J. Sanchez, CEO of Catalyst Studio and PR was a well respected man in the world of advertising and one day had a meeting with Ocean Drive magazine. He notices that the conference room was jam packed with movie memorabilia and a Cannonball Run movie poster caught his attention. The magazine executive saw him admiring the poster and offer to introduce him to Brock Yates, the inspiration of the film.

Soon after that Sanchez was introduced to Brock Yates, inventor of the Cannonball Run where Yates challenged Sanchez to enter the race. For those of you who don’t know the Cannonball Run is a real yet very illegal high-speed road race across America’s highways from New York City to Redondo Beach California. The movie Cannonball Run was a comical remake of this event. Once Sanchez graduated Skip Barber racing school, he entered the race and placed 74th out of the 99 competing teams, which isn’t bad considering he had never race before.

After the race Sanchez was hooked, and over the years raced everything he could. Then Sanchez had an idea: had anyone created an automotive series that anyone could do? Something that was not a road race, but not boring either? While pondering his thoughts, Catalyst President David Hickerman recommended that Sanchez merge his marketing knowledge, love of cars, and passion of philanthropy all into one. This idea was the spark that created the Fireball Run, a rally competition like none other. In this competition teams much solve clues and accomplish missions in order to navigate their route to the finish line. The publicity and sponsorships that this event creates generates millions of dollars of revenue, which is donated to the “Our Race to Recover America’s Missing Children.”

Each year this event is held in different regions of the country. The first ever Fireball Run took place in Orlando Florida and ended up in Beverly Hills California. The 2012 Fireball is taking place in the Northern region of the country. It started on Friday September 21st in Independence Ohio and will end on Saturday September 29th in Bangor Maine. On Thursday, September 27th, the 6th day of the Fireball Run competition was hosted in Waterbury Connecticut, where Tom’s Foreign Auto Parts helped sponsor the event. Shown below is a small gallery of photos taken from the event.

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