New Cannonball record. Coast to Coast in 27 hours 25 mins!

spitfirebill said:

I feel the record deserves an asterisk **. 

I think that all previous records probably prepared to the best of their abiilties and budget. Being prepared is not in any way justification for an asterisk.

Patrick said:

Doug is a local guy.  I've often wanted to go for it, but much like drifitng the roundabout in the center of the next town over, I don't have FU money to bail me out when I get busted.  This country is a playground for people with money and the rest of us are just in their way.  

Bingo.  How I feel exactly.  

I don't see why this should get an asterisk any more than all winning Challenge cars should get an asterisk because "they worked harder than me!".

Looking at the route, they came through town. In fact, I know pretty much their entire route from Denver to LA fairly well and have driven the Detroit-Denver leg a half dozen times. The trip through Glenwood Canyon would have been interesting at speed, and there is a whole lot of very high speed running available from there to, well, Vegas. For some reason, I thought these guys usually went further south. Google Maps says it's a 41 hour trip at the speed limit.

"The car, which had been superbly prepared, began running poorly somewhere in the Rockies, where a combination of high altitude and low-octane gasoline caused detonation."

Then it wasn't so well prepared then, was it?  Turbo car don't care about the altitude if set up properly, but it will punish you if you take shortcuts. The octane does drop in CO but it stays low all the way to the coast, so the superbly prepared car should have been tuned to run 91 octane happily. Ooops. I guess if you spend all your time tuning for the high octane and low altitudes of Illinois, it's easy to forget there's a more difficult world out there.

Tom_Spangler said:

On the Reddit discussion of this, Jack Baruth referred to it as "the non-motorsport of swerving around children and elderly people on the way to spending an IMSA season's worth of cash on being King Of The Wannabe Torettos" Which is pretty funny, quite accurate, but also misses the point a bit. Just because you spend a bunch of money, that doesn't make this an easy task.

I guess I find myself in the rare situation of completely agreeing with Jack, then.

Berkeley these guys. What they do is bad for our hobby, and will be even worse when they inevitably kill someone. This is not civil disobedience in the name of righteous outrage, it's a narcicisstic wankfest for rich a-holes who can no longer get their thrills by hunting humans for sport on their skull-shaped islands. 

JG Pasterjak said:

Tom_Spangler said:

On the Reddit discussion of this, Jack Baruth referred to it as "the non-motorsport of swerving around children and elderly people on the way to spending an IMSA season's worth of cash on being King Of The Wannabe Torettos" Which is pretty funny, quite accurate, but also misses the point a bit. Just because you spend a bunch of money, that doesn't make this an easy task.

I guess I find myself in the rare situation of completely agreeing with Jack, then.

Berkeley these guys. What they do is bad for our hobby, and will be even worse when they inevitably kill someone. This is not civil disobedience in the name of righteous outrage, it's a narcicisstic wankfest for rich a-holes who can no longer get their thrills by hunting humans for sport on their skull-shaped islands. 

Thanks Obama!

you need to figure out " drive time"  thru the big cities , 

trying to cross LA  at  most daylight hours will add hours compared to 2am !

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I meant because they had such a large support team.  Did the old guys do it that way?  To me it should be two guys in a car.  

AngryCorvair said:

JG Pasterjak said:

Tom_Spangler said:

On the Reddit discussion of this, Jack Baruth referred to it as "the non-motorsport of swerving around children and elderly people on the way to spending an IMSA season's worth of cash on being King Of The Wannabe Torettos" Which is pretty funny, quite accurate, but also misses the point a bit. Just because you spend a bunch of money, that doesn't make this an easy task.

I guess I find myself in the rare situation of completely agreeing with Jack, then.

Berkeley these guys. What they do is bad for our hobby, and will be even worse when they inevitably kill someone. This is not civil disobedience in the name of righteous outrage, it's a narcicisstic wankfest for rich a-holes who can no longer get their thrills by hunting humans for sport on their skull-shaped islands. 

