[Editor’s Note: This article was written before the 2021 One Lap of America took place.}
To be clear, Brock Yates hated, hated, the film “The Cannonball Run.” Yes, he wrote it, and yes, he cashed the check, but the script was written with actor-racer Steve McQueen in mind. McQueen got sick, though, and Burt Reynolds got hold of the script and turned a reasonably serious effort into Dom DeLuise slapstick. So it made Brock richer but took a little bit of his soul. Fortunately, Yates, maybe the best automotive writer in history, had a lot of soul to go around.
It should be noted that I never would have had a career as an automotive writer were it not for opportunities presented by Yates, something I both praise and curse him for, sometimes in the same day.
But I digress. This is the story of One Lap of America, the bastard child of the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, which Yates and racer Dan Gurney accomplished in 1971 in a…
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