Alex, after being told he couldn't drive a manual and receiving a lecture on the nature of being a team player by veteran racer and Skip Barber instructor Rene Villeneuve, is now embarking on his next challenge — a dream pursued by only those with big wads of bills or bankrolled by those with even bigger ones.

Now, with Villeneuve as his captain, he embarks on his next endurance challenge — the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series.

The series culminates in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and we're quite interested in seeing Alex's mental state after completing that race and eagerly look forward to his first competitive outing on May 17. Roy, the author of The Driver, which tells the tale of driving at illegal speeds coast to coast in pursuit of the transcontinental record, Alex is known more for his brazen flouting of traffic laws and larger-than-life personality than his demure and steely nature as a team manager. Still, he tells us he's learning the meaning of teamwork — so we'll have to wait and see how he performs managing a team he's driving with. [Team Polizei]

First, let's drop a couple of caveats on the table. Like many, I have driven too fast before. I've driven above the speed limit before. I've also done some stupid things in a car before — including driving when I've not had enough sleep. I've even covered and participated for a short time in a road rally. None of those things should be commended, celebrated or reveled in. It was stupid when I did it, and it's stupid if I do it again. Now that we've got that settled, let's talk about the matter at hand.

The "Transcontinental Record" for driving once meant something — I'm sure it was a symbol of the freedom of the open road, the success of the national highway system or the achievement of a goal once impossible — but whatever. The '79 record occurred one month before I was born, so that era of driving excitement is obviously not as intertwined with my childhood past as others with fewer and more gray hairs. But for me, that's the rub — it's the past — a past that no longer exists.

Let's talk about the present. Instead of highways and byways of clear and open sailing across middle America — today's roads are continually becoming more and more congested. The roads and highways of the nation were largely unpopulated at night and during most of the non-commuting day in the 70's when the first attempts at the "record" occurred. But as the population has expanded and the suburbs have simultaneously sprawled, roads are now populated at all times of the day and night.

Regardless of whether that's a good thing — it's a fact. In addition to the soccer mom minivan drivers of this world traveling to and fro during the day at a snail's pace, and the vampire-shift workers coming and going in the dark of night, there's also the truckers. The number of large trucks has steadily increased. Just from 1980 to 2000, there was a 82% increase in miles travelled of domestic freight (Bureau of Transportation Statistics), while the number of multi-axle roads didn't increase more than 1% during that same period. (Federal Highway Administration). Our roads are becoming more congested than ever before — and congested with people who don't expect to have a car racing by, in front of, or around them.

Given that, and the need to focus on the road in front of you as you attempt to accomplish a record requiring a lead foot of at least 89 MPH sustained over thirty hours — does attempting a "transcontinental record" really make sense? No, it does not. There's too many innocent lives on the roads these days — and endangering them for the sake of a person's pride and a desire to beat a time from a past that no longer is relevant given today's roads is selfish, silly and dangerous.

The transcontinental record for driving needs to go the way of the dodo bird. Those thrill-seekers who want to go fast and prove their endurance (insert sexual innuendo-laced double entendre here) should do it on the track. That's the place where real men and women, those who realize the importance of not endangering civilians, race. I'd much rather be applauding 24 Hours of LeMans-style max endurance track racing than applauding people stuck to the belief that a style of road racing popularized by Dom DeLuise and Terry Bradshaw is in some way a logical way to spend one's time.

Welles, having checked the books, realized that there was no law in New York that stated one had to be ill to ride in an ambulance. He proceeded to do just that, utilizing one to travel between CBS and NBC, simply to dump money into the coffers of his Mercury Theatre. Six or seven decades later, Roy talked to his lawyer on the eve of application for the 2003 Gumball 3000 and realized that he might legally be able to get away with disguising himself as a German police officer.

At the end of Bullrun 2006, I was out of cigarettes and bumming off of Haller and Herr Roy. Since that year's rally had run from New York to Los Angeles, the classic metric for such records as established by Brock Yates in defiance of the double nickel and in honor of Erwin G. "Cannon Ball" Baker, I asked Alex if he thought the 32-hour, 7-minute record set by David Diem and Doug Turner in their Ferrari 308 during the 1983 running of the U.S. Express could ever be bested. Roy gave me the stock answer; one I'd heard from Brock Yates four years before regarding the 32:51 record set by David Heinz and Dave Yarborough in an XJS on the final Cannonball. There was no way. With today's traffic congestion and the current excellence of police technology, there was simply no way. He was lying through his teeth.

