‘The Cannonball Run’ writer dies at 82

Brock Yates, a longtime auto racing journalist who helped launch the popular and off-beat Cannonball Run races in the early 1970s and wrote the hit movie of the same name, has died.

Yates died Wednesday in the western New York city of Batavia, according to his son, Brock Yates Jr. Yates was 82 and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s.