GOODSPRINGS, Nev. – If you look closely enough, you can still see bullet holes in the wall of the Pioneer Saloon. It’s one of those quintessentially western places outside of Las Vegas that teeters on the edge of kitsch and danger, which is to say it’s extremely Nevada Desert. Not much has changed at the Pioneer Saloon over the years. The beers are still cold (although you can get an IPA now). The ghost burger is still on the menu (with ghost pepper sauce). And it’s still a hangout for bikers, off-roaders, and just about anyone who can’t quite be put into a box and wouldn’t want to if there was an appropriate noun for it anyway.
I wouldn’t have ever found the Pioneer Saloon if it wasn’t for Rob MacCachren. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have done a lot of things I’ve done over the past couple years if it wasn’t for Rob MacCachren.
Rob is a living legend in off-road racing. And he just so happened to be the first off-road driver I ever met. For all his time in the desert, in Baja, on dirt tracks, and even in the snow, MacCachren still races the same way.
“I’m usually not leading at the beginning,” MacCachren tells me in October as part of a BFGoodrich ridealong in Jean (Nev.) across part of the original Mint 400 course in his personal buggy. “You watch me in videos and I’m not on the highlight reel. I never make highlights. I’m never jumping the highest. I’m never jumping the farthest. But I’m there and I’m always a player at the end.”
MacCachren’s personal mantra is that “you have to race slow enough to win.” It’s hard to argue with the results. He was inducted into the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame at the age of 45, has won just about every race you can win in off-road (including a three-year streak at the Baja 1000), and took home his first ever Mint 400 overall in 2017 – an important one for a Vegas native.
He’s practically zen, if a racer could ever be zen. And his approach carries into everything he does, from racing to parenting to his rooting interests in other sports (he loves how the Warriors have transformed basketball, but prefers the Spurs’ – and Gregg Popovich’s – process to the game rather than Golden State’s rush to snag Kevin Durant).
“His mental game is so high and he’s been coached by some of the people who created the sport,” Mint 400 CEO Matt Martelli says. “He will go out and qualify fifth on purpose.”
It was MacCachren who inspired me to chase off-road racing despite never having been on an ATV until two years ago, MacCachren (and off-road historian Marty Fiolka) who pushed me to go to Baja for the first time in the first place, MacCachren who put the idea of getting a truck (okay, a 1986 Ford Bronco II), and MacCachren who helped me fall in love with the desert.
If someone could be that passionate about this after all these years, there had to be something there.
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I first seriously entertained the idea of driving across the country when I lived in Wilmington, N.C. To spare the details of exactly who – or what – I was at that time, it’s important to know a couple tiny things. I copyedited in the morning. I drank at night. I had two goldfish named Pacey and Dawson (Dawson died first, naturally). And I was on medication for Bipolar II. Instincts no matter how small became the most important thing in the world. Depressive states felt like they’d last forever. And when I was manic? Well there’s no person in the world I hate more in my life than that person.
There’s a sign as you’re leaving Wilmington (no, not the Michael Jordan one) with towns and distances right as I-40 begins. Rose Hill is 40 miles away. Raleigh is 125 miles out. And you can get to Barstow in 2,485 miles. I-40 (with the help of Route 66) can take you almost entirely across the country, with I-15 meeting you the rest of the way.
Every single time I passed that sign a part of me wanted to do it. Leave everything behind and go West the same way I packed my tiny attic apartment in Cleveland and went to Wilmington with no answers in the first place. Something always held me back. But the instinct never left. And the more time I spent around racers like Rob Mac, the more it grew.
MacCachren is like any other racer: he admits he wouldn’t be able to continue doing this sport or make a living off it if it wasn’t for his sponsors and partners. It’s just part of racing, from NASCAR to off-road to Olympic speed skating. Someone other than family and friends has to support you along the way, and if you’re lucky enough to get brands involved, it’s easier to put a plan in place translating dream into reality. Obviously, the talent needs to be there as well – or, like Rob mentions, “one bowling ball sized rock to a tire and then that’s it.”
Since 1991, MacCachren has worked with BFGoodrich. The feedback loop works both ways for both the racers and the tire manufacturer. Off-road is the perfect testing ground for new technologies. And the drivers have consistently found that these tires hold up when making the peninsula run through Baja or racing the dirt track at Crandon.
I thought BFGoodrich would balk at the suggestion that they help me make the drive, otherwise, the Bronco would be staying in Charlotte when I moved to Los Angeles. Instead they offered up a set of KO2 tires, helpful suggestions, and a stipend toward repairs, and told me to give it a shot.
When I let MacCachren know I was doing it, he said the same thing he tells every racer who asks him for advice: “drive slow enough to win.”
The speedometer went on me after Day 1. The engine had trouble starting in Oklahoma City. The dog pocketed a couple chicken bones in Albuquerque. And I heard way too much Ed Sheeran over a five-day stretch. But I made the drive, and the Bronco made it with me (even if it went dead on the 134 near North Hollywood, but that’s all fixed now). The Bronco is a part of my new life in California, and a constant reminder that even when you don’t want to ask, if you’re willing to there are people out there who care enough to help. And sometimes a long drive isn’t just for running away; it can be a chance to run toward something.
MacCachren has had plenty of long drives, from Mexico and Montreal to Wisconsin and Maine, and he’s still going strong at 52. As he says while we’re zooming over a dry lakebed at a touch under 100 mph, “[Driving] is my job, it’s my passion, it’s my living. It’s everything to me.”
Uproxx had the chance to go in depth with Rob MacCachren again in January after the 2017 Baja 1000. He got personal, sharing his thoughts on life, his career, racing, and the desert.
You’ve got Baja in your rearview, but the Mint is coming up. The off-season isn’t really an off-season is it?
Rob MacCachren: I’m already going, “Holy sh*t, where is the time going?” And it seems like every off-season, which, November, December, January, really isn’t an off-season anyway, for us. People think that, but it’s harder and there’s more work to do, getting prepared for the next season than actually when you’re in the season. It’s never-ending. It’s what I do, or what we do.
It’s one of those things there, where you’ve done it enough times that you kind of have your checklist to go through, but you’re always learning something. Technology’s always changing. Even if you have the master list, you still have to complete it, and that takes time.
Yeah, and what I find, and I don’t know if it’s a good attribute or a bad one is that I’m constantly trying to get better, which creates more things to do. So I’m constantly looking at that list that’s somewhat repetitious and I’m adding to it. And that’s hard. As much as we try to get more prepared or get ahead of the curve or ahead of the game with everything, it seems like we fall farther behind in the way. And I think mostly that is, like I said, I think I’m creating more stuff, trying to cross more Ts and dot more Is, and that makes us busier. So, trying to get better.
Every driver typically treats the course differently, or at least their approach is different. And you’re not a “guns blazing” driver like some guys are. But it doesn’t seem as though you’re boxed yourself into a plan. So you’re somewhere in the loose stage, but you let the course come to you. Was that something you learned early, or is that something that had to come in time, after a few wrecks?
Exactly. In the beginning, my first year of racing, I did really well. I actually raced in a smaller series here in the Nevada area, and actually won all six races that very first year. But then we built another race car, one that was able to go a little bit faster, and I ended up winning and losing. I’d crash or break the transmission or blow the motor up, and through that time, the next two or three years, there was wins and there was DNFs and crashes. It became not fun to me.
Through time, I believe my main goal was always to win the championship. It was hard to win every race as well as the championship, so it became pretty much my MO. In the early days, some of the statements that my parents would say to me: one, “Keep it simple, stupid.” And another one: “Finish the race to finish first,” right?
With all that being said, and those seem lame and old, but at the time they didn’t mean a whole lot to me. But as time went on and races went on, finally I think some of that stuff landed, hit me, and I said, “Yeah, I get it now.” And you gotta finish the race to win the championship, and you don’t have to win them all. You gotta not take chances, because when I did, I learned from the mistakes and as time went on, I told my team, I go, “Hey guys, I feel it’s really easy to win the championship. We just can’t have mechanical failures with the race vehicle. I’ll handle the race and the races and make sure that I keep us in contention and don’t do anything stupid during the race to try to get on the podium or to finish.”
