My mate Josh Herron has released a new video, profiling the entire 2009 Formula Drift series. I haven't posted his stuff for a while, due to early objections, but this is probably his best work to date. Enjoy.

Formula Drift 2009 from Joshua Herron on Vimeo.

If you've hung around for a while, you know my feelings about the Dakar Raid, but I can't deny that the footage of the event is beautiful. It's like if you took Le Mans and ran it through a 'make every mundane aspect look gorgeous' filter. This year's event has already had a spectator death, an entrant with a brain contusion and a helicopter crash.

Currently, Carlos Sainz is leading his two Volkswagen Toureg teammates in the car class, which is the only one that matters, in my opinion. The others are just there to look pretty. Here's the pictures from The Big Picture - there's still 4 days of the raid left.

Ahead of my trip to Melbourne to watch the V8 Supercars in a fortnight, I thought I'd share one of the most defining moments in the sport for me. When I was a kid, one of my favourite drivers was Glenn Seton. As you'll see in this clip, he was cruising in the lead at Bathurst when he suffered a mechanical failure - He could continue, but his speed was drastically reduced. Meanwhile, Larry Perkins, who had been lapped at the start of the day, was charging hard. It became a game of cat and mouse, as Seton desperately tried to hold on to his lead.

It's also got a great example of what sports interviews used to be like and how the emotion could come shining through before PR took over.

Back when V8 Supercars was still called ATCC this happened:

It was a very dark day for Australian motoracing and the media storm was immense. Bear in mind this is two teammates contesting the win - the same as if Schalk Burger had a scrap with Bakkies Botha against the Lions. The only incident I've seen to truly rival this was Mark Skaife's 'fistpump' at Russell Ingall in 2004.

Formula 1 was awesome back before my dad was born. I wish I could have been around to see it and watch Juan Manuel Fangio just be bloody amazing.

Oh and James Hunt was pretty fucking awesome too. [though I was more of a Schekter fan]

This is just like when I used to play slot cars, except mine would hit the wall and stop straight away.

Meira is unharmed.

Jono Lester, Alastair Wootten and Michael Burdett are New Zealand drivers, if you've never heard of them. Lester is pretty handy in a Porsche GT3 - and also a pretty funny bloke - Wootten is in the Toyota Racing Series [currently sitting sixth] and Burdett is fourth.

The trio are planning to use the 40 Hour Famine to train, and train, and train at the Millenium Institute of Sport in Auckland. And it won't be one of those efforts where one person trains for 8 hours before tagging out, they're all going for 40 hours.

What a great idea - in a move that not only benefits World Vision, but the drivers themselves. Take that, all you people who think that racing cars requires no physical prowess.

Check them out at www.trainathon.co.nz

Also a plug for the Millenium Institute of Sport, I had the opportunity to stay there for a week and train last year and the place is fantastic.

Part of me thinks this would be a lot cooler if it wasn't filmed in a room full of drunken college students, likely scaring the hamsters to death. But I'm dismissing that part of my brain by imagining that whoever made those cars obviously put a lot of thought into it and probably cares a lot about the hamsters.

And the other thing is, it didn't end like the Aarons 499 at Talladega yesterday.

Seven fans injured, apparently. But 10 years ago it would have been 20 [or more] dead.

If there's one person who has a cool-ass life, it's Ken Block. Imagine making your millions by peddling shoes to skateboarders. They're a product which sell themselves. Concept: Get an amazing skateboarder such as Rodney Mullen. Get him to wear your shoes. Watch all the 14-year-olds buy them.

You'd get to live a pretty damn charmed 41-year-old life, right? Mansions, snowboarding, motorbiking, partying and rallying. Since 2005, Block's been entering both the American championship and the WRC. Rally in the US is undergoing a revamp at the moment, spearheaded by the combined efforts of both Block and Travis Pastrana, who have managed to attract the youth market as a result of their 'Hey-guys-we're-fucking-cool' image and by getting rally into the X-Games. Oh, and now-legendary videos like this:

A follow-up to that clip has been released today, showing off clips which didn't make the final cut of that one. Click here to see it.

I'm a big fan of V8 Supercars, as you already know. I also like Craig Lowndes. And computers. But I don't like breast cancer. Now I can use the first three things to try to stamp out the last one. YAY!

Unfortunately the Norton ad isn't as good as the ones on his craft: