It was just November the last time the cross-country Cannonball run record was broken by three guys in a Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG. Considering nobody is travelling at the moment, it presented an opportunity for the record to allegedly be broken again, this time in an Audi A8.
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Road & Track got the exclusive on the new record being set:
Only a few months have passed since we reported that the New York-to-Los Angeles Cannonball record was broken. It’s allegedly been broken again. The 26 hour, 38 minute time—which beats the record set in November by more than 45 minutes—appears to be legitimate, according to Ed Bolian, a Cannonball insider and driver who set his own 28 hour, 50 minute record in 2013. Alex Roy, who set the first modern NYC-to-LA record in 2006, also said the new claim is credible based on his analysis of multiple sources.
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All we know about this new set of scofflaws is that there were three, maybe four of them, and that they were driving a white 2019 Audi A8 sedan with a pair of red plastic marine fuel tanks ratchet-strapped into its trunk. They started at the Red Ball Garage in New York City at 11:15 pm on April 4, and ended less than 27 hours later at the Portofino Hotel & Marina in Redondo Beach, California, the traditional start and end points of a Cannonball attempt.
Think about it. Nobody on the roads right now, as they’re all socially distancing or sheltering place. Likely limited police patrols right now, too. Everyone is distracted. Good idea, right? Well, wrong.
If literally one thing goes wrong—if the team needs to call for help or a tow truck, if they get stopped, if they crash—literally anything goes wrong here and these guys would be pulling resources from an otherwise already overloaded system, not to mention potentially increasing the risk of contracting coronavirus by exposing themselves and others.
On top of that, it’s already super illegal to do a Cannonball run, anyway, as it would normally endanger anyone else on the road.
Road & Track reports there was a lot of talk of privately sponsoring another run at the record in online Cannonball groups planned for early April, but as the pandemic worsened and the government got more serious about minimising movement, those plans were supposedly scrapped. Still—more than one person or group can have the same idea.
VINwiki, who were part of the November record attempt, already has a video up with some details on the record run: