Take a Lap on the Fast Track

Coming out of a sharp right turn, G-forces pin my shoulder hard against the side of the tiny cockpit. I mash the throttle of the Formula Dodge race car flat on the floor. The engine behind my helmet winds up with a delicious scream. A deceptively broad left-hander approaches fast. I aim the racer toward the right side of the asphalt to take the turn as wide as possible, plunging as deeply as I dare into the corner. At the last possible moment I stab the brake hard and turn left. Too quickly, I jerk my foot off the pedal. I'm skidding! I try to correct by turning the steering wheel into the slide. Too late. Suddenly I'm a passenger on a Tilt-O-Whirl carnival ride careening wildly out of control.

In my mind I hear my instructor Bruce MacInnes holler, "If you spin, both feet in!" Push in the clutch. Lock the brakes. The two Goodyears that dominate the view forward abruptly stop turning. That ends the skidding, but the car keeps moving, jouncing through a swath of wildflowers carpeting the infield. Finally it slides to a rest. Silence. It's so quiet I can hear my heart pounding.

Back on the track, I'm not quite so aggressive as I head toward the start/finish line. I pull up and am handed a walkie-talkie. On the radio is MacInnes who, having watched my agricultural excursion, cautions me to be quicker with the steering wheel. Slow hands, he says, won't do in a fast car.

Fast Track for Beginners

Bruce MacInnes, a boyish-looking 50-year-old instructor at Skip Barber Racing School and a two-time pro Formula Ford champion, is showing 14 of us how to drive real racing cars at real racing speeds on a competition course. Barber, the nation's largest and best-known racing school, holds classes at 24 different racetracks around the country.

In the early 1970s Skip Barber, then a pro racer, observed that every other professional sport except car racing had a school where athletes could hone their skills. He set out to rectify that oversight in 1975 -- with four students and two borrowed race cars. Today the name "Skip Barber" is synonymous with racing school; more than 5,000 people a year sign up for courses at his schools.

I've come here to take the premier competition course -- three days of instruction at Barber's home track, Lime Rock Park. Ever since it was carved out of the rolling, forested Berkshire hills of northwestern Connecticut in 1957, Lime Rock has been a favorite of drivers and spectators. The mile-and-a-half-long course winds through lush, green fields, climbs a hill at the back side, then makes a breathtakingly steep dive under a bridge toward a fast right turn and into the 2,400-foot-long main straight. Many regard it as the country's most beautiful track.

We're not here for the scenery, however. "Anyone nervous?" MacInnes asks as we gather in a small classroom on pit row the first morning. "If you don't raise your hand, you're lying." His ability to give voice to our fears is reassuring. Jim Lentini, a real estate and facilities planner for Lotus Development, sighs with relief. Although he's dreamed for years about becoming a professional race driver, he worries that he's the only one who has never been in a race car. He's not alone. We're all a little nervous. None of us, in fact, has driven an all-out racer. We don't know quite what we're getting into.

Most class members are in their twenties to early forties. The youngest is Chris Dyson, a 17-year-old hotshoe with go-kart racing experience. A couple of us have clear memories of President Eisenhower. All are male, although women typically make up 5% to 10% of Barber's classes. Most of my classmates are in business or a profession, but the class also includes a paving striper and a crewman who waves lighted batons to direct aircraft where to park.

What brings us together is a passion for cars: speed, acceleration, anything mechanical. We know we're a small fraction of the population. Most of our friends, after all, have never pushed a car's accelerator to the floor. When Michael Goldman, who designs custom software applications for the financial community, told colleagues in New York City that he was spending his vacation at racing school, they asked, not entirely in jest, "Did you take out more life insurance?" We're environmentally incorrect throwbacks bent on converting Earth's precious hydrocarbons into pollution and noise for the sheer joy of it. The hospital wristbands we wear to get us into Lime Rock seem peculiarly appropriate: we must be a little touched to be here.

But if any of us thinks we're in for a wild and crazy ride, MacInnes quickly dispels the notion. On the track, he says, "you should have a sense of calm." Just as in business or in life itself, "racing is all about problem solving. We never get mad, happy, excited. We just deal with problems. And just like in life, if it starts feeling good, watch out."