What It’s Like Driving a Honda Ridgeline Baja Race Truck

Eyes up. Look up the road at what's coming, not what's right in front of you. It's a fundamental driving lesson that applies as much to your commute as it does to the racetrack. It's easier said than done, especially when what's in front of you are 3-foot-deep craters you're hitting at 80-plus mph. Astonishingly less difficult is the second rule of driving the Honda Ridgeline Baja Race Truck and its competitors: Don't lift.

From the sidelines and even the co-driver's seat, it seems like madness. The Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4 I drove out to the Honda Off-Road Racing Team's shakedown in the Mojave Desert would have to crawl down this "road" under 5 mph to keep from tearing the front end off. Even on the "smooth" sections, it would be hard to top 40 mph for fear of losing control or rattling the truck apart.

Even watching the Ridgeline Baja Race Truck leave the pit area at low speed makes you think going faster would be a bad idea. The truck bobs up and down over the whoops like aDeadliest Catchcrab boat in stormy seas. When it comes back at full race pace, though, it starts to make sense. With 2 to 3 feet of suspension travel, Baja trucks like Honda's Class 7 Ridgeline work best when they're bouncing across the tops of the bumps, not dropping down into them. The long-travel suspension allows the wheels to drop at least partway into the holes and pop back up again while the chassis and body float along mostly undisturbed. It almost looks as if the hand of God is holding the truck by the body and dragging the wheels along the uneven ground. Seeing how violently the suspension is moving up and down convinces you it ought to just explode at any minute, not do 800 miles of this nonsense in 26 hours (16 hours for the top-level Trophy Trucks).

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It doesn't look any more sane from the right seat. Not constrained to focusing on what's ahead, you can't help but stare at the holes and humps you're about to hit. To any normal person, every one of them looks like the last thing you'll see before the crash. Every time, you think, "That one's gonna hurt," but then it doesn't. The holes and humps that look like they'll either shatter your spine or send the truck careening through the air like a cop car in a Hollywood thriller don't do either. Oh, you feel them, but it's more like hitting a freshly filled pothole on the freeway that hasn't been tamped down yet.

All I could do in the right seat was laugh at the absurdity of it. Indy 500 winner Alexander Rossi, who helped drive this truck to second in class last year, is pushing 90 mph according to the GPS tracker on my navigator's screen, and every moment of it feels like it could be the one where we stuff it. But we don't. Rossi is the coolest thing in this desert by at least 50 degrees, only lifting slightly when we get completely airborne to smooth out the landing. Within minutes, we're on a smoother section, and the GPS is cresting 115 mph.

Now it's my turn. Hard on the brake. The sequential automatic transmission will only go into gear when it's moving, so it's already in first when you start it up. Modulate the throttle, or you're just going to make rooster tails. It's got 550-ish horsepower, and it's rear-wheel drive. Shift to second with a hard pull on the shifter.

Picking up speed now; time to get serious. Look up the road, not at the whoops and holes in front of you. Look at those, and you'll wreck. Looking up the road keeps you from trying to correct your line through every single obstacle at the last second. The beauty of this suspension is your line doesn't have to be perfect or even close to it.

Keep your foot in it. It still sounds crazy, but ignore that. You can feel it; the truck works best when it's skipping over the terrain rather than digging into it. Slowing down actually makes it worse. Be gentle with the steering wheel, slow hands. The truck's going to move around under you, and that's OK. Don't try to correct everything the tail does—it'll stay behind you.

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It's kinda like driving a boat: Just point it in the right direction and don't overthink it. And if you do have to correct something, don't overcorrect. That's a one-way ticket to a rollover, and you don't want to go that show. If it feels like it might be getting into a tank slapper, you're not looking far enough up the road. Focus on that, and your hands will follow and naturally get the truck back into line rather than chasing it around.

Time to turn. This is the tricky part, and nothing but seat time is going to make it easier. The Ridgeline has way more body roll than a street truck, and the first time you turn the wheel it feels like you're going to roll it. You're not. Yeah, it leans over a lot, but then it stops and takes a set. You just have to get used to it. It will roll over if you turn it too hard, so be sure to slow it up for tighter corners.

Slowing is actually the easiest part. I couldn't really tell you what the brake pedal feels like because I barely used it. The engine braking, aerodynamics, and terrain slow the truck down real quick, and slamming the shifter forward for a downshift only helps. Most of the time, just lifting off the throttle slows you right down to where you need to be. The only time it seems you really need the brakes is for the really tight corners when you want to carry as much speed as you can and brake as late as possible. Or a pit stop.

If you've driven a Honda Talon, Polaris RZR, Yamaha YXZ, or similar high-performance side by side, you get it. You drive the Ridgeline Baja Race Truck the same way, just two or three times faster. After pre-running the course in a Talon and then in the Ridgeline, though, you'll never go back. The speed is addictive, and the fact the ride is even less punishing is a bonus. In a Talon, 40 mph across the whoops feels crazy fast if you've only ever driven a pickup or a Jeep off-road, but it feels like you could get out and run faster after you've done it in a Baja Truck.

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It's got more in common with a side by side than you'd think, far more than it does with a stock Ridgeline, anyway. The Ridgeline Baja Race Truck is a tube frame mostly covered with fiberglass panels that use a few Ridgeline styling cues and underpinned by custom independent front and live-axle rear suspension. At its heart, though, it's a still a Ridgeline. Per Class 7 rules, the block and heads are the same as those in a production Ridgeline. Of course, the 3.5-liter SOHC V-6 has been crammed with race parts and has a pair of turbos hanging off it, but it still counts.

Forget the semantics. What matters is the Ridgeline Baja Race Truck is life-altering to drive, and with either a class win or a podium finish at every race it's entered (including class victories at the Baja 500 and 1000), it's no PR stunt. It's real, it's real fast, and I need one.