough to the people in the race car that they will feel good about us getting maimed trying to catch them? Ask yourself, would I do this if my kids were with me? I'm not going to read the rest of it. Check it out in the show notes. Bob Bauer.

What about you? And just a quick explanation about we come into this conversation a little hot, getting to Bob's place in the morning. Everybody in his neighborhood is a lovely neighborhood. and everybody happened to be getting their lawns done or their yards done or what have you that day. So Bob, being a thoughtful fellow, asked the neighbor's yard guys to stop for a minute so we could record. And at some point, I think I muffed the recording as we went from, you know, recording number six or number seven or what have you. And again, we come in sort of midstream. He's relaying a story about Ivan Stewart asking some questions in the car.

So without further ado, Bob Bauer on Slow Baja. Whatever we're getting out of this, we're getting out of this. You're cutting clips. Ivan Stewart, questioner. What was I thinking here, Ivan? Oh, he's full of questions all the time. Questions that make you really stop and think because you wonder. We're driving in his Ford Ranger, Toyota pre-runner thing that they've cobbled up for him.

So we're going around a turn and the tires a little, you know, he's got him lower. And you hear the tires, go, woo-woo, and he turns to me. He says, so Bob, he says, we can hear the tires. They're sliding. How come the tires are sliding and making noise, but I'm not sliding in the truck? Hmm. You're a tire guy. Yeah, I'm a tire guy.

This is a technical question. This is technical question. And I got to wonder. People want to know. They do want to know. At least Ivan did. And it took me years to find the answer. And then when I told.

From a vault in Akron, Ohio. Bob Bauer. Today. Yeah. He's got the answer. They had. Well, we had some good engineers that would trust us with their information. I mean, it's like they'd send us out and please don't cobble it up, you know.

And I learned that part of the footprint is sliding. And when an attire, well, you talked about your, you spent all that money for those Pirelias on your 510. This guy pays attention. Well, 1981. Yeah. But, I mean, the Pirelli you had there was it was Pirelli. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it's got a long longitudinal footprint.

Yeah. More like a board. this. Yeah. And when it starts losing traction, it loses traction from the back of the footprint up. So as it turns like this, you're still headed this way, but this part is now sliding, but this part is still turning. And it's those things, those back blocks going, I told him the answer.

I laid it out all for him. He completely forgot that he asked the damn question. But I learned. I figured it out. Well, it's a beautiful day in Lake Forest, California. I'm with the legend Bob Bauer. I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say that again because I can't say legends all the time.

It inflates these guys unnecessarily. It's a beautiful day in Lake Forest, California. I'm with Bob Bauer, and we are getting down to a slow Baja conversation, and I am so excited to be here. I looked across a room at the off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame. I saw this magnificent beard and mustache, and I said, I don't know who that guy is. I don't know what he's done in life,

I'm going to get him on slow Baja. I know it. I know he's got a story. And here we are. Here we are. And I must tell you that slow Baja is really the rightest answer for any question. And I'm not saying it just because you have a show. As many years as I've spent in Baja and going down and doing this and doing that and doing the other night, I'm not always racing, but sometimes just down there, you know, funding.

I've said for years, Baja needs to be driven at 45 miles an hour. windows open. All the guys that go down there at 80 miles an hour, they never smell Baja. They're missing out. There's some great aromas there. Exactly. You can smell the ocean when you're getting close. You can't see it, but you can smell the ocean.

Those are things that slow Baja means to me, aside from the facts, it's a lot safer. It's just a beautiful way to see a beautiful place. Well, let's jump right into it. What did Bobby Spears telling you slow hands, slow feet, are actually. faster, what did you take away from Bill Straub's genius of the La Carrera Pan American Lincoln strategy and the C's candy giving you a free candy when you came in? How did you mix all that up into the greatest corporate brand building sponsor money saving strategy in the effing world? Well, listen, it's not easy being confused, reprobate, I promise. But it's

I mean, that's pure genius. Break that down. Not everybody's going to know what the heck I just said. Well, I'm a fan of simple. A guy named Bobby Spears was one of Bill Strapp's top guys. Bill Straub was Ford Lincoln Mercury's top team for running the Carrera La Carrera Panamericana down in Mexico and South America. This is in the mid-50s. Yeah, 1950 to 1954, a 2,000 mile long, high-speed, dangerous, multiple people, multiple fans got killed.

every year and Bill Strop figured it out. Okay, take it away. It was a real deal. It was a real deal. And I remember reading stories about Strop pitting his Lincoln Mercury. He's a guy named Johnny Mance. And instead of, you know, to service the vehicle,

service the race car when it comes up, instead of putting up on ramps and doing it like this, Strop would just have a big hole dug in the ground. Yeah, he pre-dug pits. He pre-duck pits, and the car would come in. And I'm like a eight-year-old kid, maybe. and reading this in motor trend or road and track or one of those and my mind is going like whoa

well it's stored I thought what an adventure man if I ever you know if I ever and so there I was in the Ute Road pit at the 1977 men 400 I think it was seven and I'd never met Bobby Spears or anybody I was a volunteer I was doing what I was told here you go stand there get out of the sun get out of the shade whatever and so here's bobby spirit telling me he says you're going to pit here's your job your job bob is you're going to hand water and a wet rag to whoever sitting in the right seat of that race car is about to come in okay he says

