One Lap of the Web: Stuck in the mud, and eye surgery ahead of the Mint 400

-- Take a tour of the Koenigsegg factory, which is really a hangar once used by the Scania Air Force Wing, proving that jets really weren't born from old Opels. See the One:1 that recently made its debut at the Geneva motor show, as well as the Agera R that was used in Need for Speed. One guy spends 50 (that's five-oh hours) hours detailing a Koenigsegg for the Geneva show, which if you think about it isn't really that bizarre. Check out the whole story and gallery here.

-- Techno Classica is not a festival celebrating the best of Scooter but a classic car festival in Essen, Germany that, according to Hagerty, "everyone must do at least once." To that end they've assembled a list of five things you'll need to do if you ever happen upon that way, including how to get there, what to spend money on (most everything, really), and how much stuff you can see.

-- From 1964 to 1975, the Tasman Series bridged the gap between Australia and New Zealand. While Formula One lay dormant during the off-season, the races at Aussie and Kiwi venues attracted the world's top drivers -- including many of them hailing from New Zealand themselves, which seems to breed rally drivers the same way America breeds reality TV nuclear families. This is what it looked like from 1968 to 1973, when the world's racers went down under to battle at Oran Park, Pukekohe, Teretonga and Surfer's Paradise, where the surfing wasn't as good as the racing. The Australian continent is far more adventurous in track naming.

-- As we speak, the imitable Bill Caswell is speeding towards the effervescent glow of Las Vegas, Baja Pig in tow with enough cheap Mexican beer to feed a cartel militia. We hope so, anyway. With just 50 hours to go until the Mint 400 -- the race made legendary by Hunter S. Thompson's failure to cover it -- Caswell was drilling speed holes in his BMW E30 rally car when a piece of metal packed up and settled into a new home inside his right eyeball. "We gotta get this car done!" he moaned, wrapping a Build Race Party shirt around his head. With no time for a doctor's appointment, his buddy did the only thing they could -- they took a magnet on the end of a pair of scissors, and sucked that metal shard right out. A clean bill of health for Mr. Bill, because an eyepatch would have seriously hindered his depth perception. There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of a cornea tear. (If you're freaked out by eyeballs like I am, you might want to skip 1:06 to 1:18.)

By Blake Z. Rong