The Fuel Math

Fewer Stops = Faster. Right?

Every modern Cannonball build starts with the same goal: carry enough fuel to minimize stops. Ed Bolian's 2013 record car carried 68 gallons. Arne Toman's 2019 record car carried 87. The logic is straightforward — every fuel stop costs time, so eliminate stops.

But that logic has a ceiling. Once you're down to two stops, the gains from carrying even more fuel shrink fast. What if the better question isn't how do I stop less but how do I go faster between stops?

This is the core thesis: more fuel doesn't exist to reduce stops. It exists to increase sustained velocity. And sometimes, the fastest way across the country is to stop more — not less — because it lets you burn harder.

What the Record Looks Like

The 2019 record (Toman/Tabbutt/Chadwick) averaged 103 mph over 2,803 miles in an Audi S6 with 87 gallons of fuel. A well-executed fuel stop — pull over, fuel, go — takes about 6 minutes.

That 103 mph average includes city traffic leaving New York, traffic entering LA, mountain passes, construction zones, and weather. The actual sustained cruising speed on open highway is much higher — likely 120–150 mph on the best stretches.

So adding one fuel stop costs you exactly 6 minutes. The question becomes: does running 10 mph faster over open highway make up those 6 minutes?

Three Stops at 130 vs. Two Stops at 120

The Midwest corridor — roughly 1,200 miles from the Pennsylvania/Ohio border to the Rockies — is where sustained speed matters most. Straight, flat, low traffic at night. This is the stretch where a car's sustained cruising speed directly translates to time.

Sustained Speed	Midwest Time	Fuel Stops	Stop Time	Net Time
120 mph	10h 00m	2	12 min	10h 12m
130 mph	9h 14m	3	18 min	9h 32m
135 mph	8h 53m	3	18 min	9h 11m
140 mph	8h 34m	4	24 min	8h 58m

At 130 mph with 3 stops vs. 120 mph with 2 stops, the faster car saves 40 minutes on the Midwest corridor alone — even after absorbing the extra 6-minute stop. The math gets more dramatic the faster you go. At 140 with 4 stops you're still over an hour ahead of 120 with 2 stops.

Fuel Strategy Is Speed Strategy

This math reframes the entire fuel discussion. The conventional approach optimizes for fewer stops: carry more fuel → stop less → save time. But there's a second path.

Carry more fuel → burn at a higher rate → sustain higher speed → make up the stop time and then some.

A car that gets 12 mpg at 130 mph burns more fuel than one getting 16 mpg at 120 mph. It needs to stop more often. But if it's covering ground 10 mph faster across every mile of open highway, it doesn't matter. The speed gap compounds across hundreds of miles while the stop penalty is fixed at 6 minutes.

This doesn't mean every car should run a 4-stop strategy. It means that when choosing between two builds — one optimized for fuel efficiency and fewer stops, the other optimized for raw speed with more stops — the math favors the faster car more than most people assume.

Speed You Can Actually Sustain

This entire argument hinges on one assumption: the higher speed is actually sustained. On paper, 130 mph beats 120 mph even with an extra stop. But 130 only wins if you're actually doing 130 — not braking for traffic, not slowing for cops, not backing off in construction zones.

The real-world sustained speed isn't about what the car can do. It's about what the driver and the environment allow. A car capable of 180 mph that averages 115 because of enforcement and traffic isn't faster than a car capable of 150 mph that averages 125 because nobody notices it.