and i want you to use slow hands and slow feet he says you'll go faster you go faster but slow hands and he says it'll be much quicker and he says when you're done step away from and get your hands in the here. Okay. You can do that. I can do that. But what was really happening, Michael, I tell you, I still feel the heartbeats. While he was saying this to me, the voices in my head weren't anything to do. I'm saying, this is it. This is what I'm reading. I've been reading about this for like ever. And now it's happening. It's like, holy macro. And when I got done doing it, he got his water, he got his wet rag. He gave the rag back. He kept the water. The truck left. And I just sort of stood there in the dust saying this, I've got to have this for the rest of my life somehow,

some way. And I actually, I kind of focused on, I got to find a way to keep my hand in this some way, somehow. It's just, it fits. And now that it's all in the rear of view of mirror, I might have been close to right, I guess. Yeah. And again, so you had the guy who developed the greatest strategy for a team. And for folks who don't know the La Carrera, Panama, Americana,

but you've been listening to Slow Baja now for 100 episodes. You know that I'm obsessed by that race, that I did the race, that it nearly cost me my marriage, that I sold my race car, and I bought the same day that I sold my race car the next day. I bought my land cruiser as a great family vehicle, and I gave it to my wife as a Valentine's Day present the next day. And, of course, you know, immediately I started planning to go to Baja. Why not?

So Bill Straub really created a victory for the competitors or gave them the greatest chance ever in the greatest high-speed road race ever win on Sunday, sell on Monday era. He won it all in his strategy. The drivers only drank stuff out of bottles. They only ate food that was prepared by their cooks. They had pits dug here, there, everywhere. They figured out the tires. They did all that stuff before the race even started. And so you have Bobby Spears telling you, slow hand, slow feet, giving you a job, which you took to, and you listened.

And then you have Bill Straub, and then C's Candy, and then you turned it into a corporate boondogel that really set you, set BFG up for great success and set a whole bunch of racers up for great success. So take that part two. Tell me about Seas Candy. and tell me about how it translates into what you did. Well, between the Bobby Spears, you know, instant, I don't know what, instant crazy for me, and the BFG pitting situation, it was a five-year period between the two. And in that five years, I found my way to get to off-road races, whether it's through work or through friends or whatever. And as you do, you learn about it.

Michael, you find out what's going on here, what happens. And I really became much more aware of how important the people in the pits were because I always thought it was about the noise-making machine. No, it's the pits. You know, man, people can win with pits or lose. And so these were just little impressions that were sticking in my mind. And in 1980, well, December of 81, my boss calls me in the office. It was actually Christmas Eve Day.

And in his own unique way expressed to me that I'm going to take over their off-road race program. We're going to manage that program, pulling you off of that, this assignment, putting you on that one. And I didn't really want it. I was really happy and excited about doing what I was doing. And the guys who went the off-road races in the department, you know, we're always getting free stuff and things like that, and I just never did like that idea. So I kind of shied away from it, but I didn't have a choice. So I took the job, started talking to our limited number of teams.

I think we only had like five or six BF Goodrich supported teams, not like you see today. Yeah, and quickly run through those legends. If I can remember, Bob Gordon, Scoop Vessel's, Steve Kelly, Tommy Morris, Don Adams, Malcolm Smith, a checker. I forgot. And did you have Ivan Stewart then? Yes, yes. Yeah, you had some top-notch, top-notch. Correct.

We didn't have Ivan completely. Ivan worked for Charlotte. Okay. And so when it came to Ivan, I learned this on the, I immediately went to the West Coast and had dinner with all these people, one at a time, one-on-one. And in my talk with Ivan and Linda, I came to learn that the money BFG had in their budget didn't go to Ivan and went to Charlotte.

And I thought that was kind of. wrong but I listened and so we got to the point of the little interview with Ivina so Ivan what would you do if you had your hand of the joystick you could have anything you want anything you want he says I'd go full race full race full time I'd quit my job at Atlas fence I'd go full racing so I got thinking about that I said you know we don't have Ivan we have Charlotte it's not worth anything without Ivan I was worth a lot without without uh without uh without Charlotte. Yeah.

So I said, Ivan, I'll throw you an idea. You and Linda, think this over and call me back. What if? What if I paid your salary for a full year? Give you a year to go out and try your luck at going totally independent. We'll see if we can make this work. If you make it in the year, great. If you don't, it's going to be back to the program you had last year.

Where are you on that? Basically, he said, let's give it a try. Sign the deal. Okay, so now we own him. The following season, Cal Wells, goes to Ivan and says, listen, I want you on my Toyota. Toyota's got a big program. And we want you to be our lead guy. And so, come on over.

Oh, by the way, you're going to have to leave those tires behind. We were at the Yokohama. No, Bridgetstone. Bridgestone. We're going Bridgestone. Jeez. And so I kind of mentioned Ivan because Ivan wasn't as experienced. experienced in those years at the business level that he is today. Ivan, you can't go to Toyota

if they're running Bridgestone. Why not? Well, because you're on BFG. You understand how this works? You're on BFG and we're not going to give it away to Bridgeton. What do I do? I don't know. Guess you better talk it over with Cal. Cal calls me. What do I got to do to get Ivan I'll just put BFs on there. Okay, I'll get back to it. It took about a week. Bridgetown was out, we're in, Ivan's got his full-time ride,

changed his life. This is how it works. This is how it works. But this is how it works for Bauer. You see, you mentioned something about how people trust me and all that. It's because, you know, I learned, came to believe, I don't know if I learned it, but I came to believe early on.

And if you help people, everybody else meet their needs, yours are going to get met. It's the Bauer hierarchy of needs scale. You know, it really is. I mean, it really is. And it may sound cliche and it may sound like all those silly things, but doggone, it works. Well, honestly, as I dove deep into who's this guy across the room with the beard in the face that I'm going to get on the show and I don't even know who you are. But as I dug deep into who you are, I think that's a constant that repeats in your career at every level. You are a giver.

You give, give, give, give, whether it's a service at a gas station when you were a kid that ends up with the widow of a guy giving you the Corvette for almost nothing. First dibs. Yeah, I mean, for almost nothing to your work with the Corvette. club and that leads to your B.F. Goodrich employment. You gave, you personally gave, you personally gave Southern California for Akron, Ohio. You gave yourself up to this, this corporate role. And, and, you know, as you grew in that role, the amount that you gave to the sport and to the people and to the employees coming to your seminars and changing their lives through them paying attention to what the information you're giving them and

helping but you gave and gave and gave and gave and gave but it's never been a debit on my account it's the best way to look at it sure it's just an investment in theirs where did it come from is that your mom is that your dad is that just something you you picked up along the way hmm you know Michael I don't I don't really know um you know I This may sound a little bizarre. I have two sisters. I had a mom, two sisters.

Mom and dad are divorced. I'm growing up in a house of three women. One was a twin. And I kind of ended up being, if it is to be, Bob, it's up to me. You know, kind of running my own deal and how to get along. You had to learn how to get along. And because I was, you know, a borderline delinquent child. Okay.

I kind of learned how to get almost in trouble and all the way out. So just by listening, I don't know if my mom taught me or anybody. I learned to listen. And if I had to think of there's a single skill that has gotten me through my scrapes. It's not what I've said. It's what I've heard. And you've said a lot, though. You found yourself on a lot of podiums making speeches and talking to people about stuff.

So it's the listening. Well, the listening is the one skill no one teaches in school and the single most important skill that anybody has. I mean, if you're going to deal with other humans, just Bob's philosophy. You're also known for your opinions.

Can we talk about Bob's opinions? What's it to you? Well, if you're, let me put this delicately. If history repeats itself, you'll be running slow Baja in no time. Or at least you'll be my mentor or on my board of directors helping me through this. Because you see these things, you have an opinion about how these things can be done probably better. And then you're willing to step up and say, you know what? Yep, I'll do it.

Rod Hall comes to you and says, I'm not smart enough to run arm off. Off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame. It wasn't the motorsports part in those days. But, you know, Perlman had started this thing. Ed Perlman, we've talked about the Perlman's a lot. I'm going to see Mike probably tomorrow or tonight for the Nora. So they started the Nora Mexican 1000 back in 67 because the florist's employee didn't know how to shift the land cruiser and got out onto the highway and blew the motor up trying to deliver some flowers for Ed Perlman. And Ed being a cheap skate, went and put a V8, went to the junkyard and dropped a Chevy V8 into his land.

and then hit the desert and then pretty soon he's trying to set the record to uh from tijuana to la Paz and that doesn't work but he comes up with this great idea about hey we should have an off-road race fast forward to what we were talking about here you have opinions so rod hall comes to you and says hey i'm not smart enough i got all i got ed Ed Perlman's box of ephemera for the Motorsports Hall of Fame or the off-road racing Hall of Fame, help me. And you did. Well, you know, I was there was 1994.

I'm going to say 1994. Rod put on a race to the Reno 400. He wanted to create his own race. And he did. And he invited up there to be his race steward, a fellow named Jack Brady. Jack was one of Ed's folks. It was a Ray Stewart back in the back in the day. Along with him came Ed and that white cardboard box.

And in the box. The Hall. The Hall of Fame was in that box. One box. Yeah. And it was. So we were up in one of the rooms and we opened the box and looked and stuff like that. And Rod and I have been good friends for years already. So you know, you get to know a guy a little bit.

And I saw the look on his face was total bewilderment. Totally bewildered. Oh, my God. He says, I know this is a treasure. I mean, you can see, he knew it was on to something, but now what? And so we talked. And he ended up getting attorneys involved, accountants involved, formed it into a 501C3 corporation, got it cleaned up to be presentable. And then we went about the task of structuring it.

And I was able to do a lot of that with a lot of help from a lot of people, frankly. It wasn't just a Bauer stuff. Other people helped me a lot. And we gave it a launch in 2003. And so when you say opinions, sometimes it's just like, I have an opinion about how this should see or feel or taste or look how it should feel. And when it came to the Hall of Fame, one of the things that I put on the table right away with Rod is that, you know, this is, if we're going to do this, it's got to be a legit deal. There's not going to be an old boys club.

It's not going to, you're not going to allow to pick up your pals and put them where you want it. It has to have ethic or I'm out. And he never squabbled about that, you know, so that's how we carried forth. and the only thing I was able to say to people when I would run my little fundraisers. I'd like for the Mexican 1000. Mike Pearlman let me run a little deal there where I went to the Mexican 1000 in 2012 or 13.

And everybody say, you know, Hall of Fame needs a little bit of help. Your phrase for it is, buy me a taco. My phrase was, how about you pledge a little something per mile you make the race? You go through the whole distance, you spend a little money. What are the pledges? Are they, what, 10, 20, 30 bucks?

No, I said you can't have a nickel. You have a dime? Quarter. If you want more, that's up to you. And so the guys say, you know, wait a minute. And, you know, it's amazing what people will do if they think it's affordable. So you tell them 25 cents a mile. How bad get that hurt?

