Your driver's ed teacher in high school was probably a humorless, hyper-critical guy who constantly badgered you to "slow down, slow down! What'ya wanna do, get us all killed?"

Not so my instructors at the Skip Barber Racing School, who spent three days at the Waterford Race Track preparing me and 23 other competitors to compete in the Detroit Grand Prix Neon Challenge, a 30-minute race that runs Sunday morning, just a few hours before the real thing.

Our instructors were energetic, highly skilled, and professional people who are so good at what they do, they once taught a blind man how to perform a high-speed stop on a test track.

"The guy was great," said Bob Dotson, a veteran driver and the leader of the instructor pack. Turns out he's an old friend of mine--which wasn't necessarily a plus. "If we can teach a blind man to drive, Bacon, maybe, maybe, we can teach you. But I'm not making any promises."

Initially, Dotson urged me to "accelerate, accelerate! What'ya wanna do, live forever?" but he quit saying that after the first day. "It's good to be fearless," Dotson said, "but not if you're brainless, too."

That deadly combination explains why, if you had polled my classmates at the end of the three-day course, I'm sure they would have elected me, "Most Likely To Crash on Game Day."

Welcome to Satan's Driving Seminar.

RICH GUYS, FAST GUYS, & IDIOTS

My classmates included Channel 7's Mary Conway, WRIF's Bob Kostan, and AutoWeek editor-in-chief Sam Moses, who once wrote a book about amateur racers titled, "Rich Guys, Fast Guys, and Idiots." Guess which category I'm in?

Although I had driven over a quarter-million miles before entering the Barber course, in just three days I was forced to re-think everything I thought I knew about driving. I also had to break a lifetime of lazy habits. I'm normally so distracted behind the wheel that friends have taken to calling me Mr. Magoo. (CONTINUE...)