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Jordan test driver Timo Glock approaches 210 miles per hour down the front straight at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Friday's practice sessions for the United States Grand Prix. Glock would eventually reach an amazing 211mph during Friday's sessions before handing over to his colleagues, race drivers Nick Heidfeld and Georgio Pantano for the remainder of the weekend.

Formula One motor racing is an amazing spectacle, with races and drivers from around the world. Glock and Heidfeld are Germans, Pantano is an Italian, the Jordan team is headquartered in the United Kingdom, and the US Grand Prix was one of 18 races in 16 countries on four continents in 2004.

Thanks to this international flavor, the sport and its figureheads are household names around the world. Even the test drivers are instantly recognized by many, at home or overseas. The United States remains the only country where the sport has yet to truly catch on, and drivers can find a respite from the problems that their fame brings them.

This image has been converted from Adobe RGB, the color slightly adjusted to reduce a warm cast, resized, and sharpened slightly to account for the softening caused when it was resized. It was shot handheld at 200mm (35mm equivalent: 388mm) from the grandstand over the famous Paddock Club, and no cropping or other editing was necessary.

Edit: After a kind comment from a viewer, I got to thinking about this photo. I suddenly remembered to comment that the photo was prefocused, as the camera wouldn't have been able to focus quickly enough at the moment of capture. One other interesting footnote; in the 1/320th of a second it took to capture this photo, the car would have moved roughly 28cm / 11 inches.

Edit: After a comment from a Formula One statistician, I've corrected an error in this caption. Thanks to Sean the Slippery Serpent of Stat for pointing out that I'd accidentally referred to the number of races and countries from the 2005 F1 calendar. The correct numbers from the 2004 calendar are now used above.