Actually the footage is edited to make it seem closer. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it aint In the race I mentioned, the car actually beat the train trip by close to an hour.
In other races, the car lost twice. Once to a bicycle, and once to on off shore racing boat.
I’ll have to watch that car vs. train race again (if I can find it on one of my many storage HDDs ;-)). But didn’t they make the train guys walk from the studio to a bus stop, wait for a bus to go to the train station, etc. etc.? I believe they make some serious calculations beforehand and then set it up to end as close as possible. No matter. It’s supposed to be entertainment, and entertaining it is.