The Mall in London one Sunday in May saw Charles Lawrence Surfaces installing a temporary track for a sprint battle between man and a machine.
The man was British Olympic sprinter Mark Lewis-Francis and the machine was a BMW 320d EfficientDynamics, one of the vehicles being used within the BMW London 2012 Olympic fleet.
Lewis-Francis repeatedly launched from the starting blocks, with both he and the car being professionally timed and their progress mapped with state of the art software.
Acceleration, reaction time and speed were all recorded across three different distances.
As things turned out, man convincingly beat machine at all distances up to 30m. Beyond that, the car started to outstrip the athlete.
Image: Mark Lewis-Francis with (left to right) Charles Lawrence installers Danny Smalley, Steve Gasson and Mark Vamplew
