Britain’s Red Bull slopestyle ace-turned YouTube star Matt Jones has pulled off some surreal moves on two wheels over the years, and few will forget his epic house jump from last year. How could he possibly top it?

Well, take a quick glance at the video above if you dare, and we think you’ll agree that the 31-year-old has topped it and then some. The new film, called ‘The Impossible Gap’, sees Jones jump through the hollowed-out trailer sides of two Scania driverless trucks while they cross paths, with absolute sublime accuracy.

Tens of millions of views, shares later, we caught with Matt to hear all about it…

off.road.cc: With your house jump film, everything seemed to come from you. With something like this, do Red Bull have a big input on things like sorting out the timing, the approach car speed and so on?

Matt Jones: Everything that was to do with me riding the bike and getting through the trucks, I completely led. Scania wrote a program to create a traffic light system to show me if the timing was pretty good on a GPS prediction, and then there’s the logistics of getting everyone in the right place, which Red Bull support.

The house jump, that was my idea! My house, my towing car, and my mate driving it – I did it all myself. Then we put some Red Bull branding on the ramps, because it felt like a very Red Bull project. I learned so much from that, like finding of all of the things that almost went wrong, how to get to towed in by the car, how to work out the actual speed; all of the possible variables that weren’t expected for that project, which was 18 months ago. I put all of that into this one, so it was a blessing that I did that one in a ‘rogue way’, because I was able to iron out all of the creases for this one, where the consequences were much higher.

With trucks being driverless, were you more nervous that if they were being driven by humans?

The answer is yes, it made me more nervous. The trucks were programmed not to stop, so if something was to happen and I went under one, they’d carry on for 50-odd metres without doing an emergency stop, because we were worried about me triggering a sensor and making them behave oddly.

But then I asked the (remote) drivers to do couple of crossings in front of the ramp so I could do some timing. They couldn’t even cross in the right place! You can’t read the other person’s mind and see when they change gear and stuff. We realised that it wasn’t possible without the (fully) programmed autonomous technology. It meant that when I went for the ramp, I knew the trucks were in exactly the right spot.

This meant that I went from being pretty dubious about the whole thing to relying on it.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Red Bull UK (@redbulluk)

The trucks were moving at just under 25mph, and we guess the wind factor wasn’t as big as with the house jump – how did you assess the car speed? 

The wind didn’t have much of an impact, and basically, I wanted to go the fastest I could go and clear the jump – without being too fast and going too high – meaning I’d hit my head. 

The speed ended up being 43mph, ironically the same speed I hit on the house jump. The faster I’m going the less time I spend between the trucks – but, then the car has to stop, and I wanted to let go of the handle as late as possible, so there was a bit to back and forth on what to do. Hang on longer or drop the handle early> It feels fast when one- handed on a pushbike. 

With the house jump I started by just holding the rope, but then got a wakeboard handle, and rehearsed it quite a lot. Even with slopestyle and competitions I seem to get towed around a lot by vehicles.

There were a lot of red-light aborts on the run, before you finally got green. How was that?

I [had to be inside] 0.1 second of the trailers crossing – yet the funny thing was the trucks were fully autonomous, but I relied on a human driver to tow me in, and he was unbelievable! He could consistently drive a quarter of a mile and arrive at the finish line within half a second, but it took a lot more attempts, manually, to get within 0.1 second. All credit to James the driver on that, I definitely needed his skills. 

The red lights were a bit of a quandary, because every time I got towed in, I thought this is it, this is the one. You get really tense and believe in it, but then a light on the back of a car makes you stop, even though I’m so engaged in it, over and again. It’s hard to maintain that focus all day. There were around 30 attempts in all.

The project went into a second day off attempts. How did you handle that mentally?

I had a shit night’s sleep. I was so sure we were going to get it done that day, but we lost the light. I had to come back the next day, and it feels like you’re starting from scratch. When I’m getting towed in, I don’t know if we’re in the right zone, the right window; I just had to believe every single time.

It was hard to start a new day from scratch, but we got it done pretty soon. We definitely thought the whole thing would take less days that it did. You uncover different variables, different tech issues, but the result is the same. 

Was it filmed in a Scania test track in Sweden?

It was on an airfield, and there was a public road through it, so we had to keep moving the ramps for the postman to come through! It was somewhere they already had GPS logged, with a grid of sensors (I think), so the trucks were ready to go and pinned by satellite.

When the green light finally happened, was there any hesitation, and what went through your mind?

There wasn’t any option not to do it at that point, I’d waited so long. Imagine if did? I was skidding up the ramp most of the time, and would have gone off the end and under one of the lorries, so when I saw the green light, we were all in.

What was the aftermath like after you landed it?

Coming out the other side felt insane. I still remember [it], the second trailer – and seeing the back of it coming at me fast through my peripheral (vision) and thinking this is a weird feeling, I’ve never done this! 

As soon as I was over the landing and free of that, I felt mega. It’s a relief not to have to do something again; you put so much time and dedication into something, then you can forget about it.

What comes next?

I’d like to get back in the woods and doing some projects; riding dirt jumps, which is what got me into the sport in the first place. I’ve taken over Woburn Bike Park, which is where I grew up riding, so this winter we’re going to go in there and rebuild it, which I’m so stoked about, as that’s like my whole career coming full circle.

I think I’ll stay away from lorries and motorways for now!

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