While we old-timers may recognize the name Cannonball Run from the Burt Reynolds movie of the same name, the informal, illegal road race is very real, albeit usually with fewer shenanigans and mustaches (at least in recent years). The advent of COVID-19 gave wannabe Cannonballers something that had not been seen in the history of the challenge: shockingly empty highways.
Cannonball in the Time of Covid: Empty Streets and New Records
In the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, more people than ever before were staying at home, both from work and from school. This meant that roads were pretty much emptier than they have ever been since the development of the American highway system, and probably even before that. From this insurmountable pile of lemons, a number of speedy drivers made lemonade, breaking the fastest score for the Cannonball Run multiple times over the course of 2020.
Prior to the pandemic, the fastest time was a grand total of 27 hours and 25 minutes, which was completed by Arne Toman and Doug Tabbutt and their spotter Berkeley Chadwick in 2019. If you do the math, a trip that fast requires an average speed of 103 mph. Just a few months later during the height of COVID stay-at-home orders, however, the dynamic duo (and their new spotter Dunadel Daryoush) crushed their record in May of 2020 with a new time of 25 hours and 39 minutes, and an average speed of around 110, with a maximum of 175.
What Does it Take to Get a Great Score on the Cannonball Run?
A big part of getting the best time on the Cannonball Run—back in the day and to-day—isn’t about what you car’s top speed is, but about strategy. According to Tim Daly, one of the former Cannonball participants “The essence of Cannonball is not to get caught. It’s to prove that you can drive a lot faster than the ridiculous speed limits we have here in the US and not bring attention to ourselves.” Sure you can try to do 150 the whole way, but that will get you pulled over. And nothing takes longer than a cop writing you a ticket when you are in a hurry. You have to be fast to get a good time, but you can’t be fast enough that you get noticed. This is why the original Moon Trash II of the 1971 race was such a brilliant strategy. You have to think a little bit differently in 2020, though, to keep up with the times.
Under the hood Toman and Tabott’s 2020 champion Cannonball car is a 2016 Audi S6. If you were to see it at a glance on a highway, however, you’d probably think you were looking at a Ford Taurus police car, complete with reflective stickers, visually modified lights and a Ford badge on the front that actually says Audi. Dubbed the Fraud Taurus by the team, the car was also kitted out with a number of other items designed to foil law enforcement, such as radar detectors, laser diffusers and even a roof-mounted thermal camera (which they hid during daylight hours to continue to keep attention at a minimum). The ability to hide in plain sight, along with modern tech and an army of advance spotters—as well as a devastating global pandemic—was what made the incredible run possible with the limitations placed on the drivers by modern police technology.
Will this new impossibly fast, 25 hour and 39 minute, super illegal record ever be broken? It seems unlikely because it took an entire pandemic to make it possible in the first place, but who knows what the future will bring.
