I played a lot of sports growing up. In basketball, the five of us on the court were moving as one unit, running plays to get the ball to the best shooter to score points. In football, everyone had their assignment to clear a path for one man to take the ball and make his way to the endzone. And, in baseball, everyone’s individual performance in their own position with their own solitary moments at the plate came together for a hopeful win. But, recently, I was able to go behind the scenes with the Polaris Racing Team at the Baja 1000 and learned a new concept that my sports history never taught me: Competitive camaraderie. The idea of focusing on your individual performance and competing against your teammate to win a race, while also cheering for their success, is a dynamic entirely new to me. And while it is common in the race world of all types, seeing it up close was a new experience, and one everyone should get someday.
Military precision
One of the first things I noticed during this experience was the military precision. I sat and watched the pre-race brief and was taken back to my days in the United States Army. The men and women gathered around the highest-ranking person in the room while they absorbed the mission brief presented at the front of the room. Starting with defining the goal (in this instance, it was much easier as everyone showed up in Baja with the distinct mission to win), he then moved on to how they would accomplish the goal. Finally, he outlined everyone’s role in the mission. It felt so similar that I was not surprised at all when he revealed Baja ceremonial coins, exactly like we received in the field, mission coins as a memento of your service.
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One of the more illuminating moments during that day was the opportunity to watch the pit crew practice up close. I had never seen a pit crew outside of on TV or in Days of Thunder…yeah, that movie. The team broke down an incredibly complex process into small, individual steps with one theme that also took me back to my military days: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
I then got the opportunity to speak to the drivers, and that is where I got the chance to learn more about the one thing that seemed so UNFAMILIAR to me. The idea of competitive camaraderie. When I spoke with 2024 champion, Brock Heger, I revelled in how unbothered he was by the situation. He was simply excited to be racing against his teammates because he knew one of them was winning the next day. He hoped it was him, but he knew it was going to be a tough race. Then came Cayden MacCachren, a man who had competitive camaraderie not only with his fellow drivers but also with the legend that is his father in the industry. And then, the next day, I got a chance to ride next to Max Eddy Jr., who made his name in motocross before joining the other two and giving them a run for their money. At the end of the day, MacCachren was victorious, but the real winner was Polaris.
Problems on the fly
Military precision preparation isn’t to ensure nothing goes wrong. The hardest part of figuring this out is accepting that something will go wrong, and you have to be ready for every possibility and the eventuality. In the first two hundred miles of the race, one of the drivers broke a part in his steering assembly and wasn’t going to make it to the pit stop. This could have killed any chance he had of finishing the race. Instead, the engineering team set up a pit stop using only the equipment they had in their trucks to repair his vehicle and get it back on the track. What’s better? The hour-long job was accomplished in an astonishing 24 minutes.
Going behind the scenes with Polaris gave me a rare opportunity to see the military precision at work. But it also gave me the understanding that preparation and attention to detail allow Heger, MacCachgren, and Eddy Jr. to focus on one thing: helping their team win by beating their teammates in the ultimate display of competitive camaraderie.
