3. Car vs. Stamp
Of all the things that have been raced against on Top Gear, a stamp has to be one of the strangest, but still one of the most entertaining. Racing a letter posted by a Top Gear producer at 2.31pm, Hammond and May drove a Porsche Panamera from one corner of Britain to the other to the address it had been sent to. Not content with just Land's End to John O'Groats however, this race was from the Scilly Isles, to the Orkneys. Hammond kindly offered to drive the first leg of the journey, to the ferry, and they were off. Whilst on the ferry they were able to watch the helicopter carrying the letter fly past them, as it made it's way to the Royal Mail sorting office in Truro. The Porsche was unloaded from the ferry an hour and a half later, while the letter was driven to Exeter airport, bound for it's next destination of Nottingham. Once they had reached the mainland however, Hammond and May's journey had truly begun, and they were armed with a laptop that was tracking the letter's progress. Using this they were able to constantly update themselves of where the letter was as it flew from Nottingham to Edinburgh to RAF Kinloss, RAF Kinloss to Inverness by lorry, and then another plane to the Orkneys. All the while Hammond and May had made their way to John O'Groats, and had passed Inverness by the time the letter had landed. Now racing against the local sorting office and Postman Pat, they had to board another ferry which would take 45 minutes to reach the Orkney Islands. To make matters worse, whilst on the ferry their laptop lost signal, and the tracker in the letter had been switched off. They would have no way of knowing if they would beat the letter until they arrived. Ultimately they didn't and it was waiting for them when they finally reached Zansibar Bunglaw, Birsay, Orkney.