The guy makes it a thousand miles. Well, thank you. You get 30 of those people together to do it. So if you're spread it out a bunch of a bunch of people who all are involved in their own success, success happens for more of us. So that's what I mean by the opinion. Let's do something. It's not,

it's what outrageous may, but it's got to be ethical, got to be fair, got to be repeatable. That was it. Yeah, but you did it. You stepped up and did it. Well,

Rod Hall did a lot in his career, an awful lot. Yes, amazingly successful driver, pretty successful human and all that business family. He saw, he saw the guy.

Maybe he saw the mark her the sucker or what, but you stepped up and did it as what I'm getting to. Well, what he, I know what he, I know what he heard. I don't know what he saw. I know what he heard. And this is maybe part of the opinions, things that you're, you're searching for, is that between the time, Ed put that thing back into a box, which is about 1970, no, 80 something, 80, I think it was. My years are probably wrong, but forgive me. Nothing happened to the Hall of Fame. plenty happened to off-road racing. Off-roading as a general.

So when we structured the thing, it wasn't going to be off-road racing only. It had to be for all four-wheeler. It's recreational. Otherwise, rock crawling. I put categories in there that weren't yet mature, but I knew in 15 years they'd earn their spot. And it had to be inclusive.

So I've lost my place. I know it's changed you. I was headed for... Yeah, well, you're just telling me this someday, there's going to be a Slow Baja category. Yes. Because it's not just for racing. We're going to take a break right here.

We're going to have a word from our sponsors. Baja Bound. I'm Baja Bound today. And I can't wait to swing by Jeff's house pick up a whole big bag of lip balm. So everybody's going to have nice, safe lips for our trip. And we'll be right back with Bob Bauer. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border.

And when we go, we'll be going with Baja Bajaound insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at Bajaubound.com. That's Bajaubound.com serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Big thanks to my new sponsor Nomad Wheels. They stepped up and sponsored the Slow Baja Safari class at the Nora Mexican 1000, and I don't know if you've seen the pictures, but Slow Baja is running a set of 501 convoys in utility gray, and they look pretty damn sharp. They were a little shiny. I will admit that they were a little shiny when I got them installed at Basil's Garage just before the Normexican 1000, but after, I don't know,

3,800 miles from Baja dirt, they look perfect. They really do. Nomadwheels.com. That's right. Check them out, reflecting a minimalist approach to off-road travel. Nomadwheels.com. The Bauer Report. You're the Bauer Group, right? But I'm not schizophrenic and neither am I, so. Are we back? Hey, we're back with Bob Bauer of the Bauer group. We've got to stop smiling.

Well, we've had such a fun, lively disjointed conversation. There's a point that we didn't get the answer. And inquiring minds want to know, Bob. All right. We got Bobby Spears. Yes, yes. We heard a little bit about Bill Strop. Yes.

We did not hear about how Seas Candy became the greatest off-road pit strategy in the world. How did you take these things and assimilate it into what you did for the BFG pits? You did work for people who don't know. You worked for BF. Goodrich. I did. I worked for BF. Goodrich from 1976 until my last day in 1994. And just to summarize here, you got there because you were a Corvette guy.

Yeah. And you're doing some fun Corvette stuff. And you became an officer in the Western States Corvette Club back when people had clubs before everybody was just on the Internet talking to themselves. Council of clubs. I mean, this is like a big year. You ascended to the highest mountain of the Corvette Scaliwags. Yeah. And you got to go to places like Wichita and other places.

You mentioned Wichita. That's where I asked the core question of, I met the BFG guy. Who's, you know, they're over there helping those Corvettes out. And so I was a guest. And I wanted to meet the BFG feats, people, because I had some ideas. Opinions. Opinions. I did.

And one of them came out in the form of a question for the BFG guide. His name was Gary, Gary Pace. And I said, how would you feel about getting linked up with a group of Corvette people who set all the trends that these people you're paying are following? The West Coast guys. The cool kids. Well, we were. You didn't want to say that. Yeah.

And so, you know, he gave me that what you're talking about, Willis look. And we sat down. And it ended up with him. taking an airplane flight out to California. I came to learn it's the first time he'd ever been west of Denver in his life. He was so animated when he got off the airplane. Michael, he was coming off the airplane.

He says, Bob, Bob, Bob. He says, you know, he says, we were in the air for the last 45 minutes over the city. We never changed directions. Yeah. He's from Ohio. Yeah.

We saw some lights and two streets. It just kept going and going. Well, anyway, so the pit strategy that was amazing, I eventually got in charge the off-road race program. And so you got hired by Goodrich. You moved up into, you had to move to Akron. Yeah, yeah.

And somehow they said, you know what, hey, send this guy out to the desert. And now we're getting to seize candy. Now we're getting to seize candy. Well, you guys don't have any money, which is a big secret. You look like a big dog, but it's the mid-70s. There's some malaise going on. There's some issues with fuel and money and business. and now you're trying to make chicken salad out of chicken squat, my dad says.

Harvard MBAs would be aghast if they saw our marketing plan and written right in it was by use of smoke and mirrors. I'm notes of the words, Michael. I wrote them. Yeah. Anyway, so we were not very big. We just had the appearance of being very big, but we couldn't, you know, we couldn't write a big check because our mouth, even though our mouth was promising that. So I get in charge of the program. I'd already learned over the five years prior by going to races how important pitting was.

