How to Win the Cannonball and not get caught (cheating)

Firstly i don't plan to enter. I think the modern Cannonball would be hard to cheat in, I heard of "spotters": but who are they and what are they spotting? Maybe locals who can tell you if the Highway Patrol are in their usual spots? My room-mate has a ham radio and when some disaster happened while we were driving, he knew about it from the ham radio chatter even before it was in the radio news, but some of the ham radio folk might be off-duty cops, right, and if so, they would know he's coming? The reason I want to know is I am writing a short fiction story about how one could win with a little sleight of hand, by having two identical cars, Drive like hell from New york in the first one, garage it in Ogden off I-15 and fly by private plane to Barstow to resume the race in the second identical car, The only trouble is, do the competitors now have tags glued on their particpting cars at the start that would make it hard to switch over to another car? If they do, I could have them get caught by using free phones they were given at the start , not knowing their route can be traced by the phone recording their routes and stopping periods. Everybody knows all new phones have tracking though one time I bought a use-once-and-throw-away phone (with a set number. of hours on it) and since you could register it under any name (even Mickey Mouse.) they would be smart to use "burner" phones. I also thought of them forgetting to change odometers but that's too dumb a move, Any suggestions?

wally the writer