https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hs3ahcxDDg
Call me a coward if you want, but skydiving doesn't even come close to being something that I would put on a bucket list. It just isn't an activity I could see myself doing. I get that it offers the kind of rush that plenty of folks out there enjoy feeling, and I have a number of friends who have taken the terrifying leap out of a plane.
With all that in mind though, I'm fairly certain that even the most extreme of my adrenaline junkie friends would tell me to get lost if I even brought up the concept of skydiving in a car. For that reason, Konstantin Petrijcuk is an absolute lunatic.
A veteran skydiver of 10 years, Petrijcuk recruited a few of his pals and headed over to Area 51 in Arizona to recreate a skydiving car stunt from 30,000 feet in the air. If you've ever seen Furious 7 (the seventh installment in the Fast & Furious franchise), then you'll get a better idea of what Petrijcuk and his buddies were inspired by.
Read More: The Last Race of the NASCAR Cup Series Season Began with This Disastrous Skydiving Attempt
You'd probably think that the Furious 7 stunt was heavily CGI'd, but as it turns out, it was 100% real. Petrijcuk's crew wasn't exactly working with the same budget as the Furious 7 crew though, so as you can imagine, it took a lot of work for them to pull this off.
Per Road and Track:
The team found two cars to build up for the stunt, removing the drivetrains, roofs, all fluids, and anything else that could cause a problem during free-fall. They also clad the underbodies to try to make the plummeting vehicles more aerodynamic as they hurtled toward the Arizona desert.
Don't get me wrong, this made for some absolutely incredible footage. There's no doubt of that. But, is every single person associated with this stunt an certifiably insane person? Without question.
This post was originally published on May 14, 2019.