A couple of months later, sitting in my hotel room at the Marriott outside Charles de Gaulle airport, I got one of Alex's typically-frantic text messages. Curiosity piqued, I called him back. He asked when I'd be back in LA. I replied that I had a vacation scheduled after the Paris Auto Show and I'd be home on October 8th. He faxed a non-disclosure agreement to the hotel told me that I needed to get to Santa Monica as soon as I landed. He was going to break the transcontinental record. Oddly enough, I'd flown to Europe on Aer Lingus flight EI 144. I'd be flying back while crossing his path somewhere in the middle of the country.

Cory Welles (as far as I know, no relation to Orson), the director behind the as-yet-unfinished (but coming) documentary 32 Hours, 7 Minutes and Alex had decided to see what it would actually take to do what Diem and Turner did over two decades ago in a modern environment. And as such, I found myself at dinner with Cory's family and journalist Gary Jarlson, who'd witnessed the end of numerous runnings of the Express, including Diem and Turner's epic marathon drive.

Jarlson noted that there was construction on the 15 on the way in from Barstow. We tried in vain to get in touch with Cory, Alex and Dave Maher — Alex's co-driver during his inaugural Gumball in 2003 — in the vain hope of rerouting them. We gathered in the rented suite to wait. Around midnight, we walked down to the pier where we were joined by the crew of Polizei Air, the spotter-plane crew who'd been known during the run as both "Cowbell Air" and "Ozzel Air." The film chase car (a Cayenne Turbo) headed off to the intercept point on I-10. I stayed behind. I wanted to see that blue E39 come over the rise. And at 1:30AM, it did exactly that, with one headlight out — right into a rat's nest of bored police officers who had no idea how many laws had been broken in the last day and a quarter. Maher jumped out of the passenger side and shoved the time card into the battery-powered punch clock Lelaine Lau had flown out from New York after the start.

Alex got out of the antenna-festooned M5 and declared, "I'm never driving again."

Some might call a forward-observation/chase airplane a cheat, akin to Carrie Bradshaw never removing her brassiere during moments of fleshy union while working as a sex columnist. But in 1983, much to the consternation of the other U.S. Express contestants, Diem and Turner did exactly that. After all, if the police can use a plane to spy on drivers, who's to mandate that drivers can't utilize an aircraft to watch for them? The plane — coupled with Alex's expertly-programmed scanners — saved them in Oklahoma, where the previous April, during the first attempt at the record, the trusty Polizei M5 took a dirt nap due to a clogged fuel filter. The authorities took an interest in the machine at a local BMW dealer after Alex was overheard at the airport talking about the failure of the run. By some dint of luck, the M5 was returned to New York unsearched. He vowed not to drive in the state again. But in a classic Dante Hicks "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" twist of Murphy's tail, an earlier-than-anticipated fuel stop forced Alex into the driver's seat. Shortly thereafter, the police started to take an interest in the German sedan with a "Storm Chaser" sticker on the bumper. Diem and Turner survived an encounter with an officer in 1983 Zanesville, Ohio. Roy and Maher would likely not survive one in 2006 Oklahoma. They slipped into the pocket behind a semi as the officers watched the eastbound side of the freeway, convinced that the nuts in the BMW had turned around in an attempt to elude them. The relative safety of the Lone Star state line was within sight.

Maher began to zone out on his next leg, giving it his all and then succumbing to hallucinations. By far the faster of the two, Maher's formidible all dwindled while Roy stood watch helplessly until the next fuel stop. If they were to definitively break Diem and Turner's record (which they felt they needed to do by at least an hour, given the milage differential between Santa Monica and Newport Beach — the terminus of the '83 Express), Alex had to turn off his inner nanny and essentially hoon it to the pier. Which is exactly what he did. From the Interstate 15/10 interchange to the finish line — 54 miles, Roy averaged 99mph — at one point taking an 360 Modena by surprise. The Fezza driver never caught up. And the cops never caught on as the M5's V8 roared through the jacket-weather chill of an early-fall Los Angeles night.

Last night, I talked to La Carrera Panamericana Unlimited Class co-organizer Kevin Ward about the run. Ward took La Carrera outright in 1995 and has won in Baja and a number of other grueling desert races held in furnace-like conditions. On motorcycles. His dad, Jon Ward, won his class at the Daytona 24 and built a noted Trans-Am car made famous by Jerry Titus. Ward and Haller also did the Bullrun in '06 with the ill-fated Stude he'd used to win La Carrera. Needless to say, Ward knows a thing or two about traveling very fast for long periods of time. His words? "I'm impresssed. I'm way, way impressed. To do it for mile after mile, hour after hour? He was like a pit bull."

