Other drivers keep their eyes on the road and their hands upon the wheel, but my eyes wander aimlessly while my hands busy themselves with the radio, the wipers, and the ketchup I'm putting on my cheeseburger, and my right knee handles the steering. I keep track of my progress on the road with occasional "updates" to discover where my car is headed, and what might be in its way. Sometimes it's really interesting, what you can see when you look up.

From day one of the school all that changed--and fast. Before taking the course, I knew racing was dangerous, but I didn't realize how difficult it was to do well. Funny how spending three days screaming the tires around a racetrack with disaster around every one of its 16-turns can heighten your appreciation for such things.

REINVENTING THE WHEEL

Dotson and his staff had to re-teach us how to do everything, including braking, turning, and shifting gears. They also taught us how to get out of disaster once you've already gotten in it--but not all of us picked up the finer points of that lesson.

We started out learning how to brake, which isn't as simple as it sounds. They told us to forget about pumping the brakes in favor of consistent, hard braking, just short of locking them up. It's much more efficient--if you can do it.

Most of us couldn't. I tended to skid, then let up too much, then jump on the brakes too hard again. My car sounded like it was scratching out the morse code for S-O-S in squealing rubber.

The ever-helpful Dotson gave me two tips. "One, stay cool. Two, buy golf clubs."

Before I could run off to the nearest golf course, we learned about turning. Obviously, the goal here is to maximize speed through the turn without losing control. The Idiot (me), thinks you do this by diving into the turn as directly as you can, as quickly as you can.

Wrong on both counts. A good racer transforms a pointy 90-degree turn into a soft, wide arc. On a right to left turn, for example, the wise driver veers his car as far to the right as possible before the turn, and keeps it there for as long as possible. While still in the straightaway, he gets all his braking done, and then hits the gas before finally turning the car left toward the inside of the curve.

If the goal is speed, it sounds counter-intuitive to slow down that much before turning, but Dotson told us not to worry about our speed entering the turn, but our speed exiting it. In this pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later bargain, it's better to sacrifice speed coming into the corner than coming out of it.

But just because your brain buys into it, doesn't meet your guts will.

(CONTINUE...)