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The Great American Run by Scott (Team #6)
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
Scott of Team 06 who ran with us on the Miami edition of this years Great American Run just finished his writeup:
My friend Eric from Dallas decided to ship his car (a Dodge Charger SRT8 with 715 hp) out to Florida to do the Rally with me. Personally, I don’t think he could bear to do a 3,000 miles run in my Prowler, it is a great car for me but he’s a little (maybe a lot) bigger than me so I don’t blame him. Plus, with two people there isn’t room for any necessity items such as food and water.
Eric and the car got to the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, FL on Thursday, July 26th; I met up with him the next day. Eric had dropped the car off the previous day at Speed & Truck World to have the after market air-ride suspension looked over and have a new air tank put in. We spent Friday hanging out playing pool waiting for the shop to finish. Once it got late in the day, we drove to the shop to figure out what was taking so long, ends up they were just slow. Of course they didn’t finish even with us pushing, so we left it with them over night. Before we left we asked them to put new tires all around.
Cannonball Run: 61 mph objective explained
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
Unlike many other rallies the Cannonball Runs have a legal objective that allows the rally to have a true winner. We received a lot of questions about this 61 mph objective used in the Cannonball Run’s including this years Great American Run. We will try to answer all the questions in this article.
What is the 61 mph objective?
The 61 miles per hour objective means contestants have to aim for a 61 mph average over the total distance of the rally.
How is the 61 mph measured?
To measure your average speed there’s three variables that need to be entered: the distance, your start time and your arrival time. The difference between your start and arrival time is called driving time. When you divide the distance by your driving time you get your average speed. During the Cannonball Runs also your odometer is reset when you start and written down when you finish, this is just to make sure you followed the designated route and not used in any calculations of your average speed.
In multiple day events a subtotal is made for every team on a daily basis. All these subtotals are added and make your final average speed. The subtotals are not weighted and your average speed over the total distance is therefor irrelevant.
Example:
The Great American Run: Our Highlights
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007Now everybody returned home safely after the rally, it’s time to review. First of all we like to thank the organisers and the crew for putting a great event together! This article brings you our personal highlights of the coast-to-coast adventure!
This years Great American Run had two different start locations: Around 35 cars started in Miami on sunday evening and about 45 teams started in New York at the same time. After 4 days on the road all teams got together in Las Vegas and drove the final leg together to the trackday at Willow Springs Raceway where the final timing for the 61 mph challenge was held. After a couple laps (in a convertible) in 110 degrees fahrenheit (43 degrees celcius) the teams continued to the Biltmore hotel in downtown LA for the final dinner and award ceremony.
Our highlights from Miami to Los Angeles:
Start in Miami
The weather was certainly not a highlight at the start in Miami: with more rain then sunshine the day of the start, my image of Miami as a place where the sun always shines and the girls walk around in bikini every day is destroyed forever… Still can’t believe nobody told me to bring an umbrella! But as always there’s something on the bright side, before the start we met a lot of the Cannonballers that checked in at our Great American Run forums and we definatly had fun together! After checking in with Jo and Nina we had a little bite in one of the casino’s many restaurants as we knew we wouldn’t have much time to eat during the first stage of the rally. The first briefing gave some insight in our fellow rally drivers: only 10% of the teams had done a similar event before and 60% was driving a rental car. After the usual organiser chit-chat about rules and who not to call when in jail, we were good to go and made our way to the startline.
The Great American Run by Team Fuzzy Tongue
Saturday, August 11th, 2007
#44 Team Fuzzy Tongue: that are the drivers ‘Dirtydawg’ Johnny and ‘Empress Jo’ and their Porsche Boxster S called Samantha. Enjoy they great write-up about their Great American! Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences!
Wow! What a week! Our sleep times reduced daily until the final night which consisted of only 3 hours sleep time. Final results—Red Bull does not give you wings unless it’s consumed along with much coffee, diet soda, and Vivarin. We learned this as a result of scientific experimentation. Sleep deprivation is the true mother of creative stay-awake methodology.
