Top Gear gets ready for Britcar racing

Over this past weekend (October 2-4) the Silverstone raceway hosted the Britcar 500 race, a 6 hour race featuring European super sports cars slugging it out endurance style. I've tried to be patient and unfortunately I've found scant video worthy of this event to post up on this blog. However, in the process of looking for video for the Britcar 500 I stumbled upon this great clip about preparing a street car for a 24 hour Britcar endurance race, courtesy of those blokes on BBC's Top Gear.

Top Gear is an Emmy award-winning show produced in Britain featuring Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May driving all sorts of different cars and getting themselves into all kinds of funny situations. The snarky sense of humor is totally up my alley, and there's plenty of it to be had on this clip. (For proof of what I'm talking about, check out what's on your screen at the 2:59 mark). Anyway, the basic premise here is that the Top Gear dudes are taking a used BMW 330D and get it race ready with modifications galore. The guys get ready to qualify and they seem over matched, but these savvy Brits have an ace up their sleeve to make the race. Perhaps the highlight of this clip is when the gents have to do their night time qualifying laps, and you can see first hand how dark and sketchy driving a fast car on a curvy race track can be. It's blacker than you may expect. And in case you're interested, part two of this episode is available on YouTube, so check it out.