The Daredevil Driver Jumps and Sets World Record


Daredevil Travis Pastrana has smashed the world record for the longest jump in a rally car by leaping 269ft in his Subaru. He made the near perfect jump from a pier in Long Beach, California to a barge anchored in the harbour, beating the previous record by 98 feet.

His vehicle skidded sideways after landing and slammed into a safety wall at the end of the barge. Pastrana emerged and ran up to the landing ramp where he did a backflip into the water.

Around 20,000 people had gathered to see the stunt which is part of Red Bull New Year, No Limits series.

The 26-year-old said afterwards: 'It was a wild ride.

'The flight was awesome. I couldn't have asked for anything better.'

After teasing the crowd with a warm-up run down the 1,000-foot run-in and up the take-off ramp, Pastrana did it for real, flying across approximately 220 feet of water to the landing ramp.

Pastrana said he skidded at the end because the dew had set in about 10 minutes before he took off. Had he landed straight and stopped before the wall, he planned to spin doughnuts in celebration.

Asked about the condition of his car, he laughed and said: 'Good-ish. It's not a submarine, so I think that's good.'

The old record was 171 feet set by Pastrana's Subaru teammate, Ken Block, in a rally car in November 2006.

Pastrana, who had wanted to break that mark by more than 100 ft, added: 'There's a 40-foot window where I wasn't going to break or die, and I hit it right in the middle.'

The driver is well known for his stunts. He was the first to do a double backflip on a motorcycle, and he's gone on to win four straight Rally America championships.

In 1999, Pastrana announced himself to the action sports world when at age 15 he celebrated an X Games gold medal by jumping his motorcycle into San Francisco Bay. That stunt got him into trouble, and he lost his prize money along with his medal.

As part of his Nitro Circus TV show, he's done such crazy stunts as riding dirt bikes off a ramp into the Grand Canyon and parachuting the rest of the way down; and jumping out of a plane without a parachute, confident that a fellow skydiver with a parachute who jumped out at the same time would catch up to him and guide him to earth.