I need to stay in contention with whosever leading, I don’t need to be leading from the green flag. I just need to stay close, stay in touch with them, and typically in off-road racing, and I think in most racing, and I’ll specifically go back to off-road racing, I don’t know if it’s 80 percent of the people, when they put their helmet on, some of them throw their brains out the window. Because they wanna go, they want the adrenaline rush. They wanna jump really high. They wanna go as fast as the race car can possibly go, or truck. And I don’t need to do that. I don’t need to jump high. I don’t need to jump the farthest. I don’t need to do any of that. I don’t need to show off in front of the people in the desert races. I don’t need to show off; I don’t do any of that.
I’ve learned to cruise and be smart, take care of your vehicle, and usually at the end of the race, if there’s 50 people that entered, say the Mint 400 or Baja 1000, if there’s 40 or 50 trophy trucks, before that race even starts, there’s about 15-20 that can win. If we threw them a little bit, and I get down to 10, and then when the race starts, you’re not even halfway in, you’re down to 5 guys, maybe, or even less, that are still there in contention to win.
Typically, when you’re in the final stage or the last 25 percent of the race, you’re down to two or three guys, that’s it. My playbook is to make sure you’re one of those guys and a lot of times what happens with that is I end up landing on the podium, but I don’t win. But I’m in contention for the championship. So I sometimes wrestle with myself. Hey, my plan put me behind a minute or two or three or whatever and at the end, when I was trying to go win the race, I couldn’t catch up. I couldn’t make up the time that I’m down, and I didn’t win, but I got second or third or whatever it may have been and then I’m like, “Man, maybe my MO is wrong,” but in the end I think I’m so instilled with trying to win the championship.
I say it about other people that have never won a trophy truck race or an off-road race in any class, or even short-course, they’ve never won, and they try so hard and they take chances. And those chances and trying hard ends up causing them issues or failures because of that. And if they’d ever win one, they say, “Oh, it’s that easy?” Or, “I just made sure I stayed out of trouble, and guess what? I’m the winner.”
If you look back at it, especially the desert races, usually the guy that’s leading halfway is not the winner. I’m not the fastest guy during the race. I definitely wanna be in the top five, and I’m actually really happy with being third, fourth, or fifth in qualifying. I’m really happy with that, especially in Baja, because you really don’t wanna open the road.
What do you think is the biggest change in off-road racing in the time since you’ve started? You can win or lose three different 500-mile races in a matter of three to four minutes total now, when, if you look at some of the logbooks from way back, you’re talking hours of difference between the first and second place finishers.
Yeah. It’s technology, honestly, and the repetition of building the cars. So you had to take care of the tires, you had to take care of the transmissions, and you had to take care of the brakes. And nowadays, the technology’s changing, and honestly the vendors or the manufacturers of the parts have really caught up. Now you can go buy the stuff off the shelf. You can go to Fox shops or King and buy the shocks. Obviously BFGoodrich has awesome tires, and to me they’re the leaders. Since I’ve been with them in 1991, they’re always going and testing and improving, and they used to spend multiple days in the desert with Ivan Stewart and Larry Ragland, and in the early 1990s I used to go, too. We had three trucks of different types of builds, and BFGoodrich would spend time out there and have a helicopter, have semis, have everything and they just test, test, test.
But plain and simple, now a guy, if you want the best trophy truck, you pretty much go to about three to five builders. If you want the best engine, you go to three builders of engines. Transmissions, there’s two or three. Tires, if you want the best tires, you pretty much know where you should go to buy them. Now everyone knows what you need to win. Now we tune our trucks to what we like. The suspension, the tire pressure, sway bars, you tune it to what you like. You used to have to build it yourself, modify it, and really work on it. Now, you can buy everything off the shelf. You can go to vendors like Cartech or Mackenzie’s and you can say, “I want the best stuff,” and there it is. You just buy it; you don’t have to build it anymore in the shop.
