And now, the best use of a BlackBerry Storm I have seen to date: Lewis Hamilton, the British Formula One driver, appears in a YouTube video controlling his F1 car remotely with Research in Motion's touchscreen smartphone.

Here's the backstory: A couple of Vodafone subscribers in the UK hacked a BlackBerry Storm to race a toy R/C F1 car around a homemade track. That's what appears in the first minute or so of the video. The Storm's built-in accelerometer lets them steer the car by tiling the phone back and forth, while acceleration and braking is controlled with buttons on the phone's touch screen, according to Autoblog.

Once word got out and Team McLaren heard about it, they invited the fellows to the McLaren Mercedes garage, where they adapted the control system to a real F1 car. "Hilarity ensues when Hamilton himself takes the car out on the track, sans driver, and does a lap behind the wheel of the Blackberry Storm," the report said. (Video after the break.)

There's no word on how much of this was staged—skepticism is running high, given how much McLaren stands to lose if the BlackBerry Storm glitched (certainly not unheard of) and sent the multi-million dollar car into a track wall. The three minute video is certainly worth watching, though. (Thanks to Warren Wein for sending this in.)