And then I saw the situation because I never really studied the BFG side of it because it was never my issue, my problem, my job. It was now. And I said, you know, we can do an awful lot in pitting here if we try. So I started off using every race we had. There was six of them that year as a rehearsal for the Baja 1,000. Everything was focused in the Baja 1,000. And so we gave our tractor-trailer guys, you know, pit anybody. Anybody comes in and needs help.

I don't care if they're on X, Y, Z tires. Help them. Give them what they need. And this is Frank DeAngelo, right? Yeah, Frank was my tractor-trailer driver at the time. And he was tuned into that. I told him, even, Michael, if you are driving along the highway and see somebody stopped along, stop!

You know, you've got oil. Give them oil. It's smart. Plus... It's the C's candy. It's the sample. Well, when they come into the pits and they're on someone else's stuff, and they come in and they get fed and their car gets fixed, even almost washed,

you know, we clean out the numbers, that leaves a mark. And so if they're going to be paying $120, $150 a tire from XYZ company, you might as well pay it to somebody who's going to pay it back. You see, because the racers, I knew in pitting was important because my meetings told me in January, They all wanted more money. Well, you think that's pretty logical. You know, the sponsor guy shows up. Yeah.

Give me, give me, give me, give me. Give me, give me. You got money. I don't. I need you to give me your money. And tires. Yeah, and swag. And we're going to, they're going to make us famous.

That's the other famous. Yeah, we're going to put the sticker on. Yeah. Well, I knew that if I could get guys to just come in the pits and figure out what it was, they'd come back. And that was the C's Candy approach. You don't go into a C's candy store ever. without getting a free sample before you even order.

And that's kind of how I looked at, it's simple. I mean, I couldn't afford to buy, advertise, whatever you do, word of mouth was it. And if I could convert racers to customers by doing something as outrageous as being nice, let me think, how often do I want to do this? And being nice is free. It's free.

Smiles don't cost a thing. They don't cost a thing. Treat them with respect. It's amazing. And it worked. It worked. The mapping stuff didn't come until way later, though, Michael. We're going to get into that.

All right. You know, I have a sponsor who's just come back. I love them dearly. Benchmark maps. They make this beautiful 72-page Baja Road and Recreation Atlas. But before things like that existed, some guy like you said, you know what? We need to have all this mapped out so people know where the hell they're going.

no can figure out how long it might take to get there. Yeah, yeah. So maybe they can quit doing some stupid stuff on the road. So take, break that up. Well, you saw, you saw this pressing need and there wasn't a, what were you, were you using like AAA Club maps or what, what? Illegally, yeah. But well, yes, I, I had gotten really lost in the 80,

I don't know, five or six by a thousand. They'd get kind of scrambled after a while, but, um, I was with Mike Randall. We're in the Jeep poncho. And we came around a turn. It all started by one racer just snapping his lights on at us. He had gone into a ditch backwards. His headlights were facing down course as we were coming up. And he was waiting for cars to come around the turn to flick on all his lights so that car would stop and pull him out. It's a pretty stupid way of doing it in my opinion. I do have opinions. And I told him so. And so we left. You're still in the ditch, dude. That's just bad. Because now we had the, Michael, we had these big white balls in our eyes. You can't see a damn thing.

Can't see a bird. Our eyeballs have been burned. They have been. Yeah. And so we took off. What we didn't know is we couldn't see. And we took off in the wrong direction. And we were making great time.

Can't make this up. This doesn't happen on a track weekend at the track. No, no. And by and bye, you know, Mike and I, realized, well, I realized for it, what kind of loss? I said, I'm not sure, you know, I'm looking around, I'm not sure where we are. And at that time, you're using every sense

that you can muster, smell included. You got your sex in that. Yeah, I smell salt. Okay, so we're gonna come to something probably flat, like a beach, or at least close. And then I see it, I said, oh, there it is, white hard pack, right out there. Mike, go!

We're a four-wheel drive, jeeponcha with, you know, big old four-o-o-o-c, got a four-old. all the way out on that salt crust over the mud bog, the salt, the coastal thing there. The mud flats. Stuck. All four. Took them two days to find us.

Nisha, my wife was not enchanted, and I was made to understand that. So I swore I'd never be lost in Anabaha ever like that. So I started begging pre-runs from guys. Guys are going down because I was a private pilot. I had a little understanding of the navigation lanes you used there. And they have whack charts and, you know, sectional charts and things like that. I knew how to read that were very accurate for very good stuff and the Auto Club map. Between the two of those, I could go down there and keep track of exactly where I was, knowing what it was.

And I would start, you know, K-173, there's this road that goes into Tracer Manos and, you know, like that. started bit by bit and over a couple of years it got to be pretty comprehensive so i started making extra copies and it's kind of slipping to a friend i didn't care if he was on yokohama's don't care this guy needs help and he's a one-man team he's got the race car and one chase guy so um but i realized at a point because people liked the map so much and they did so much good the chase crews were going crazy for him because they knew now it's going to take me an hour as opposed to, I don't know how long I have, we better get to it. You know, I better speed.