Back in 1982, toward the end of his life, Welles opined, "I think there has always been an England; an older England, which was sweeter and purer; where the hay smelled better and the weather was always springtime and the daffodils blew in the gentle, warm breezes. You feel the nostalgia for it in Chaucer, and you feel it all through Shakespeare." And you feel that longing's New-World analogue in America; Yates felt it. The Cannonball guys felt it. There was never a time in America when one could do whatever one wanted. But we like to believe there was.

But for all of those fictions we cling to that make the impossible possible; for the longing for a daffodil that must've wafted sweeter on the breeze or glowed hotter against the springtime green before one was born; for Alex's admiration of Diem, Turner and the rest of the Cannonball/U.S. Express drivers; for his rivalry with Richard Rawlings; for Maher's dedication to running flat out; even for Herr Roy's lifespan-shrinking worry about the danger of legal apprehension, followed by his must-accomplish speed bender of the last 54 miles, the numbers stand alone, and the effort behind them trips over the line and makes a sheer and spectacular faceplant into the splintered board parking lot of the staggering — hanging perilously over the Pacific like Manifest Destiny on a megadose of Adderall. Unlike the drug prescribed to folks who find coke dealers unsavory unless they've got a date to impress — but just like the best French champagnes — Alex Roy and David Maher's coast-to-coast blast is vintage dated: October 7th, 9:26PM EDT-October 9th,1:30AM PDT, 2006.

Roy's memoir, The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World, will hit bookstores this week, serving dual purposes. For one, its narrative proffers the backstory to Team Polizei, the Teutonic-themed guise Roy derived for the Gumball rally in 2003. Perhaps more important, at least for automotive information junkies, is the formal declaration it'll issue. And this is it: Roy and co-driver Dave Maher last year raced from New York City to Santa Monica Pier - a total of 2,795 miles across 13 states — in a 2000 BMW M5, arriving after 31 hours, 4 minutes on the road. If accepted by the community of rally cohorts who scrutinize such matters, that time will best all other such records of lore, the most recent clocked this past May, when rivals Richard Rawlings and Dennis Collins claimed a time of 31 hours, 59 minutes from New York City to Redondo Beach, California in a black Ferrari 550. It also dramatically undercuts the celebrated record of 32 hours, 7 minutes set by David Diem and Doug Turner, winners of the 1983 US Express.

To some, confirming such an act will always involve a leap of faith; no third-party auditor will certify that which involves breaking the law - something Roy and Maher did hundreds of times along the way. Statutes of limitation having expired, Roy's documentation of proof - the toll and gas receipts, the GPS markers, the time-coded videotape and the accounts from witnesses - can now be disbursed. Insiders will argue over minutiae (for example, the legitimacy of his chosen start and end points). Simultaneously will be an inevitable media tour, bound to stir up several news cycles' worth of real or feigned indignation among commentators and interviewers. And let's be real; it's easy for some to get apoplectic about Roy's chosen avocation, considering the highly illegal rates of speed it entails on public roads, not to mention the road-rally company Roy's kept during the past decade, a story told across several chapters in "The Driver."

Dave Maher

I'd always considered modern road rallies like Gumball and Bullrun — with their whistle-stop partying and multimillions in automotive exotica — to signify the worst sort of new-century decadence; the kind of flaunting, decline-of-western-civilization happenings that feed the tabloids and stir talk-radio curmudgeons into a lather of self-righteousness. These motoring orgies seemed to mock Brock Yates's original coast-to-coast concept, born from discontent with overly harsh speed limits. Screw these new rich, oblivious assholes, I thought, with their Ferraris and Koenigseggs and Saleen S7s, and the high-mileage groupies who rode in on them. Sour grapes or not, such extreme irresponsibility comprises a common perception of road rallies, and not just among schoolmarmish, culture-war types. Of course, rally organizers strictly forbid law breaking, which may squelch their liability but surely doesn't prevent the inevitable triple-digit interstate run.

