E.G. “CANNONBALL” BAKER

E.G. “CANNONBALL” BAKER gained fame from 1915 to 1935 by setting hundreds of point-to-point and coast-to-coast records on motorcycles and in stock passenger cars. He drove a Stutz motorcar for his first coast-to-coast record of 11 days, 7 hours, and 15 minutes in 1915. He reduced his time almost every year, driving various makes of cars, to eventually attain a time of 2 days, 21 hours, and 31 minutes with a Franklin air-cooled car in 1929. On the first day of motorized competition at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he won event number seven, a four-lap, 10-mile dash for amateur motorcycle racers on August 14, 1909. In 1922, he accepted an invitation by the Chevrolet Brothers to drive one of their Frontenac racing cars in the Indianapolis 500, completing all 200 laps without the aid of a relief driver and finishing 11th.