I finally turned all the masters and all the stuff over to BFG to incorporate into their pitting situation because they had budget and interest. And I couldn't do it anymore on the scale they wanted it done, because I had to hand color every map. Right, every circle. Well, let's touch on you were in the right seat of this G. Pancho. Yeah. And somehow through your work, somebody convinced

you, you'd done some driving with your Corvette, I'm assuming. Yes, yes. But somebody had said, hey, let's get the B.F. Goodrich guy into the right seat. That's going to be tires. That's going to be corporate money. If we can just get this guy, if we can just reel this dude in. Yep. Uh, we've got it made. And so you took your, your approach, your acumen to, the right seat and you, in my opinion, went from being a cheerleader to being a referee

or a regulator and tried to get guys to calm down and go slower so that they could win. The rides while I had the job of being a program manager or whatever

they called us, they called us a lot of things. I would refuse to get in a race car, no matter who it was for any reason. Because exactly as you described, that is no doubt the motivation for them saying, let's put the BF guy in the race car. And so I had that job only for one season. And then I moved on to an admin job in the Southern California so I could be actually closer to my mom. She was alone here and fill the blanks for yourself. Yeah, you don't have to make excuses for Akron.

My dad graduated from Akron, you, and seven days later he was in California, it took him seven days to drive. So it was a great place to be from. I have fond feelings for Akron, very fond. I've been there many, many times. Good stuff. That's Akron's a good place. Nice people. They really are.

Nice people. So anyway, said they did the maps and more people got to them and they saved stuff. And me getting in the right seat happened after I was in charge the program. I wouldn't compromise like that. And it happened almost serendipitous. asleep. I was attending races on my own anyway. And so Mike Randall or Johnny Randall, I came to which of the Randals, but it was the Randall clan said, hey Bob, you want to go for a ride during practice? Now I can. So we did. And he commented at the end of the thing. It's why,

you know, you're not like most people who get into the crux the first time. And eventually I turned into an invitation to ride with him in the desert. And as a result, because the Randalls were pretty notorious for going like 60 for the first half hour, and then they break, really fast, but not really finishers until we started finishing. And they kind of credited me for giving them the motivation inside the cockpit to do that. And I started forming more opinions. After I got to realizing from sitting in the right seat of a race car, knowing what it's like sitting in a pit, knowing what it's like doing a chase, knowing what it's like to be the program manager, all these various views on the same little knob, I said, do you know, done well, done correctly,

I believe the right seat can win two races a year for the left seat. It's like a catcher and a pitcher. Yeah. Again, we were talking about you being in the right seat, and you had said, being in the right seat, you thought you could pick up a couple wins a season by being prepared and taking the approach that you took. And I want to read a quote from your old teammate and your friend. We were talking about Ivan Stewart earlier. So this is a quote from Ivan Stewart. Ivan Stewart said, I wouldn't ride with Robbie, meaning Robbie Gordon.

I wouldn't ride with Robbie if you paid me. I really like Robbie, and I think he's truly a great driver, but I wouldn't ride with him. He's still too young, a little too enthusiastic in front of a crowd. I like riding with older drivers who have nothing to prove. You rode with Robbie Gordon a lot. Yeah. Can you play? I haven won't ride with Linda either, so come on.

Can you get into that? Tell me how, tell us how you were approached to tame the monster of Robbie Gordon. Now, again, he had Bob Gordon. He had a pretty damn good example of what to do. True. And pick it up. Robbie was a phenomenon from the very get-go. I mean, he started out with a lot of press, which for an 18-year-old kid could really kick your rhetoric in the wrong direction.

is my opinion. And to a degree, it seems to have done that with Robbie while they were watching. And he'd have his friends sitting in the right seat. And they were cheerleaders. You know, fly it, Robbie. Fly it. Ooh, dude. That guy needs no encouragement to fly it. No, he doesn't.

And if anything, you know, Robbie somehow after he and I spent some time together, saw the merits of keeping it out of the air, you can't turn, stop or go in the air. You have to be connected to the planet. And so he'd save his buggy hops and crazy shit for crowds. But man, when we got away from the crowd, it was back down on that desert floor, digging, digging, digging, digging. So when you get in with Robbie, he's young.

He was young. He was brash. He was all those things that Ivan says. He really was. And talented. and incredibly talented and you're what 45ish or age wise uh yeah summer you're mature you could be his dad yeah yeah he's needed one sometimes yeah all right so pick it up so so you get in with with Robbie and um we started making friends on the pre-run together he would he would be Robbie and and I would be Bob, and it finally came to the point where I was going to let him go ahead

and be Robbie without Bob on the pre-runs. All we had was a lap belt. Jesus. Are you in the, you're in, this is the hay hauler era? What are you? Well, it's his hay-haller era, correct? Late 80s. There was an earlier hay-haller, Jim Jacobus's pickup, which is an early Ford pickup,

high-beam car, builds the race car, but it was now Robbie's pre-runner. Lap belts with Robbie. Lap belts with Robbie. Flying. flying and private pilot with no license you know those two words are amazing what they do they can stir your emotions watch this well so there was a lot you know there's a lot of stuff going on to get in the car with robbie not to mention uh too too strongly Robbie didn't pick me he's now a Ford driver factory Ford driver Ford BFG and it was probably in his

early days learning about, you know, when you have sponsorship, you don't have autonomy or you're now owned. Hello? That's the deal. He was getting used to that. So he had, I think, a fair amount of skepticism. I don't know about distrust or whatever, but it wasn't a positive kumbaya deal, especially after I bailed on the pre-runs. You were like the vice principal or something having to sit in with the delinquent. Yeah. I'm going to sit right. I'm going to sit right here until you get this right. Well, I'm sure that he expected, well, I'm not sure. It would be hard to not imagine him expecting it. His co-driver is going to come in and tell me how to do my race truck. Bullshit. And ain't going to happen. Well, I was a little smarter than that. I have opinions. The guy driving

the car is in charge. He is the pilot in command. Period. Whether there's Robbie or I don't care who. Therefore, he's in charge. So it never made sense. sense to me, to any of the volatile drivers that had ever been with, to say, slow down, stop. Oh, oh, you dummy? All right, hear stories back. It's whacking the guy, whacking the driver. Bill Straup, Parnelli Jones. Well, in that case, I can see what Strapp had in mind.

