We Race The Stig in Go Karts (with GoPros)

[Narrator] He's a professional racecar driver.

He's played the Stig in the notorious BBC show, Top Gear.

He's an editor for Wired, with a focus on transportation.

Today, they race these bad boys.

That's a 20 horsepower electric engine vehicle

with top speeds up to 45 miles per hour.

It's a pretty fast go kart.

Love a car?

[Alex] Yeah, pretty nice.

Yeah, full GT, 350, 500 horsepower,

but where's the track, all I see is storage?

Tracks are in there.

Go karts?

Are you afraid, or are we going

to take you into the track?

[Ben] Come on, let's see who's going to win this.

[Alex] Let's do it.

[Ben] This could be a very short experience for you.

(exciting music)

[Ben] It's the pedal on the right, here we go.

It's kind of like watching a Pink Panther movie

where there's a gorilla driving a really nice car.

There he goes into the wall again.

You time your acceleration so you're not

jumping on and off the brakes.

On the road, you can save like 20% on your gas bill.

I'm gonna remind him here, just give him a little nudge.

He's gonna start working on it,

that's it, he's looking left, he's looking right.

He's looking very slow.

I might die of old age if I stay behind him.

The great thing with go karts is that

your steering wheel is directly connected to the wheels,

so you could feel the tire biting into the surface.

Oh, he spun, he spun into the wall.

That really is embarrassing, now if I can catch up.

[Alex] That's fine, that's no problem.

Here we go.

There he is, fantastic, hello, Alex.

Cutting up the inside, he's suffering a little bit

from target fixation, where you just

kind of study the car in front of you.

Driving with distraction is quite tricky,

whether it's having some horrible racing driver

hectoring your rear bumper the entire time

or of course being the cell phone.

For racing cars and for go karts

you're siting close enough so that you can

get a bend in the knee.

That's so that you can get enough

brake pressure with your right foot.

Smooth, gentle movements with the steering wheel,

same with the gas and the brake makes you faster.

I think he gets the point.

So how's the neck, after the few taps to the bumper there?

Neck's doing okay, little sweaty, I have to say.

I think you've--

I'm a little nervous.

You've earned the Golden Stick award,

it's like an Oscar for driving, the most improved.

Most improved, all right, I'll take that.

You pretty much destroyed me out there.

It was nice beating you, I mean, meeting you, sorry.

[Alex] Yeah. (engine revving)