2007 Gumball 3000 Cancelled Following Fatal Accident

[Small_Fryz]

i remember in one of the previous gumballs, a driver in a m3 and GT3? did 1100 miles in 10 hours, including stops.

 

[Race Idiot]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/06/wgum06.xml

So he tried to flee the country in a private jet, classy.

Also we have so many amazing racetracks in Europe why do they have to do this on public roads? I always thought of these gumball 'races' as a bunch of wankers endangering everyone around them. There is a proper time and place for fast driving and it's a racetrack.
Yeah I know officially they aren't meant to speed, but it's completely clear that they do. If they wanted the excitement of weaving about traffic like a **** well they can probably afford to hire the nurburgring out and hire people to drive around slowly for them to do that.

 

[Famine]

Are people trying to get there first?

Technically... no.

No timing data is kept - there's no records of the times people reach checkpoints in and there's no time limits. No position data is kept - other than the fact that you can say "x" reached the "y" checkpoint first. In fact, there's no prize awarded for any kind of vehicle prowess achievements - the only prize awarded is "The Spirit of Gumball" which is judged by other drivers (being won in recent years by such motorsports luminaries as the Citroen 2CV and an ice cream truck).

So technically, the Gumball 3000 isn't a race, no.


But some of the drivers behave like morons.

 

[Danny]

It's an illegal race while out on public roads and you expect me to give my simpathy to this race? 💡 Uh... no.

You sure you couldn't simpathise? Not even slitely?

 

[Danoff]

Technically... no.

Technically, but I've seen the videos - many of these guys are trying to get there as fast as possible, even first. I'd call it a race in spirit.

 

[YSSMAN]

^ Alex Roy is notorious for playing it like a race, particularly last-years run in the Bentley. If I recall correctly, he was first to every checkpoint except for one, by which his little 'accident' in Thailand caused him to be a bit behind...

But really, if you've got this many people together with this many cars that can go that fast, people are going to go crazy. Hell, I'd probably be good for 100+ MPH runs in my Jetta just for the hell of it if I saw them, its just what you do...

...But if this is supposed to be a remembrance for the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Dash (otherwise known as the Cannonball Run), they've missed the point. When Brock Yates first threw that together back in the '70s, it was in protest to the 55 MPH speed-limits set by the Nixon Administration, and to prove that people in high-performance cars can drive safely at high-rates of speed without killing anyone.

The way the roads are today, any Gumballer would be hard-pressed to surpass the 35 hour record set by Brock and Gurney in the Ferrari 365 GTB 'Daytona.'

Still, I'd rate the Gumball (besides its obvious pitfalls) higher than the Bullrun, and the compendium of other stupid 'runs' that happen across the US and the World. Quite frankly, the only one that can touch the Gumball is the C/D 'One Lap of America,' and that truly is a race.

 

[Famine]

But if this is supposed to be a remembrance for the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Dash (otherwise known as the Cannonball Run)

No, that's the Cannonball Run - it's a different event from the Gumball 3000, which is a sort of homage to the Gumball Rally.

I'll add that I directly observed the Gumball 3000 on Day 1, from above their route. Of the 40 or so cars I saw, 2 were above the speed limit - and a further car was pulled over (presumably for speeding) by the police that wasn't involved in the Gumball 3000 at all.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the Gumballers are just talentless rich folk with fast cars either. Of the two drivers I could name, Jay Kay has an MSA competition licence and was described by The Stig as one of the most natural drivers he'd ever seen, and Xzibit competed in the Grand Prix of Long Beach this year.

 

[V1P3R]

I like how those idiots have the "oh darn glad it wasn't me lets continue to talk about what to do with the race" attitude.