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Billions of people are confined to the planet these days due to the coronavirus . A situation that not everyone understands. Spain has registered in the first month of the state of alarm half a million sanctions and arrests for violating the restrictions . But there are those who go far beyond trying to overcome a police check to go to their second residence. Despite the exceptional nature in which they live, several individuals have broken the Cannonball record these days. An illegal race in which the objective is to go from end to end of the USA in the shortest possible time, specifically, from New York to Los Angeles.
As reported by Road & Track , a group of three unidentified people left the Redball garage in Manhattan (New York) , the traditional departure point of the Cannonball , with their Audi A8 , and arrived 26 hours and 38 minutes later at the Portofino Hotel in Redondo. Beach , located at 4,546.9 kilometers. Different sources of the fans of this test confirmed the record despite the anonymity of the participants.
Only after months of the race, to avoid legal prosecution, are the authors of a route known, which, under normal conditions, and according to Google Maps, should take 42 hours to drive . The notification of the new record came through a Facebook post that the author deleted within a few hours. In it, the white Audi A8 appears with the trunk open, which includes several extra tank tanks to avoid having to stop to refuel .
The origin of the Cannonball Baker or Cannonball Run is in a series of five unofficial races that were made in the 1970s. They were created by the editor of Car and Drive magazine Steve Smith. They were originally conceived as a celebration of the Interstate Highway System , a petition by major US automakers and promoted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower .
Another reason for these meetings was to protest against what they considered to be "strict traffic laws". The film The Cannonball Run , released in 1981 and starring, among others, Burt Reynolds , became even more popular these competitive series. The group went on to individual attempts.
The only rules are to get from one point to another in the shortest time possible. There are no requirements for vehicle type, maximum allowed speeds, number of drivers or chosen route. The current record was dated November 2019, when a modified 2015 Mercedes-AMG E63 was used to reach 800 horsepower .
He covered the more than 4,500 kilometers in 27 hours and 25 minutes using all sorts of 'allowed' tricks on the Cannonball such as interference emitters to override speed radars, scanners, thermal cameras to detect patrols, or a system that turns off the taillights to make the car invisible at night . Despite the extreme of this race, the Cannonball accident history is small, except for a couple of injuries that were never serious .
The Audi A8 did not have any modifications. Just the fuel tanks and a tablet taped to the driver's back with a stopwatch app. All in all, the German saloon would have reduced that figure in 47 minutes . That, as long as it is declared 'legitimate' by the Cannonball community . Never official, since this type of racing is still illegal.
The leak of this record has caused enormous controversy, how could it be otherwise. Some denounce the contempt of confinement as a sign of lack of solidarity with the rest of the Americans. "Although it is as if a cocaine dealer denounces a heroin dealer," said Ed Bolian , who in 2013 broke the record with time of 28 hours and 50 minutes. So much so that the 'official' account of the Cannonball on Instagram published that "none of these records has any value, because doing races during the days of Covid-19 devalues the difficulty of the exercise. It could end badly. The current record is still the one at 27:25. End of story . "
Inrix , a traffic analysis company, reports that traffic congestion in the US, the country most affected by this virus in the world, has fallen by 50%. Hence, the promoters of this type of records do not look very favorably on taking advantage of the situation of empty roads ... To top it off, the Cannonball community canceled the attempt to break the record that it had scheduled for April 4 . "What they wanted to prove in the '70s was that you could quickly drive around the country with normal traffic without interrupting anyone or being insecure . And this is nothing like that. It will always be a record in quarantine time, always with an asterisk next to it, "says Bolian.
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