That’s really made the competition close, and as well with the transmissions and engines, same. You pick one of those trucks, and you pretty much got what you need. Now you just have to be able to drive and not be stupid and throw your head out the brain. They already do it, and a lot of them, it’s a hobby. You think about it, this is a hobby for a lot of people, and they want that adrenaline rush. They wanna go 140-something miles an hour. They wanna jump 100 feet or 10 feet up in the air. They wanna do that. But that’s not what gets you the win. There’s three to five guys that are gonna win, and then, if somebody else wins, you look at what happened and you go, “Oh, okay, well this is what happened and that’s why that guy won.” Typically with every race, there’s a reason why that guy won, and it’s because other people broke or they had issues.
What have you learned from guys like Walker Evans, and what is your approach to being a steward of off-road racing now that you’ve gotten into basically that sweet spot of your career, where so many people are looking up to you who are getting into the sport, but you still are that bridge between the old guard and the young guys who are trying to take you down?
A lot of it, going back to the some of the things I’ve already said, the experience and being a young kid and wanting to set the world on fire, or the track on fire, and beat everybody. As time goes on, I’ve learned that a little bit from the legends, and I’ve learned probably a lot more of it on my own about how to finish the race. I’ve reflected on it fairly recently about the age and being appreciative, but I can keep doing this and Walker and like I said, Larry Ragland won three Baja 1000s in a row when he was in his 50s. This was when I was in my early 40s thinking that, well now here I am in my early 50s, and I just won three Bajas in a row being 49, 50, and 51.
I used to race for Walker. He was gonna retire when he was 50, and I was gonna get to drive his truck. Well, he didn’t retire, and I had to leave and go to find another ride, basically, because I wanted to keep going up the ladder, but he didn’t retire. He went until he was 60, so thankfully, in off-road racing, it’s not Supercross, it’s not NASCAR, it’s not as physically demanding. I think that experience is one of the things that really help the older people or myself or anyone be able to keep doing it.
I use the example, in short-course racing, it’s a 15-minute sprint race let’s say, 15-20 minutes, it’s a sprint race. I remember being, ten years ago, I remember catching or finding myself breathing hard while I was racing. I don’t do that anymore. It’s weird, and the only thing I can say is, I think that I’m so comfortable doing it, that it’s not building me up like that, not making me work hard and breathe hard.
I don’t know how to explain it, maybe we go talk to some professionals about that and ask them, or put some heart monitors and stuff like that on me, and find out what is going on. Because when I get out of the truck now in short-course, I don’t feel like I’m sweating. I don’t feel like I’m at a loss of breath, and I’m definitely not breathing hard during the race, which I know that I used to. I know, because I remember coming to a yellow and huffing and puffing. And I don’t do that anymore.
Thankfully, for some reason, and I guess I can say I feel like I’m maybe just the experience and being calm about it now and being through it so many times really calmed me down. Racing against the younger guys nowadays, I see them come in and they’re driving their ass off and as time goes on, I feel they make mistakes. They’re making mistakes, where me, I minimize my mistakes and my lap time may not be the fastest, but it’s right there but I don’t make a mistake, so in the end I’m actually faster over the whole time.
The older guys, it’s weird to me that I was that kid one time looking up to the Ivan Stewart and Larry Ragland and Walker Evans. Also being a 20-year-old saying, “Oh that guy’s 40, he’s old,” now it’s kinda weird. Here I am, early 50s, and when I’m hanging out with the 20 and 30-year-olds in a group, I don’t feel like I’m different from them. I still feel like I’m one of them.