SUNDAY - We are on the road!
The rubber has met the road. After crazy parties last night at Hard Rock (complete with table-top dancers and a multitude of what appeared to be “hired girlfriends”), the Great American Run (GAR) officially kicked off at 6pm (eastern time).
Unfortunately the rain interfered with the wearing of our costumes today but there will be frivoloty tomorrow and each day of the race from here on.
Not much to blog today since we just started. The other drivers that we’ve met seem to be just as crazy and fun as we are. We’ve seen plenty of cops and no fellow GAR cars have been nabbed (that we’ve seen). However, the posted speed limit has been exceeded (I swear we haven’t surpassed 117 though)!
MONDAY:
We arrived at our hotel around 7am (eastern time) with an unofficial average speed of 72mph. Yeah, yeah, it was obvious to the officials that speeds may have exceeded the posted limits but what’s a Fuzzy Tonguer to do? LOL. One of the staff told us not to worry because there were several teams that arrived with less mileage on their odometer than the 908 miles it should’ve taken had they followed the designated route. Those individuals went out cruising the New Orleans area in an attempt to cover their cheating ways.
Great American Run: final write-up by Team Fluge
Saturday, August 11th, 2007
Finally GTspirit.com is proud to present the final write-up by Team Fluge about their great experiences, fun and problems they had during the Great American Run!!!
Looking back at this once in a lifetime 3000 mile cross country experience, it may have been the initial glamour of NYC that eventually caught up to the #18 team keeping them from a podium finish.
We pulled onto the wide open Avenue of the Americas in NYC with all 5 lanes completely traffic free due to the Sunday start. What better way to salute the fans lining the streets below flashing billboards and massive skyscrapers than to do a number of burn outs on our way to Central Park and Tavern on the Green.
Caught up in the moment, neither Fluge nor Lowblad remembered to turn off the traction control of the Ultimate Bad Boy as it made for bigger burn outs.
Arriving at the Tavern on the Green, the clutch was smoking and backing into our spot, we found reverse was non-existent.
Thankfully our factory Saleen pit crew were on hand and did a quick examination, turned off the traction control and cooled down the clutch/transmission assembly which brought back reverse.
After the cool down, all gears were back, but we did notice the Bad Boy much harder to shift.
Things were fine flying through New Jersey on our way to the Catskills until we caught up to a Ford GT and other Cannonballers and this early in the race who could blame us from testing one another’s driving skills and horsepower, This high speed run was tough on the recently red hot, glowing and smoking clutch as we would have to downshift through traffic from 5th to 2nd and back up through the gears to play with our friends in Turnpike traffic. This constant back and forth through the gears, redline to redline was so hard on our gas mileage (108 miles on the first tank); we reasoned it was also very difficult on the clutch and transmission.
The Great American Run - Molly Saleen vid - Miami to New Orleans
Monday, August 6th, 2007Enjoy this video about the first leg of the Great American Run by Molly Saleen! Thanks to Molly-Pop.com!
For more infos and updates join our Great American Run forum.
The Great American Run - pics by Molly Saleen
Monday, August 6th, 2007Sadly the Great American is over. But time now for some pictures!!! Molly Saleen is so kind to share her pics from her trip through the US. All pictures can be watched at her website Molly-Pop.com.
Great American Run Pics by the Saleen Pitcrew
Sunday, August 5th, 2007The Saleen Pitcrew joined the Great American Run in a S331 Supercharged Sport Truck. Now they shared their awesome pictures from the first 5 days from New York to Denver!
Join our Great American Run forum to get the latest updates and pictures!
Great American Run: Day 6 by Molly Saleen
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
Allready the last write-up by Molly Saleen about the final leg from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. At this point we want to thank Molly for her updates! And we can’t wait for more videos of her and her Molly-Pop-Mustang at the Great American Run!
