The island of Gotland is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Sweden, and is also home to the Gotland Ring, a motorsports racetrack carved into an old limestone quarry which, once finished, will be the longest racetrack on Earth.

Today about 3km of the Northern loop are currently in use¹, but around 7km will be ready by next year. As well as the track itself, Google’s images let us see the absolutely massive wind turbines that form part of the operator’s vision to be the most environmentally friendly racing facility of its type in the world.

Although it’s far from complete at this stage, these images do also let us begin to see the profile of the Southern Loop, which will apparently be ready for “tarmac installation” next year, but won’t be ready for racing until 2012. As this diagram demonstrates, when finished the two loops will be joined, allowing drivers to race around one complete circuit totalling 28km.²

The land on which the track is being built belongs to a company called Nordkalk, and as the imagery makes quite obvious, it used to be a large limestone quarry. It looks like production of limestone is still in full flow here, judging by the activity going on at the nearby lake, and in fact much of the crushed stone needed for building the circuit was provided by the mining operation.

Gotland Ring does have a Wikipedia page, but it currently reads like a badly translated press release. Perhaps a kindly Swede could do a better job of translating the key points from the official site?

Even a company as all-powerful as Google occasionally needs a helping hand, as the driver of this Street View car in Australia discovered. Give him credit though: despite getting stuck in the mud, he kept his camera running to record the little drama that played out under the hot Outback sun…

Our man got into difficulties on the remote Bourke-Wilcannia road, in north west New South Wales. In the early days of Australian settlement, the town of Bourke came to represent the western edge of civilisation, and the expression “back o’Bourke” is still used to refer to the wilds of the Outback. It’s no surprise, then, that the road conditions can be far from ideal.

After battling bravely through the first flood, the Street View car finally gets bogged down in this patch of mud a few miles short of the small town of Tilpa¹.

Cursing his luck, our driver makes a heroic effort to free himself, spinning the wheels and sending mud flying into the air, but to no avail.

Luckily, help soon arrives, in the form of a vehicle that seems to be coping rather better with the conditions.

The driver of the 4×4² hops out to see what’s happening, even crouching down to have a look at the wheels.

Good job he remembered to bring the tow rope – our man is freed to film another day. Sadly, he switched off the camera soon after he was pulled free, so we can’t see what happened next. Let’s hope he at least bought his knight in shining armour a cold beer.

Thanks to Ken Arnold.

This is the Quaranta, probably one of the least likely cars you’d ever expect to find on Street View – as it’s the only one of its kind in existence!

The “Quaranta” (Italian for “Forty”), is the latest concept from Italdesign Giugiaro who specialise in prototyping next-generation cars, and have designed everything from Bugattis and Ferarris to Volkswagen Golfs and Fiat Unos.

It would hardly be a concept car without an airplane-cockpit style seating arrangement, but this one also has a solar-panelled roof and a hybrid engine. The manufacturer claims that it can do 0-60 in around 4 seconds, with a top speed of 155mph. If this is true, it would make the Quaranta the fastest hybrid car in the world.

Of course the Quaranta isn’t just out for a quick spin – immediately behind it we find a whole truck full of production crew and camera-men! Presumably the truck is about to overtake the car to capture some footage, but we can’t tell what they were filming for.

Perhaps there’s one clue however – does anyone else thinks the driver looks a bit like Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond?

There’s tons of detailed pictures of the Quaranta on Flickr or a video about its design (in Italian) on Youtube.

The mining regions of Germany are home to five of the world’s largest movable technical industrial machines – the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60.

Larger than the Eiffel Tower, these machines weigh 13,600 tons and are up to 502m long, 80m high and 240m wide. 760 wheels carry them along rails at a rather sedate top speed of 13 m/minute. Two excavators can move up to 29,000 cubic metres of earth an hour, exposing coal seams for mining.

There are 3 operational F60s – in Jänschwalde (first image, above), Welzow-Süd and Nochten.

In addition there is one being updated with newer technology in Reichwalde, though it’s partially obscured by a massive paper airplane that was apparently flying over when the Google satellite was taking pictures!

Finally, the last F60 built is located in Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf. It was only operational for 13 months, but is now open to tourists. The European Route of Industrial Heritage has more information and a good gallery.

Thanks to Martin Zwirner.

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.