Drive a Race Car

“I’ve driven a lot of fast cars in the past few years. Earlier this year, I had a Corvette up above 120 miles per hour on the track. I’ve been behind the wheel of Ferraris, Maseratis, BMWs, and the list goes on. So I figured I could handle a race car just fine, and my heartbeat didn’t so much as quicken as I climbed through the window of a NASCAR stock car on the track of the Daytona International Speedway. But as I sped toward the first turn and saw the 31-degree bank looming in front of me, I did have one brief heart flutter and a moment of doubt. As I recall, my thoughts were something like this: “Holy shit.”

“Even though I had gotten into a car, put on a seat belt and started it with no problems every day since I started driving, I remember climbing into the cockpit of the Formula Ford and thinking “what’s next"? Luckily not long after getting in a Bondurant instructor appeared and helped me buckle up, get the steering wheel on and told me to start the car. The next hour was a fantastic blur sights, sounds & sensations all around me as one corner melted into the next and then it was over. Climbing out of the cockpit I felt a sense of accomplishment and joy, adrenaline still coursing through my body. If you ever wished you could drive a race car on a race track…do it! It’s not like driving every day!”

“Sure, I was substantially slower than Jordon and felt a little self-conscious about being the only person on the team who was a true amateur who'd never made it beyond the Porsche Club's intermediate-lite "blue" track day run group. But in that moment, alone with the extremely good 86 in a non-competitive setting where I was free to just keep hacking down my times with each successive lap, I was in heaven.”