Around the tracks: A senator gets busted zooming and driving, a Ford Fiesta gets a pretty cool makeover

When we’re not creating it ourselves, the CarAdvice team spends a lot of time finding and consuming motoring content from all over the world.

Here’s a handful of the photos, articles, videos or social media posts that most caught our eye last week. Some of them are brand new, others have been online for a while.

Enjoy them – just not too much, okay?

He tried his best to conceal it but virtual backgrounds don't always work perfectly, especially when you're on the move.

Ohio state lawmaker, Andrew Brenner attempted to fly under the radar during his participation in a virtual government meeting while behind the wheel earlier this month. The irony – this happened on the very same day a bill was being passed to ban distracted driving and this included live streaming.

The video begins with the senator static in the driver's seat before you then see him with a seatbelt on and a virtual background of an office where you clearly see him driving and touching his device to access voice and video controls. Busted!

The Ford Festiva – you don't see them much on the road anymore but they were a very popular small car sold locally from 1986 to 2000.

This guy, known as Ginger Billy, has the right idea: don't leave your old Ford lying around the backyard, give it purpose. He converted his into a tiny pick-up truck then then outfitted it into a powerful lawnmower. A new business venture? Possibly...

It's always best to to leave your phone in a safe place when undertaking important tasks – like when on a racetrack perhaps.

Ethan Shippert, the owner of Shippert Racing Services, found out just what those consequences can be on a recent visit to Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma. Defending his actions he told Road & Track that he usually takes his phone with him during testing so he can call his mechanics with any issues.

It was the vibrations and speed of the Ford-Cosworth V8 that sent his phone into emergency mode, calling 911, four times over. Surely, he'll pass his phone over before he heads onto the track next time.

In February 2021, Elon Musk said Tesla will be accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment when purchasing a new car. He's now done a complete 180 and tweeted saying Tesla has "suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin" due to "rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining."

In the tweet he said: "we are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel."

Minutes after Musk's announcement, the price of Bitcoin dropped about 5 per cent.

BMW, in collaboration with composer and curator Hans Zimmer, has created a distinctive sound for the BMW M models that are powered by a fully-electric or plug-in hybrid drive system.

The German automaker stressed that such sounds are important to enhance the driving experience.

In Zimmer's latest partnership with BMW, he has developed drive sounds for the BMW iX and BMW i4, including a differentiated sound for the M-specification version of the BMW i4. See below.

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