When I went to Surrey, England to visit the Top Gear set and talk to the mighty triumvirate of hosts, I was a bit disappointed to learn that I would not be allowed to drive anything on the famous Top Gear track. Something about me being an idiot, and insurance, or something. But I got to do the next best thing: have host Chris Harris drift me around the track like a loon while I pestered him with car trivia questions.
My secret, unspoken goal was to see if I could get Chris so distracted that we’d spin out or flip or cause me to soil myself so I’d have a really exciting story.
What I didn’t count on was that he’s more than capable of answering some pretty obscure car trivia while flinging a Mercedes-AMG C63 sideways around the track at high speed.
This was fun, and Chris was a great sport. Personally, I think this would make a good recurring segment, maybe even branching out into more general trivia questions while Harris barely avoids walls of white-painted tires.
Maybe they could fit him with electrodes to finally determine if the parts of the brain used for drifting and the parts of the brain used for answering trivia are, in fact, different.
I should write up a grant proposal.