8 Weirdest Motorsports On the Planet

Well, I thought I had seen it all. I watched most of this countdown with a skeptical scowl of disapproval, since most of these motorsports are fairly common and not something we would classify as “weird”. Then we got to #1 and the scowl faded, replaced by a grin of equal parts disbelief and amusement.

The first sport is one we cover a good bit here and Speed Society. In fact, we’ve even attended the King of the Hammers offroad extravaganza and will likely do so next year, as it is a spectacular event held right here in the deserts of Southern California. Next on the list is one of the most fun events to watch in all of boating, sprint boat racing. These small, high-powered boats shred around a tight course and require ridiculous precision from the driver and navigator. As you can see in the video, one minor misstep and things can go very badly. Another motorsport we’ve shared quite a bit, sand and dirt drag racing is the grittier, shorter version of drag racing on concrete. These cars are virtual twins of their quarter mile counterparts, except the use paddle tires to sling sand or dirt high into the air as they rip down the track.

Back to the water, Swamp Buggy racing is a combination of boats and mud racing, using huge pizza-cutter style wheels in the front and tall, skinny paddle tires in the back, and when the buggies hit the deeper water of the course, areas known as “sippy holes”, the long slender body becomes a boat and those pizza cutter front wheels become rudders, steering the buggy through the water while the buggy actually floats instead of drives.

Then there’s formula offroad, lawnmower racing, and even school bus racing, each of which we’ve seen quite often in some form or another, but the top spot on the list is something that we can’t even believe exists, but we actually want to try for ourselves! Pig N Ford races start out with a driver sprint to a series of pig pens, where the driver grabs his squealing copilot, a small piglet, and then jumps in his Model T for a lap around the track.

After that lap, the driver then jumps out of the car, swaps pigs, and returns to his car to complete the race! Now if that doesn’t sound like fun, nothing does!