Drivers of high-octane sports cars thrilled onlookers by skidding sideways around corners in a street race being held in the shadow of Wembley Stadium.
Competitors burned rubber in head-to-head races around a special track in a car park outside the structure on Saturday (09) for JDM Allstars Wembley Street Drift.
At the core of this frenetic yet stylish motorsport is a cornering method known as drifting.
The stars of the series throw their powerful machines, typically adapted Toyotas or Nissans, into a controlled slide in which the rear wheels of the vehicle travel in the opposite direction to those at the front, making the car glide, or drift, through the turn.
Modern drifting started out as a racing technique popular in the All Japan Touring Car Championship over 30 years ago.
In 1997 it became a national sport in Japan and two years later the sport spread to Europe and America, and is now the fastest growing motorsport in the world.
The temporary circuit built for Wembley Street Drift - the second race in a Triple Series Crown championship - emulated those tracks in Japan where the sport started out and featured a crowd-pleasing mix of sweeping curves, long straights and fiendishly tight corners.
But drifting is not a straightforward race between two cars. It is a judged sport where the panache and showmanship of the 40 drivers counts just as much as pure speed.
The judges assessed the competitors on a number of aspects, including the driver's ability to follow the correct route around the course - announced just moments before they began - as well as how much of a show the driver put on (including how much smoke they made and how close they were to the other cars) and how fast they took turns on the course, with the maxim being: the faster, the better.
Each driver was given a score reflecting their overall performance behind the wheel and the field was whittled down to semi-finalists and, eventually, a winner.
Surrounding the track were a wide variety of activities for spectators including funfair attractions, children's activities, go karting and a range of food outlets.