For the most part, and these guys, they have a lot of respect, the young guys; it’s really neat. They have a lot of respect, they look up to you, they do wanna knock you off, they do want your job. They want your sponsors. I was that same guy. I feel I had a lot of respect. I had a really lot of respect for the older [guys] and kind of felt like it wasn’t my place to be where they were. But my time would come and I guess my time is there where I’m one of those guys. But I also feel like I’m one of the young guys as well. I feel like I’m just like everyone else. Still at this time I feel like I can beat them all, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMjnQ7RtUs
Ar you able to learn from a guy like Bryce Menzies, who is out there, still picking up knowledge, but racing at such a high level? You wanna compete with guys like that, so you don’t wanna share too many trade secrets, but off-road racing as a sport is also so different from other sports where there is comradery. You guys are all in this together. You can’t be racing in the desert if you don’t get along.
It’s amazing, in all my years of racing, if you were to ask me, “Who’s your enemy?” In all my racing, if I’ve ever had an enemy, it probably has never lasted for more than a couple months. I’ve kept racing against these people. I’ve had my run-ins with Ricky Johnson … would probably be the most, but we each respect each other, we had common goals, and we understand each other, and we pretty much, within a couple months, we’re back to high-fiving and everything. Because we get it and it’s really weird, because I feel, over the years, that the media or the television or the promoters want the rivalries. And I don’t think that they happen that much.
Prior to a race, whether it be the Baja 1000 or short-course races, if you were over in staging, you’d see us in a circle, you’re competitors. Prior to Baja 1000 you would see Robby Gordon, Bryce Menzies, Rob Maccachren, Andy McMillin all sitting in a circle, maybe praying together, maybe shaking hands, wishing each other be safe and good luck. Sometimes people don’t say good luck, Ricky Johnson’s famous for this, he goes, “I’m not gonna tell you good luck, I’m gonna tell you see you on the podium.” So that’s a Ricky statement.
Back to Bryce, I wanna help these guys but also they’re trying to beat me and knock me off. When Bryce started, I basically was on the same team. His dad brought me in, and being here in Vegas, some other friends knew Bryce’s dad Steve and they said “Hey, you need to get Rob on the team, he knows this stuff and he can help out and help with Bryce and everything.”
In the beginning, Bryce was like the young kid that didn’t give two cents about it and just, I’m not even sure that he really wanted to do it. Now he’s out and I see him setting the world on fire, and he’s winning the Baja 1000 by 20 minutes, but the truck breaks. I see the preparation before this year’s Dakar, and I’m just going like, “Man, he’s not doing what he should be doing.” And I wish I could go help him and I should go tell him, but it’s not my job to, because he wants to beat me, too.
So the Bryces and these young kids, they’re coming, they’re trying, they’re doing. Bryce is racing against me, it’s been awhile since he’s won a trophy truck race, and I feel for him. Maybe when I was told when I was young, “Keep it simple, stupid” and “to finish first, first you must finish,” things like that, they really stuck in my head.
Maybe that’s what’s helping me and not helping these younger guys, which, in a lot of ways, I’m fine with it. Because it’s prolonging my career.
You’ve learned a lot about racing from racing in the desert. And I’ve found that even just being out there in small portions of time, I’ve learned a lot about myself, being out there. You, having grown up in Nevada, you had to have learned a ton about yourself being out there in those moments, where it’s just you and the elements.
What’s funny is just in daily life and racing, to me, it’s my business. It ends up being a lot of work, and it’s stressful. You’re always worried, year to year: sponsorship, continuing on, how long can this go. It’s how I feed my family. It’s not a hobby. I run my own racing, I don’t just show up and drive for somebody and get a paycheck. I have to run my own racing, get the funding to run the team, and then figure out budgets, and end up trying to figure out how to pay myself as well.
So racing, actually getting in the race vehicle, whether short-course or desert, actually that’s the easy part. And when I’m pre-running, especially in Baja, I get to reflect, think about things, enjoy the scenery, relax, if you wanna call it that, and just reflect on the past, think about the future. And the right thing as well, it’s funny, but getting in the race truck and competing is actually more calming to me than day-to-day. What have I learned about myself? It’s really, I guess saying, that you need to be calm, that there’s no benefit to be hauling ass, going crazy, trying to set the world on fire.