I'm still not over that perception, entirely, though Alex introduced me to a more sober group of rallyists than I'd known existed. These guys treat rallies the way Delta Force handles a special op. They seek to reduce risk in all of its forms, collect reams of reconnaissance data, select the latest high-tech gadgetry, and choose vehicles based on function over conspicuity. For instance, many recognize a sweet spot in the speed/fuel-economy curve that can make cruising at 90 more beneficial than bombing along at 130. They've also logged enough track hours to be safer than the uninitiated at high speed and seldom engage in risky moves — shoulder passing, for example. Simply, their aim is to win, not emerge after seven days with a force-multiplied hangover and an angry protozoa in their shorts.

It's from this mode of thinking that Alex planned his coast-to-coast run - a multi-year effort that cost upward of $150,000. He chose Maher, a banker with extensive track experience and zero sense of humor (self-described), after a search to replace childhood friend Jon Goodrich, who bowed out as co-pilot after two failed attempts (how much can a friend be expected to endure?). Roy oversaw the effort with a manic efficiency, supervising a team that included J.F. Musial, an ex-employee of the New Jersey department of transportation, and another childhood friend, Paul Weismann, who piloted the spotter plane (yes they had a spotter plane, a Cessna). An exhaustive information-collection effort yielded hundreds of speed-trap locations and local police-radio frequencies, all managed by on-board GPS navigation, in triple redundancy. A cover story was derived; they were storm chasers following a major atmospheric disturbance. When time came to get underway, the sweating of details had expanded to include what manner of sustenance to carry on board (Red Bull, beef jerky, cigarettes).

Supplies

From the moment Roy punched the timeclock in downtown NYC a little over a year ago, a major plan was unfolding. It was a plan that didn't include costumes or parties or redheads in skin-tight polypropylene. It did include some risk, however. And that's just the way stuff like that goes. Like it or hate it, it's done. Let the debates begin. [Team Polizei, 32 Hours 7 Minutes (documentary on the Diem/Turner run)]

On Tuesday, our resident Empire Stater sat down with everyone's favorite Teutonic village person to chat about the difference between a rally and a transcontinental record attempt. Today FastLane Daily's got part two of their conversations, where Alex talks about the problems with irrefutably proving that one has travelled from New York to Los Angeles faster than anyone else, as well as the impact of accidents like the one on the Gumball 3000 on road rallies in general.

Related:
It's Not a Rally, It's a Race: Spinelli Chats With Alex Roy Regarding Transcon Hijinks [Internal]

Herr Roy is getting pretty popular around the FastLane Daily studios, having spoken yesterday on the need for independent verification of the Rawlings/Collins transcontinental record(?). Today, he and Spinelli sat down for part one of a two-part powwow on the ins and outs of the legality of rallying, as well as the inherent supralegality of traveling from New York to Los Angeles at a high rate of speed.

Related:
Transcontinental 144: Alex Roy on the Rawlings/Collins Record Attempt; Top Gear's Thoughts on the TransCon Completion [Internal]

Coming out of Albania after the notorious Commander Kokolari escort incident, Michael Ross put the hammer to the floor of the Polizei M5 and took us down toward the Adriatic, which may well have been the most breathtaking bit of a trip full of face-melting, soul-widdling vistas. Coming into the city of Budva, a 2,500 year-old-burg on the coast, Mister Ross was laying on the throttle while Herr Roy alternated through horn, emergency lights, siren and navigation duties. Then the cops showed up.

The officer was nonplussed and wasn't particularly well-versed in English. But what he did know is that an Yank and a Brit dressed as Italian highway patrolmen driving a seven-year-old German performance sedan with a large dent in the roof and Adidas stripes on the side simply didn't add up. Ross calmly informed the officer that we weren't cops and weren't claiming to be officers of the law; that we were raising money for a charity benefiting the London Metropolitan Police (which was actually true, if a bit of a stretch). Unswayed by Ross' calm demeanor, he ordered Roy into his B.O.-stanky VW Golf, put his fellow officer in our shotgun seat and told Ross to follow him to the station.

On the way, in the thick of Budva traffic, we ran across a few other Gumballers. The officer attempted to interdict them, but two cars simply ignored his order, while the Russian couple in the M6 who'd picked up Morley and McConville the day before in Macedonia followed his directions and came to the station with us. Note that at the time, we had no idea that these two had anything to do with the Macedonian situation, so scattered and rumor-laden was the communication.

Once we arrived, they took our passports and forced us to stand around in the cop shop's foyer for around an hour and a half. They used police report forms for toilet-seat covers. The Montenegrin men seemed disturbed by the Polizei crew's leggings. I was mostly thankful that their jackets were long. The Russians grew impatient and finally asked why they were being held when they hadn't been charged with anything and obviously weren't driving a fake BMW police car, which is what had been reported.

