Watch The Stig crush Google Street View

Some say he downloaded his entire browsing history into his right pinky. Some say he linked his Youtube account to his brain and now translates comments into Swahili. All we know is, he's called the Stig.

The Tame Racing Driver drifts a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series around the world-famous Top Gear test track, while a leisurely waddling Street View car captures it for us vicarious Internet dwellers. (Just think: if the Stig had driven the Google Street View camera car, all we would get is a huge, blurry mess.) If this is a race, it's worth mentioning that the SLS AMG has, uh, quite a bit more power than the Opel Astra camera car. Better aerodynamics, too.

But imagine if the Street View images were an actual race! The Astra gets a good start off the line! The SLS barely inches by, and gets sideways into the first corner! The Astra, catching up along the straightaway! Round the Hammerhead they go! The SLS goes through the Follow-Through, sideways! Two corners now, around Gambon, and across the line!

Who wins at the end? See for yourself.

This isn't the first time Google has hit the track. Street View cars have been caught interrupting ALMS races at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, diced against Miatas and S2000s at Thunderhill, Bathurst's Mount Panorama, and paced the pace car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Street View did a lap of The Track Formerly Known As Infineon, but there evidently must have been a licensing disagreement with Sonoma Raceway; the only images available are of the pits.)

Google even hit up the Lotus test track in Hethel, which apparently is perpetually soaked in rain. We wonder if anybody has strapped Google's octopus-like camera systems to the top of an Evora yet.

By Blake Z. Rong