It’s also, I’m trying to think of some other things, but it’s very rewarding to have your own team be instrumental in how everything gets put together, from the tire pressure that you put in it to the shock settings to the sway bars to the pits to everything orchestrating a race. And then having it come to fruition and possibly winning. That is very rewarding and probably maybe more rewarding to me, especially with some of these races, putting all that together and then having it come to fruition and being the overall winner, and reflecting back on all the people. How did all that come together? And all the people and all the manpower and all the time that it took to organize all that and being thankful for all those people that played a part of it.
I guess I’ve learned to be patient. You gotta take the highs with the lows; in off-road racing there’s a lot of lows. There’s only one winner. These races, they only come once a year. When you don’t conquer ’em and win ’em like you planned out to do, you have to wait 364 days to do it again. We won three Baja 1000s in a row. I think I’ve raced my first Baja 1000 in 1986, and I know I’ve missed one since 1986, but it took me all the way until 2007 to win my first one overall, and then it took all the way until 2014 to win the second one overall.
Now that I’ve won, it took those many years to win, and then you win three in a row. And then when I don’t win in 2017, I’m destroyed. It’s the biggest letdown that I’ve ever had, was to not win this last one.
What would you tell someone who’s never seen an off-road race? Why is it what it is? What makes people so passionate about this if they’ve never been exposed to it? Because for me, I think you just have to be there, you have to see it, but for those people who haven’t had that opportunity yet, what is it about off-road racing that people just can’t get enough of it?
Some people, maybe they would understand, there’s people that get addicted to golf, and they gotta go golf. I don’t, but I think that a golfer has 18 holes to play to try to get a good score. And it takes many hours to play those 18 holes to try to beat your score by one shot. In off-road racing, I think it’s the same thing. The comparison can be there. For me, it’s crossing the desert at high rates of speed, and trying to go faster than anyone else in the race. You’re trying to get over the bumps, through the bumps, faster than anyone, but also smarter. Back to the fastest guy, I know he’s the winner, but you’ve gotta be smarter.
Here’s what I say, I had the chance to do NASCAR racing, the trucks. When the trucks first started, I had a chance to do that, and I did. I practiced and raced a couple exhibition races and did some other stuff on short-track ovals, and I just didn’t like it. It was the same thing. It was the same asphalt, same left-hand corner, turns one two, turns three four, one two three four, it was the same thing, same thing. I’m like, “You know what? I just don’t like this.”
And for off-road racing, it’s completely different. Baja 1000, we have peninsula runs. It’s over 1000 miles of one direction. You never touch the same piece of dirt twice. Our lap races are 250, 400-mile lap races. Every lap you come around, the terrain’s different, the rocks are moved, it’s getting rougher because there’s 100 or 200 other vehicles that are out there on the race course at the same time that you are. And you’re trying to go faster, to be smarter, and to win the race over all the other guys, and think it’s an addiction.
Golfing, you can come back and do the same 18 holes the very next day. In our racing, there’s not another race on the exact same race course until a year later. There’s other races, the very next weekend there’s probably a different race, you can go do that, but it’s just the whole culmination of the preparation of the race truck, or buggy, from what you have, how you build it, how you prepare it, the parts you choose, the people you surround yourself with, to starting the race, to not having problems, to having great pit stops, and to having a little bit of luck on your side as well, to hopefully be the winner.
For me, I guess you can say it’s an addiction. It’s my job, it was my hobby at one time, it turned into my passion, which turned into my career, and I love doing it. Most of the time, like yourself, you saying when you’ve experienced it, you’ve experienced different parts of it and now it’s part of your life. And I think people that get into this, they love it.
Plus the family part of it. The comradery amongst the racers and the spectators. Even during the races, the spectators can meet with the pit crews. There’s nothing dividing the two. There’s a lot of freedom. You could call racing “The Wild West.” There’s not a fence around the track in desert racing. People can go just about anywhere in Baja and watch whatever they want to watch. It’s an amazing sport.
This interview has been briefly condensed for clarity. Uproxx was invited on a hosted trip to Nevada for a ride along with BFGoodrich and Rob MacCachren over SEMA weekend.