Then Alex hit upon the strategy of proving that plenty of cars on the rally were fake police cars. He showed the officers Ross' Bentley from the '06 Gumball, the Polizia Stradale Intercettore in RCMP and Guardia Civil livery, the Polizei CL he'd contested on the Bullrun and in a masterstroke, the M5 shot a few days before at the Hahn airport with a couple of genuine German Polizei Mercs. Ross stifled a "They were very authentic," which was a good thing, given that I was curling my toes trying to stifle guffaws.

Apparently, Ross and I played it off okay, because with that, the chief, who came across like practically every gruff elder statesman of a podunk station ever portrayed told us to lay off the lights and let us go. We hit Croatia soon after. It was time to turn on the radar detector. It was also the next-to-last fun moment we had on the rally. What had begun with the Polizei roadblock in Hahn was all about to come undone in the next twelve hours. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
">Travels With Commander Kokolari; More on the Gumball 3000 [Internal]

The ever-lovin' Herr Roy knows a thing or two about transcontinental control of incontinence in the service of swaths of ground covered in short amounts of time. He's harbored a friendly rivalry with both Richard Rawlings and the Collins Brothers since his first Gumball back in '03. And as a classic business-giver, Alex has laid down his call for third-party verification of the record (which, according to our conversation with Bullrun organizer Andy Duncan earlier today, there is ample evidence of). While refutations have been flying all morning, there are rumors of Rawlings appearing on Jay Leno tonight (which we heard from Bullrunners, but haven't been able to corroborate with our Tonight Show contact), and Andy insists that they "Definitely, definitely, definitely" went. If it all checks out, even given the distance between Darien, CT and Manhattan it sounds like they well-and-truly broke the Cannonball record from '79. Meanwhile, we're waiting for the exact mileage and a route map to see if there's any possible way that they outdrove the Diem/Turner US Express time from '83. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Did Rawlings and Collins Break the Transcontinental Record?; Texas Duo Claims to Have Broken 1979 Cannonball NYC to LA Run [Internal]

After a grueling drive from Athens with the Gumball crew, I grabbed three hours of sleep on top of a bathrobe laid down on a hardwood floor in Team Polizei's room at the Tirana Sheraton. The next morning, we were up and at 'em in the face of a cool rain-threatening Albanian morning. Max Cooper informed us that the people of Albania had rebuilt a bridge in anticipation of Gumball's passage and we'd receive a police escort to the border. We headed outside and Herr Roy immediately got to work moving the Polizia Stradale Intercettore into position. What happened next was both pure comedy and slightly frightening.

A couple of guys in a 911 began goading Alex. At first, he played them off, pulling his arrogant, Alpha Cop schtick on them, calling them unprepared. When they persisted, he went to see Albanian police honcho Commander Kokolari. Commander Kokolari indicated through his translator that he would appreciate a gift, so Alex handed over his safety-orange light-up traffic baton. In exchange, Commander Kokolari had his people ensure that the Team Polizei M5 was the first to leave the line, following the commander himself in a 1.6L VW Bora (That's Mk IV Jetta to you, Yanqui). What's more when Carl and his compatriot in the Porsche attempted to pass us, Commander Kokolari would order his motorcycle cops to box the other cars in so we could pass and regain the lead.

Then it started to rain, and the sight just got surreal. Albanian guys on what seemed like twenty-year-old Moto Guzzis frantically waving oncoming cars onto the shoulder; the route out of Tirana to the border lined with people cheering for the convoy of cars; Alex on the PA yelling out random phrases in semi-Italian-accented English, including my favorite as we passed a somewhat forlorn looking teenager with a hard edge to his face: "Thank you Moped Champion of Albania!" Meanwhile Kokolari — a short, severe, salt-and-pepper man of about fifty with a fireplug build — was leaning out the window waving Alex's baton for all he was worth, grinning at us like a madman. The vision led Roy to comment, "I wonder what'll happen when he figures out that it lights up."

