Jeff Proctor got to go out a winner in November when he won his category at the SCORE International Baja 1000, but it is surely a bittersweet moment as ending his driving career stemmed from concussions he accumulated in off-road racing and other activities. Proctor has since started concussion treatment.
“Off road racing can put a considerable amount of strain on your neck and brain due to the nature of rough whoop sections,” Proctor wrote in a series of Instagram Stories detailing his treatment. “It’s been data recorded that our race trucks and bodies can see g-force loads of 1–5 g’s per whoop or g out.”
Proctor has overseen the Honda Off-Road Factory Racing Team since 2016. As a driver for the team’s Ridgeline programme, he won his class at the Baja 500 five times and has four Baja 1000 victories, the latter including back-to-back triumphs in 2021 and 2022. The Ridgeline competed in Class 7 but will be eligible for the Trophy Truck category in 2023 as Honda will introduce a “Gen 2” model with a TT platform. Ethan Ebert, who raced for Honda’s Talon division, replaces Proctor in the Ridgeline.
Despite his successes, Proctor started to develop head injuries over the past one-and-a-half years.
“Every year there are about 300,000 cases of traumatic brain injury (TBI) that occur in a sports and/or recreation setting. About 90 percent of sports-related TBIs are mild (MBTI) and may go unreported,” he wrote. “Concussions compound with each incident. Racing off road created 100’s of sub concussions with each whoop my brain experienced during a race. Since the first major concussion, each race, the recovery would get longer and longer. I would recover just in time to feel good enough to race. Then the process would start over. I was in denial that I had a TBI.