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A month ago, I shared the story of Jay Roberts, a Cannonball Run enthusiast who set a new record for completing the trip semi-autonomously, using his 2017 Toyota Prius and an aftermarket Comma 3X system. Earlier this week, Jay texted me that he’d thrown down another gauntlet, and I briefly wondered what it could’ve been. Perhaps a record in an EV or something entirely left-field, like a kei car. When he told me what he’d actually accomplished, it was clear I wasn’t thinking creatively enough.
“On Saturday morning I set a new world record,” his text read. “A ridiculous record for spending the most time driving in a single roundabout. Old time was 4 hours and 28 minutes. New record is 5 hours and 3 minutes.”
The next day, Jay and I hopped on the phone because I had so many questions, obviously starting with “Why?” If you’ve ever spoken to a Cannonballer before, the answer always tends to be more or less the same: Because they could.
“Well, about a month ago, a small group, about five or six of us, have a little group chat, and we banter back and forth,” Jay told me. “One of them, Jake Dwinell, he posted a link of some news story that somebody had set a world record for driving continuously in the same roundabout, and their time was only 4 hours and 28 minutes.”
“Of course, us being cannonballers, we look at that time and say, ‘Oh, this is low-hanging fruit,’” Jay said.
So on October 11, Jay and his co-driver Jake embarked on what I can only describe as the total opposite of a Cannonball Run: Driving for the longest possible time while covering the shortest possible geographical distance, around a single-lane roundabout in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Jay and Jake shot for a time of 5 hours and 3 minutes, which they achieved, to honor Brock Yates’ very first Cannonball Run on May 3, 1971. They also aimed to raise $500 for the Brock Yates Memorial Fund, which collects money for Alzheimer’s research, and ended up exceeding that handily. The total sits at $1,118 at the time of publishing, and they’re still accepting donations.
Though this all didn’t come without some difficulty.
“I can do five hours [in a car], you know, no problem,” Jake told me. “I can do it after work and then wake up and do 18 the next day. This was way harder than I expected it to be. The centrifugal force glued you in the seat.”
Many of us appreciate a nice road trip, but a Cannonballer’s idea of fun is a 40-hour cross-country journey. They don’t tend to get carsick. Unfortunately, it turns out that doing something north of 1,200 laps only turning left at about 12 mph is a little disorienting. Jay said he was mostly looking out the driver’s-side window, except when glancing at the windshield to make sure other traffic didn’t leap in front—which presented another problem.
“On a Cannonball, there’s a lot of you know, 100-mile stretches where you can just sit with your foot planted,” Jake said. “Or, even if you’re a cruise control person—none of my cars have cruise control—but if you’re a cruise control person, you can set cruise and recline, and at least you can, like, look around.”
A roundabout that takes 15 seconds to lap and only contains one lane doesn’t present such opportunities to turn your brain off.
“Jay and I were fully alert the entire run,” Jake said. “There wasn’t a moment when we both weren’t fully fixated on the road ahead, because there were a few close calls where people ran out in front of us. And, you know, it’s funny—we were judging how some people really know how to use roundabouts, and other people are just not good at it. You know, people stopping and waiting for someone to get into the roundabout. That’s not how it works. And by the end, we slowed down a little bit, because traffic would build up, and it was like, ‘Okay, let’s let some people in.’ We’ll go slow enough. And they still wouldn’t get in. We’d be barely crawling through the roundabout, and they’d wait for us to do another lap. There are some cars that we probably did three laps around before they merged.”
You can watch a time-lapse of all five hours above. Not only did the duo confuse and perhaps frustrate their fellow motorists, but they also led some to call the police, which is ironic for many reasons.
“Legally, we’re not breaking any laws!” Jay laughed. “That’s a crazy thing, for Cannonballers to be doing something that sets a record and breaks no laws. You know, usually we’re always speeding.”
Jay says they had two encounters with the police. On the first occasion, an officer stopped at the entrance of the roundabout and pointed for them to exit. They kept circling anyway, until the cop pulled forward and parked in the middle of the roundabout, blocking their path.
“We rolled down the window,” Jay said. “And we told him, ‘Hey, we’re not breaking any laws, and we’re doing this to raise money for charity.’ And so he just kind of rolled his eyes, waved at it, and went on.”
That officer remained outside the roundabout for a few more minutes, so Jake called the local police department to explain what they were doing and why. “The first dispatcher was kind of like, ‘OK,’ and by the end, she was laughing and asking what the charity was for and everything. She said, ‘OK, well I’ll let the officers know what’s going on.”
Top left: A friend in a C4 Corvette joins in to pace the Prius. Top right: The final time of 5 hours, 3 minutes, and 7 seconds. Bottom: Jake Dwinell and Jay Roberts pose after the end of their run. Courtesy Jake Dwinell and Jay Roberts
That kept the fuzz off their extremely slow-revolving tail until about 10 minutes before the pair broke the 4-hour, 28-minute record they’d seen online. Jake told me this roundabout was on the border between two jurisdictions, and another cop who probably belonged to a different town’s department pulled them over. This was a problem, because while the record they set out to beat did allow stops for passenger changes—not that Jay and Jake ever switched duties—they couldn’t average longer than a minute. Fortunately, a friend came to the rescue.
“Our buddy Spencer kind of saved the day for us,” Jake said. “He went up to the police officer [and said] ‘Hey, they’re going for a record. If they get out, they’re going to lose it. Just let them keep driving, and I’ll explain this to you while they’re driving.’”
Jake said that every lap they did after, the cop’s expression progressively changed from stern to friendly, until they were laughing and Spencer was taking selfies with them. “[Spencer] told me, ‘I was getting ready to just run away from her, and she would have had to track me down. That would have given you the four or five minutes [Jay] needed to get the record.’ He was like, ‘I was going to take one for the team if I had to.’”
Spencer’s selfie with the police officer. Courtesy Jay Roberts
Fortunately, it didn’t come to that, and Jay and Jake achieved the time they set out to. Friends tuned in and watched their livestream and even joined in on occasion to circle the roundabout with them. Jay said the “Gonzo Prius,” as he calls it, performed flawlessly, save for an issue where the endless cornering resulted in a massive puddle where the air conditioning condensation drain was located under the left side of the vehicle.
“This ranks in the single digits of the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in a car,” Jay said. “You know, it’s just—the whole premise of it is pointless. Unless you’re doing it to raise money for charity or to set a record—even if it was just one or the other, [it’s] pointless. You have to have at least two or more valid reasons that you could argue to make it worth the effort.”
Well, Jay and Jake did it and raised some money for a good cause in the process, traveling a total of 60.3 miles while averaging 49 miles to the gallon, spending around 60% of the time on electric power, Jay estimated. I asked him what the first thing they did was after they stopped.
“Both of us, we had to pee so bad. Oh gosh. Our kidneys were about to explode.”
Courtesy Jay Roberts
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Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
