Monster trucks regularly get airborne during high-octane Monster Jam car-crushing shows - it doesn't take much of a ramp to get something with that much power off the ground - but the video you are about to see chronicles an altogether more extreme form of automotive insanity.
Watch as Joe Sylvester leaps his four-and-a-half-ton big-wheeler Bad Habit - powered by a supercharged 8850cc Chevrolet V8 delivering more than 1000kW - into the record books with a 72.39-metre ramp jump, beating the previous mark by seven metres.
That means hitting 136km/h on the approach and enough height to clear a three-storey building - a tall order on both counts, given that the current land-speed record for a monster truck is 138km/h.
Sylvester explained: “Nobody ever hits a jump going that fast in a monster truck. In a stadium format, you're not going even half that speed.”
“This is about a risky as it gets in a monster truck.”
The record attempt took weeks of careful planning and preparation but, when the time came to put up or shut up at the Cornfield 500 on 1 September, Sylvester told the crowd he would keep trying until “we break the record, or break the truck”.
In the event he nailed it on the very first run, with the truck flying so high that it over-rotated at the top and came down hard on its front wheels in a near-disastrous touch-and-go landing.
“I can't really think of a more dangerous stunt,” admitted Sylvester after the jump. “If you crash at that speed, from that height, it would be pretty devastating.”
Other record-breaking ramp-jumpers agreed.
Motocross racer Travis Pastrana, who landed an 82-metre rally car jump off the Long Beach Pier in 2009, said: “I've driven a monster truck and it's the most violent thing you've ever done.”
Robbie Maddison, who jumped an off-road motorcycle 115.4 metres in 2012, said, “Holy s**t, that is amazing,” and Top Gear USA presenter Tanner Foust, who flew a smaller, “trophy” truck 101.2 metres at an IndyCar stunt in 2011, simply asked: “That guy's still alive?”