Pastrana shatters world record for car jump with nearly perfect flight; unofficially 274 feet

Pastrana breaks world record for jump in rally car

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Travis Pastrana shattered the world record for the longest jump in a rally car on Thursday night, making a nearly perfect flight from the Pine Street Pier onto a barge anchored in the harbor.

His jump was unofficially measured at 274 feet, which would smash the old record by 103 feet.

After teasing the crowd of several thousand with a warmup run down the 1,000-foot run-in and up the takeoff ramp, Pastrana did it for real, flying across approximately 200 feet of water to the landing ramp on the barge just a few minutes after midnight EST.

His Subaru skidded sideways after landing and slammed into a wall at the end of the barge, but Pastrana emerged unscathed, ran to the end of the barge and did a backflip into the water.

The old record was 171 feet set by Pastrana’s Subaru teammate, Ken Block, in a rally car in November 2006. Pastrana wanted to break that mark by more than 100 feet.

The stunt was the latest in Red Bull’s New Years, No Limits series.

Pastrana was the first to do a double backflip on a motorcycle.

A decade ago, he 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 in 1999. That stunt got him into a fair bit of trouble, and he lost his prize money and medal.