At precisely 10:35 A.M. on Friday morning, November 21, 2008, truck driving man Cameron Steele will roll up to the starting line in his Monster Energy-backed 442-cubic inch, 860-horsepower motivated #16 Desert Assassin Trophy Truck, jam it into gear, take off in a tire melting, asphalt wrinkling wall of sound and billow of smoke, racing along like a bat out of hell to look for sand and dirt and begin the teeth chattering, spine compressing 629.74-mile race known as the 41st Tecate SCORE Baja 1000.

Otherworldly tough race trucks with skeletons made around a tube-chassis spine of 4130 chrome-moly steel and fiberglass, Steele will go to war with 28 other Trophy Trucks. The premiere classification in ALL of SCORE off road racing, the Trophy Truck class is the Formula 1 of off road racing, where everyone looks the other way when rules and regulations are brought up. To that end, to make a run at the front in the fiercely fought, money burning, club swinging class requires the tactical planning, man power and technical and equipment resources of a full-on army.

Cameron, while many people know you from the TV work you’ve done with the ESPN/ABC/NBC/CBS and Speed TV networks — as well as being heavily involved in actions sports — you were actually brought up in desert racing, weren’t you?
I was. I’m actually look at an ad in the Baja 1000 program that shows the start of our family’s history in Baja 38 years ago.

How far back does your family’s history at Baja go?
My dad went the first time in 1970 and raced the first time in 1971.

So you went down there every year with him?
I started going in 1972.

How old would you have been then?
I was four, I think.

So Baja truly is in your bloodlines…
Yeah, a lot of people don’t really understand that I raced off road for a long time before I raced supercross, rode freestyle and even rode waves for a living. I left off road racing in 1992 because my mom was diagnosed with cancer. So I left off road racing for, really nine years, total. I didn’t come back full-time until 11 years later. So a lot of people thought I was just a television commentator. They didn’t realize I had already won a number of off road racers.

You started off road racing again in 2003, and not long after, started the Desert Assassins, What are the Desert Assassins and what is the group all about?
The Desert Assassins is just for fun. It’s a group of people who are fully dedicated to off road racing. It’s a desert family. I hate team names that have their name on it. It just bugs, you know? I thought we’d just come up with something different and Desert Assassins was a little bit offensive and thought people might remember it so off we went.

When did the Desert Assassins actually form?
The Desert Assassins thing didn’t come around until 2005.

When you came back to racing, was it your goal to compete in the Trophy Truck classification?
Actually, you know, I didn’t have a goal to get to Trophy Truck. My goal was just to win races and get back to establishing myself as a threat, which obviously, we were as kids. For me, I wanted to be as good as I ever was. It was hard for a while for people to realize that we were really a force to be reckoned with.

Cameron, you’re now an established Trophy Truck competitor. Can you explain more about the class? Trophy Truck truly is the Formula 1 of off road racing, isn’t it?
Yeah, I like to call it the Uber Truck. It’s the ultimate off road machine. If you want to go fast and take on any kind of terrain the desert can throw at you. It’s the way to go. It’s totally unlimited. There are very few racing organizations that are truly unlimited other than the safety rules. Nobody tells you what you can or can’t do with the Trophy Truck, so really I guess that’s on-line with Formula 1. If you go to NASCAR or IndyCar or any other racing organization, there are rules you have stay within. It’s the ultimate class.

Technically speaking, what can you tell me about your current trophy truck?
It’s an all tube chassis that the Geiser brothers built. It’s a GM-based motor. It’s a GM Dart block. It’s a 442 cubic inch engine and it puts out 860 horsepower.

That’s about 100 more horsepower than a current NASCAR Sprint Cup car puts out…
Perfect. Those guys are pussies.

What else can you tell me about the truck?
The front wheel travel is 27 inches and suspended by a Fox coil over and a Fox Shock. The rear has 36 inches of available travel, but we run it at 32 inches. It’s all on Fox Racing Shox. The tires are a huge deal. We have a Yokahama special construction racing tire. It’s a 37 inch, 12” x 5”. It’s a 37 1250 with a 17” rim and the tires run on carbon fiber American Racing wheels. The transmission is a Turbo 400. The rear end is all custom built. We run 5.0 gears and top speed 132 miles per hour in Baja format.

Is this a full-time job for you now?
It is. It’s full-time. I’m a full-time racer. The sponsors, from Monster to Yokohama, American racing — due to the people who pay me to go racing — it’s become a full-time commitment. I’m still hosting a ton of television shows, but this is my full-time gig.

Cameron, if you had to put a dollar figure to it, what’s your truck worth?
With the Geiser brother truck I have, you can’t buy one in the configuration that we have for less than $300,000. I would say the street value of my truck is approximately $350,000. My truck, I believe to build, would be $450,000.

The 41st Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 will be 629.74-miles in length and consist of six checkpoints. Now I’m going to go out a limb here and assume that it takes one hell of an effort to make a run at this race. Can you describe what goes into it all?
Well, from my team, we’ll move about 120 people around the northern part of the peninsula this year. We will have 14 pits in 633 miles. We’ll also have 12 moving rovers. So in total, we’ll bring a semi, a box truck, probably around 16 chase trucks and 120 people.

What’s your goal at Baja, dude?
I think that realistically you wouldn’t be a real racecar driver if you didn’t think you were going there to win. And my heart tells me I’m going there to win. I think were capable of winning. We’re bringing the equipment and the people and the infrastructure to be capable of winning. We’re going there to win. I believe a top three is something I would be happy and I’d be disappointed if we weren’t in the top three. I mean I went out on my own and bought my own truck. I’m one of the very few non-millionaires racing in this class. I’m sponsor-backed 100% That’s why I think I work harder than anybody else. But our day is coming.

Will you drive all 633 miles yourself?
I won’t drive the whole thing myself. I have a partner I’ve been partnered up with all year named Rick Geiser. He’s one of the brothers who engineered and built the truck.

How fast are you going across these 630 miles of radically brutal terrain?
I think the first 120 miles will be a little slower because it’s so technical. The second half of the race will speed way up. Probably an average speed of somewhere 55 miles per hour will win the race. Our truck, in the current desert configuration, will do 131 miles per hour on the pavement. In the dirt, I think our top speed will be somewhere around 125 or 126 miles per hour.

What’s the sensation of going 126 miles per hour across whooped-out dirt like?
The one thing people don’t realize that when the trucks get going that fast, we have big open cabs where NASCAR has windshields to throw the air up and over the car, our trucks give you the sensation that truck is starting float. Once I get over 120 the truck feels like it’s going to take off and fly. And at times you can really and truly be going that fast and be driving sideways and almost floating sideways down the dirt.

Okay, buddy. Best wishes in getting this all pulled together and we’ll talk to you and let everyone know how you and the Monster Energy/Desert Assassin contingent are doing come race day.
Thanks a lot, EJ. Stay in touch. I’d love to let the Monster family know just how gnarly this whole deal is.

Eric Johnson