While Ross navigated the wet roads and avoided collision with the hoontastic kamikaze motorcycle cops, Alex took one of the pull-back-and-let-go Mitsubishi Polizei toys he'd purchased at Hahn airport as gifts for the Gumballers and personalized it for Kokolari with a Sharpie. As we reached the border and passed Kokolari, Ross handed it out the window to the obviously chuffed law enforcement officer. It was a surreal start to a day that only got more disjointed. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
The Inverse of Alexander: Istanbul to Athens [Internal]

A Phyrgian king had bound a chariot yoke/And Alexander cut the Gordian Knot/And legend said that who untied that knot/He would become the Master of Asia – Iron Maiden

The Taxi boys had rented a Mercedes in London for the trip to Hahn, hopped the flight to Istanbul and then set out in a refurbished example of one of the many minibuses that dot the landscape of Western Turkey. The thing was a hoot, and what it lacked in speed, it made up for in range and comfort. But as the day grew later and Kemal still hadn't shown up, we decided to accept Jarod DeAnda and Fly's offer of a ride-along in two of the Volkswagen Sharan support vans.

Donated for the rally by sponsor Addison Lee, who planned to press the minivans into service as what we in the US would know as livery cars once Gumball was done with them, the Sharans arrived brand new. The van we picked up in Istanbul only had 2,000 miles on it. Roy, Ross, DeAnda and Fly piled into one van, while I hopped in with Gumball staffers Dan and Johnny. Since Alex had a route plotted, we let the Fly-piloted van take the lead, and let's just say the old boy set quite a pace. Once we got out of Constantinople-town, it was a 100-120mph dash across some of the bumpiest main roads I've ever encountered. At one point, the rear of the Sharan got so bumpy and light I was hoping that we weren't going to re-enact a diesel-powered version of Torquenstein's 2004 wreck in North Africa. Luckily, that didn't come to pass.

We missed the turn into the Turkish border crossing with the boys in the other van staring in disbelief as Dan braked hard through a red octagonal sign reading "DUR." We realized later that there were men with machine guns just down that particular road, and they must've wondered what in hell the crazy yahoos in a Fußballmutterwagen were up to. We spent 45 minutes at the checkpoint being sent around in circles before we realized that the problem was that the vans had been driven into the country by different people. Digging around, the Gumball crew came up with a list of approved drivers.

Hitting the road again, Alex realized that we were gaining on the Aytac boys in their Ferrari 456GT, the only other team besides Turkish Taxi and our Sharan convoy to make the drive to Athens. And in true Alex fashion, he devised a plan. At a gas stop, we all piled in to the mini mart to stock up on snacks. I fatefully discovered the coveted DAF banner. While ambling back to the van, treats in tow, Roy suddenly came flying out of the store with an armful of masking tape and commanded, "Johnson! I need your help!" Thus ensued a mass stickering of the Fly-piloted Sharan with makeshift Team Polizei livery. The plan was to catch up to Aytac, shadow them until they made a gas stop and then hammer forward to victory, arriving triumphant in Athens. It didn't quite work. The rain came down in falls as soon as we left the station, washing the Polizei VW of its haphazard markings. Aytac (both great guys, by the way), after swapping a Subaru alternator into their Fezza, put the distance on us.

Meanwhile, Johnny became enamored of the Dream Sandwich, a pseudo-sub that seemed to consist largely of bread. We made a final fuel stop about an hour or so out of Athena's fair city, where we fueled up on Greek pastries; once into town we paid a taxi driver to lead us to the Hilton. Cruising through a flashing yellow light (apparently, a said signal means something different in Greece than it does in the UK or US), we were nearly T-boned by a Skoda cab with no intention of stopping. We pulled in with a few miniscule bits of tape stuck to the Polizei Sharan while the DAF banner hung proudly in the rear of our vehicle. We bailed on the Hilton and headed for the airport Sofitel, so's to be closer to the cars in anticipation of their release the next morning.

With all of the smack that's been talked about the rich fucks in their expensive cars since the Macedonian accident, people tend to forget that part of the joy of these rallies is the sheer ingenuity they engender, not to mention the fun involved that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with speed. What's not wonderful about tooling through the mountains of Greece singing along with Dean Martin? Or scoring official patches from Turkish border patrol agents? Or stop signs that read "DUR?" I think anyone in those two vans would agree it was the most enjoyable day of Gumball; even if we weren't in the M5 — maybe because we weren't in the M5 — it encapsulated the anything-can-happen nature of a transcontinental rally. While some guys may sign up to drive fast and bone hookers at every stop, the thing I've appreciated most about rallying is the sense of instant camaraderie that develops; the shared wonder at seeing things we never thought we'd encounter. The Istanbul-Athens run? It was an absolute shining example of that. – Davey G. Johnson

More on the Gumball 3000 [Internal]