This is the 50th anniversary of the British Lawn Mower Racing Association, and last weekend they held their annual race: A grueling overnight event of 500 laps, complete with pit crews.

This year's race took 14 hours! Teams were allowed to rotate up to three drivers.

As for regulations:

"Events will be open to all self-propelled lawn mowers...originally designed, manufactured and sold commercially, to mow domestic lawns. It must remain as such to all intent and purposes, apart from the following permitted modifications. You may not, therefore, purpose-build a mower. By lawn mower we mean domestic lawns, not game fields, golf courses, public parks."

The permitted engine modifications are slim: You're allowed to remove the exhaust and muffler, and disable the speed governor. That's about it. You can, however, lower the seat, and the cutting blades of course have to be removed.

Anyways here's some fun footage of the race you can scrub through. It's shocking how fast some of these are with the speed governers disabled, some can reportedly hit 50 MPH:

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The sport has yet to catch up to Formula races, in that there is no Formula E equivalent for battery-powered lawn mowers. I'm sure it's just a matter of time.