Thanks Obama!

I'm actually finding it very hard to disagree with JG on this one.

In reply to Duke :

+1. Keep it on the track.

20-30mph over the speed limit, I get. 70+ mph over a speed limit that's already 70-80mph is pushing it too hard on public roads. If you're on the autobahn, and those speeds are somewhat expected I get it. But nobody on a US road is expecting to encounter somebody going 130+mph. 

These guys are just as bad for our hobby as coal rollers. In both cases, They're flagrantly breaking laws in very visible, extreme fashion. In both cases they're endangering others in the process. And in both cases they're making the automotive hobby look bad while giving ammunition to anybody that might argue that we need stricter laws against vehicle modification or aggressive driving. 

Gotta agree, these guys and anyone who pursues a cannonball type run is a douchebag.  While nobody has gotten hurt yet is totally besides the point, this is an exercise in ego and unlike climbing Mt Everest, where the only person you hurt is yourself, there are real consequences to innocents here.

Then all the blowback on the car hobby as a whole as well. 

I think we're reaching a consensus. Also J.G. reminded me why I always read the columns first when I get GRM every month.

"...skull shaped islands." Talk about turning a phrase!

I saw a shot of their gps,  l believe they topped out at 197.  On public roads.  With no safety gear, and likely no firewall between them and the trunk mounted fuel cell.  One fraction of a second of a deer jumping out and they're dead.  

There's only one solution to this problem:

Build a life-size replica of the entire US highway system, somewhere out in space, on a big artificial planet, and use it only for closed-course racing! 

In reply to pinchvalve :

Previous record holder Alex Roy made pretty good use of a spotter plane.

Not going to lie, following these attempts over the past 5-6 years has been a guilty pleasure of mine.

On their YouTube video the speedo app is showing 140 something and you can tell out the windshield they are hauling ass. 

And I and was happy with my 32 hour Detroit to San Francisco run....

Correcting myself.  193

sergio said:

On their YouTube video the speedo app is showing 140 something and you can tell out the windshield they are hauling ass. 

I'm failing to understand how the videos can't be used to prosecute them and throw them in jail, frankly.

Even with spotters, I'm also failing to see how they could avoid unmarked police, or police who happen to pull out behind them and pace them, etc. Around here we have tons of police cars that don't look like standard unmarked cruisers (just run-of-the-mill Explorers, or the odd Honda, or a GMC pickup). Even an off-duty police officer in his personal car could make a stop if their speed was a "dangerous" situation (which it seemingly would be).

All the logical questions aside, I couldn't care less about this "record" as a record goes. The one time something unexpected happens and someone univolved in the Run dies, that's one person too much for a bullE36 M3 stunt. Ok, so it didn't happen this time. Think these guys won't try to beat their own record. What else do people with money have to do.....

Competing in an open road race is about as close as you can get to this and be legal. Sadly there are very few of them and the longest is about 90 miles. 

1SlowVW said:

In reply to pinchvalve :

Previous record holder Alex Roy made pretty good use of a spotter plane.

 

Not going to lie, following these attempts over the past 5-6 years has been a guilty pleasure of mine.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes these attempts. 

Gearheadotaku said:

And I and was happy with my 32 hour Detroit to San Francisco run....

Not bad. Google maps says a little over 35 hours. Now, no more criticizing other record attempts 

I bet you could air freight a lightweight E36 M3box for similar money. Anybody want to pitch in to demolish the record with a Reliant Robin?

I'm with the grown ups on this one.

Gearheadotaku said:

Competing in an open road race is about as close as you can get to this and be legal. Sadly there are very few of them and the longest is about 90 miles. 

Targa Newfoundland is back for 2020...

I wasted some time reading Alex Roy's book a few years ago.  Called himself "the driver" and promptly crashed the first time he goes to a track.  He comes off as very, very full of himself and how great he is in his own mind.