Plus, it's Strop. It's Strop. And, but you don't do that, Michael. He's in charge of the thing. And as we started running, you know, pretty soon he started listening to me. I was never telling him anything to do. When we'd get a little froggy, you know, you're maybe just coming off to bump stops a little bit. You're playing a little bit, I can save it like this.

You can tell we're on the edge. And you learn a sense from the right seat is how far ahead of this truck is his driver. And you're measuring his mind, watching his feet. You're busy. So it's on the edge. Rather than to say slow down, that's like ordering the guy around. He's in charge. So Robbie, how long can the truck do this?

Is this an all-day thing? You shut up. Pretty soon, we lose about 300 hours. We're back down digging. There's another time that I know a guy at his attention. We're on the radio. It was, I believe, a Nevada 500. 90 or so

89 you're fresh in the relationship with him you started in 89 yeah did you start did you start with with Robbie in 89 88 88 so you're it's a new relationship yeah oh yeah yeah it's new and he's still

well like any two guys in a race car do you you gotta learn each other you have to learn to trust each other or get away from each other in car marriage in car marriage all right go ahead pick it up through what goes in the car, stays in the car, all that kind of stuff.

Nevada 500. We're a runner for the overall. We're lickedy split and we've got a pretty good gap on the guys behind. Over the radio comes a warning. It's a guy named Stutz, Dan Stutz from Ford. And he's on the radio to Robbie. He said, Robbie, Rob, you got to slow down. You've got to slow down.

Your times are too quick. You're going too fast with that section. We can't have you do this. You're going to break the truck. So I kind of looking around and say, well, Robbie, I said, you know, you're not on the bump stops. You're not plain I can save it. You're having fun. You can tell it because he's got his foot up on the dead pedal.

He's robbinging it through here. God. Talent. Screw him. Stutz is an idiot. He's not in the race car. You are. How's your race car, Robbie?

I never told a driver anything. I always ask questions. Ask questions. questions. Open-ended questions. There is a little science to it. Who, what, where, when, why, how. And they command an answer more often than not. And if you can command an answer out of a race driver, you've caused him to think. And if you cause him to think with a smart question, you've caused him to think what you want him to think. Without telling him. Without telling him. You've worked him all the way around in your mind to the answer that you want. You're like a, you're like a basset hound getting that rabbit right in front of the hunter. I'm a dad. I'm a dad. Diabolical dad. But that worked with a lot of drivers, frankly. I came to believe that that is the correct philosophy,

at least for the combination of me and the cockpit with somebody. And that was your secret sauce? Well, the secret sauce was consistently, driver knows they have my respect. Driver knows I'm paying very, very close attention to him. When I started asking them about their brake problems, and he's been trying to hide it, because I can see what's going on with the feet,

I'm no virgin. And I believe that feedback I've received from drivers that I've been with is that's a very comforting thing when they realize that they're not only not alone, but they're in there with a partner. Robbie was asked in an interview, pardon me, after some race, Gold Coast race, I think. Breast guy gets, says, Robbie, you know, why do you have this guy Bauer in the race truck? He's not media. He's not a mechanic. He doesn't own anything. Is he paying you?

And Robbie says, best compliment, Acley, Michael, I think I've ever received. He says, listen, he says, Bauer is over there racing his side of the truck just as fast as I'm racing mine. Wow. Wow. And I said, well, shut up, leave, take the wind.

But that's how drivers, I think, felt with me according to what they say. And then, you know, after a certain point, the right seat stuff became, people go out and say go get Bauer put your guy in with Bauer he'll teach them he'll mentor them he'll whatever

and at first I thought that was like kind of a come down until I realized no it's really the other way around it's a privilege yeah and can you can you break down what that I mean with Gopros and everything else people have been inside race cars now

When you were doing it, you didn't get to go to YouTube and say, well, what are these legends doing? How am I supposed to do this job? You figured it out. You made it work. And you were very successful at it. And as you said, probably on your side, as Robbie said, you're racing just as fast as he is over there. Can you just put us in that seat and tell us what a navigator, co-driver, what your responsibilities are? What you say, what you say, what happens?

You know, you have to change the tire, right? like a tire goes back the driver we have to change the time okay so just just tell us about how for folks who you know listen for folks who have no idea what the navigator does navigator does different things in different situations you know my recipe or or my activities aren't going to be the same as his activities with that driver so i i don't mean to describe here's how it's got it was you know it's here's bob's process And Bob's process starts probably about half an hour before we ever get to the start line while we're in a race truck. I mean, it starts earlier because there's all sorts of relationship things that go on before the race. But in the race car, I'm doing things on purpose that maybe don't matter. Maybe I'm just kidding myself.

First thing to do is I'm keeping a conversation going on. Relax, quiet, low tones, low energy, no hype. Keep my guy. Keep his pulse at 50. Don't get him excited. Don't get him distracted. Talk about the race course. Talk about today.

Talk about the assets. How are you feeling? Watch him carefully. I remember one driver, he had that wheel. We're still on the grid. Knuckles were white. I said, was it no? I won't use names.