For more updates also visit our Great American Forum!!!
Well we got a late start today! It was an easy and short drive! I recieved a phone call in the morning that said that there was already approx. 15 cars that had been pulled over for speeding and one of the cops had the District Attorney in his car to talk to the drivers as they were pulled over. So we decided to take it easy with the speeding, kinda. This drive included a track day at Willow Springs. At the track, the black corvette team recieved the fastest time. A porsche GT2 hit the wall and wrecked the front end of his car.
The final night Gala started at 9 pm. The awards started right after dinner!!
The first award was for the fastest time throughout the rally and I WON!!!!!!!!!!I had the fastest average speed of the rally so I went on stage as they presented me with a bottle of champagne!
Stephen Games in his Saleen Extreme Bad Boy won the rally for keeping an average speed of 61 mph and he was awarded the keys to his new Saleen Extreme!!
Des and HeCe came in a close second place!! Kinda like they did behind me in New Orleans! :)
The Mistubishi Evo won the award of the bravest of Cannonball, he was arrested and given 4 tickets throughout the rally!
The black corvette team was awarded the fastest time on the track!
Then we celebrated!!
[via Molly-Pop.com]
Great American Run: Day 5 by Molly Saleen
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
It seems like Molly had a great party time in Viva Las Vegas. Enjoy her write-up about the fourth leg from Tucson to Las Vegas!
Best day ever!!! We had wide open roads from Tucson to Vegas. I drove along side of the Lotus, 2 porsches, and another Saleen mustang. It was our fastest run! We were all doing five car passes along the one way roads! We stopped at the Arizona border and saw the THE THING. There were bulletin boards for the The Thing all done the highway so I was curious… We paid our $2 admission and went in… Well I wouldn’t recommend stopping there! It was kinda spooky! Then we arrived to Las Vegas and checked into the Venetian! The hotel room was awesome but the party that night was insane!! Bespoke International guys got a table at Tao and we partied the night and morning away…(Those guys know how to party!) Needless to say we missed the check point in the morning…
[via Molly-Pop.com]
The Great American Run - Day 6 Photos
Saturday, August 4th, 2007Yesterday Team # 34 Tangospeed / GTspirit drove from Vegas to Los Angeles.
Now we have some great pictures from the last day of the Great American Run: Starting with the start checkpoint at Eurotech Motoring, pics from (the road to) willows spring raceway and finally some pics from the the road to Los Angeles:
The Great American Run: Update 4 by Team Fluge
Saturday, August 4th, 2007
Another great write-up by Team Fluge about the fourth leg from Denver to Las Vegas!
Fluge/Lowblad “Coast� into Vegas
The #18 Saleen team were off to an early start leaving Denver at 7am in route to Las Vegas.
The first pit stop of the day was taken at Loveland Pass as the team also took a “Pre-Kilimanjaro� test hike at over 10,000 feet.
Back on the road, the smooth, desolate straight-a-ways of Utah gave the team a good chance to put the hammer down and cruised at 164mph!
Those same desolate roads that produced blistering cruising speeds also produced plummeting gas mileage.
Fluge/Lowblad blew through Green River, Utah, so fast they didn’t realize the next gas station was over 100 miles away. Never ones to turn around and run from adversity, the team decided to push on to Salina, Utah.
After a difficult but rapid calculation, they found themselves to be coming up 7 miles (of gasoline) short to reach Salina.
Not to fear! The team put practices in place to make up the missing gasoline that would make a pit crew chief proud. Slower (75mph) speeds were employed, zero supercharger boost was used, drafting behind 18 wheelers, and yes, most importantly, of all “Coasting� down miles of the Rockies foothills in neutral to reduce rpms.
Finally the team pulling into the gas pumps just as the engine sputtered and died. An edgy risk - a surprising reward.
Even with that slow 100mph average section, the team arrived at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas over 3 1/2 hours early. Enough time for check-in and a few hours at the poker tables.