Street View Car Dreams of the Laguna Seca Raceway
As one of Google Street View cars drove past the Laguna Seca Raceway, it happened to capture a photograph of a race in action.
Aware of its own existence as a fuel-efficient-but-not-exactly-a-racecar Toyota Prius, the anthropomorphized car obviously dreamed of one day being in the Le Mans.
Then all of a sudden, and with some wavy lines down the screen, the dream came true! The Google Street View car was part of the race!
Feeling the wind through its hair as it raced round the track, the car was bolstered by some trackside fans who didn’t spot it as a fraud.
But the dream was on shaky ground, with the car inexplicably being transported back up onto the overbridges as it tried to drive under them.
Eventually though, our plucky camera car took the chequered flag.
Then, awaking from the dream, the street view car went back to the drudgery of capturing pictures of people’s houses.
These are great captures -even if in my ignorance, I don’t know how they were captured…?
You can go to another section of the track and see more, including a shadow of the camera.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
My guess is they just let the car on the track for a little bit and the cars drove slowly for a cool photo op thing.
If you go through the pics, you can see safety vehicles out on the track (like heading into the corkscrew). Pics appear to have been taken during a practice/scouting session for an ALMS race.
Nice SPOOF ! Even with a ‘hook and ladder’ extended, you can’t just drive by and see the track. Have fun
HK – AZ
The race was almost certainly the 2008 Monterey Sports Car Championships which was run on the weekend of October 18th. Wikipedia race report here.