German police descended on the Hockenheimring on Saturday to bring an abrupt halt to an illegal night race being held at the circuit.
A German news service reported that around 50 police officers took part in the raid on the track, where 43 cars and around 100 people were enjoying a spot of moonlit mayhem around the stadium section of the track in Baden-Württemberg in south-western Germany.
Unfortunately it appears that, oddly enough, they did not have permission for this, and the circuit owners weren't very pleased. And nor will be the revellers themselves pretty soon, as the police plan to slap every person who attended with an undisclosed fine.
Since the Hockenheimring lost its long high-speed forest section for the 2002 Grand Prix it has looked pretty cosy, sitting deeply nestled in dense Teutonic greenery, and it is just about possible to see how these people thought they might get away with it.
It is thought that the mischievous motorists had organised the meet online, and had probably been doing this regularly for some time. Now it seems they'll have to head back to their computers, and resort to driving the track in games to get their nocturnal racing fix...