Look at what your hands are doing with that wheel. You won't last 10 minutes that way. Let's get your thumbs. And let's do that kind of stuff. So my process always starts with, what's going on between their ears. So then you're coming up to the line. When you're three cars back, it's all business.

Then it's just monosyllable answers. Smart questions. No extra talk. No extra talk needed whatsoever. No wisecracks, comments, the chicky boom boom over there with a nice... No. Go like that.

And he knows it. You take off. I look for a reason to... praise my driver as early as I can for a reason, not false, for a reason. Fortunately, you know, in the first 30 minutes of a race, especially the Baja 1000, I don't believe that there's a more intense on-rush of input, and you know you have to select the three things that are output that are going to get you through, and seven that are going to whack you. So in the race car, you're doing the first half hour, you look for praise.

Then you start analyzing what's going on and start talking stuff. If he's the driver who wants turns called like we have now with GPS, you can call turns ahead of time. And I use a system in the GPS that I use range rings. I don't know if this matters to your listeners, but I use range rings on the GPS. I set it at about half a mile six-tenths. So the range rings come down. And I know that one ring is roughly two-tenths of a mile away, a quarter-mile away. So the curse comes through that, I said, obstacle, two-tenths.

Or do tense, we got a 45-right or right-or-right-45, however they like to hear it. And pretty soon you get into a cadence where they don't even have to understand. They know if he's going a quarter-mile out, then I'm going to run halfway to it, coming up on it, clear. Boom, boom, boom, boom, clear. Every time. The co-driver makes that habit. So that I said it before, but I mean it's even when you can't understand what I'm saying. I was with Reed Rutherford and his 7200 car, a little ecotech motor.

Just saying, I mean, you can't hear yourself think, much less intercom, but read new because of the cadence. So that's where you start doing things as a co-driver where you are partnering up and helping that driver. The story is about changing tires and diagnosing this and everything else. his opinion, more often come from the teams that don't have it organized in the cockpit. They're fixing things after they break. I believe what I'm trying to do is keep them from breaking to begin with. Let's keep rolling.

You're only good while you're rolling forward. That's pretty profound, Bob, and we're going to leave it right there, man. Wow. You're only one more time? I don't know. All right. Wow. Bob Bauer, what a delight. Thank you so much for opening your home and your house and telling all the neighbors to stop with their gardening for this period for Slow Baja. And just to close it up here, I do think you mean it. I do think you mean it when you say you're not just trying to flatter me, but going slow is the way to see Baja. Oh, yes. Absolutely. There's stories about things that happen at speed and how I feel.

feel about what I said about anything else. But, you know, your first couple of trips down there for a motorsport event, you feel racy, so you act racy. But then when you come down and you get to meet who the Baja people are, and the further south you go, the more gracious and the kinder they are. I've often believed, after being down there for 40 plus, you know, our neighbors down south could sure teach us gringos a thing or two about how to bring up children and how to treat our elders and you know how to keep community together keep the family together going at 40 miles an

hour matters it does you can smell it you certainly can we're going to keep a few questions for the next time we meet there's still a lot to talk about and i really appreciate it again we've got to get down the road i've got five more stops between here and ensanada and we're off to the nora tonight. So I really appreciate you making some time. So thank you. It's actually been my pleasure. Thank you for finding me. I appreciate that too. It was the mustache and the beard and the twinkle in your eye. All right. Thanks, Bob. You're welcome. Hey, well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Bob. Bauer, one amazing dude. Really, an amazing human being. That glint in his eye is legit. And do take a second. You know, it's right now. It's the Baja 1,000 time. A lot of people are heading down to

to chase the race and take a minute, read that, what about you? I got to tell you. I hope it changes somebody's behavior and saves the life. I really do. All right, well, enough about that. If you like what I'm doing here, if you like what I'm doing, and it's November and you're listening all year and you wish there were more episodes, take a second. Drop a taco in the tank. Really, you know, I can't do this show without you, folks. Really, I can't reach in, reach in deep. Hit that donate link. Drop a taco in the tank and help me. keep this show on the road, meeting people in their homes, meeting people in Baja. I was just at the Chenet Lodge, sat down right at the table that I interviewed Johnny Johnson at. And of course,

he's not there anymore. And it just made me happy that I spent that time that I got that interview. And if you're happy, then I'm doing that stuff. Really, take a second. Drop a taco in the tank. If you don't have any tacos, I get it. I do not have any tacos in my tank at the moment. but hit that five-star review on Apple or Spotify. Say something nice about why you're still listening to the show 100-something episodes later. And share the show with a friend. Send it along to somebody you know loves Baja and tell them why you're still spending this time with me.

Got some great new stuff in the shop, including Canvas shopping bag. I made some really nice canvas shopping bags for the Slow Baja Vintage Expedition. I made some extras because I thought people might want to have one here. It's going into the holidays. It's got a zipper. You can put your stuff in it, take it to the beach, throw it in the sand, zip it up. Nobody's going to mess with it. It's got a zipper pocket inside the zippered top. So it's double security. Throw your keys in there. Throw your phone in there. Throw your wallet in there. Whatever is important to you. Throw it in the inside pocket, zip it up and then zip up the outside. Man alive. Who's thinking like that for you? It's Slow Baja approved. Check it out. Slow Baja Canva Canvas shopping bag at the Slow Baja shop. All right, enough. Enough. about that. I'll be back with something fun before you know it. And to tell you about Off-road Motorsports Hall of Famer Mary McGee's pal Steve McQueen, you know, he loved Baja.

Steve McQueen did. He said Baja is life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.