Road Scholar: Speed thrills

DRIVE AN INDY CAR, DEFY DEATH, SMILE

By Newt Briggs

In the hierarchy of land speed there are three levels of fast: fast, very fast and holy-shit-did-you-see-that-thing-it-was-bending-time-and-space-as-we-know-it fast. Many things satisfy the requirements of the first two--cockroaches, Major League fastballs, the service at In-N-Out Burger, annulments of weddings involving Britney Spears--but few can achieve the terminal velocity that is the domain of speeding bullets, Superman and the Starship Enterprise. To do so would require an act of automotive insanity--stuffing a 600-plus horsepower engine in a frame that's little more than a go-cart on steroids. In other words, building an Indy car.

Of course, it's neither cheap nor particularly safe to operate such a vehicle. Authentic Indy cars cost millions to build and maintain, and a crash at 200 mph will basically reduce the human body to a pile of ash and teeth. To drive an Indy car is to know the thrill of Icarus, soaring upwards into the unknown but always teetering on the edge of disaster. And now, thanks to the Mario Andretti Racing School at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, you can drive one yourself--for less than $400.

"These open-wheel cars are unbelievable," says Bob Lutz, founder and president of the school and former owner of the Richard Petty Driving Experience. "You're sitting an inch and a half off the ground. The wind is gusting through the cockpit. The only thing you can see is the top of the tires. You can't even see the nose of the car, and you're going faster than you could have ever imagined."

It's a once-in-a-lifetime thrill for a deal-of-a-lifetime price. The $399 "Qualifier" package allows armchair gearheads the chance to drive six laps around the speedway on the tail of a professional driver. If all goes according to plan, the instructor will accelerate to a maximum speed of 145 mph--not quite as fast as the cars go during IRL events but fast enough to round the 1.5-mile oval in less than a minute (and nearly 17 mph faster than Matt Kenseth's average speed when he won the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at the track in March).

"The speedway is perfect for what we do," Lutz says. "Even professional drivers will tell you that Daytona, at two and a half miles, is a boring track. It's so big and so wide open that they're flat-footed the whole way around. There's no challenge to that track. A 1.5-mile track, on the other hand, forces drivers to really consider their lines and approach."

In order to safely offer the experience but maintain the "same look and feel" as authentic Indy cars, Lutz and his staff designed and built their cars from the ground up. Instead of the 3.5-liter, methane-snorting turbine that propels conventional Indy cars, the Andretti cars are powered by a 5.7-liter small-block Chevy not unlike a stock car engine. Raw horsepower is transferred to the rear wheels by means of a single-speed, rear-end gearbox, which replaces the six-speed gearbox typical to the race-ready versions. According to Lutz, everything else on the Andretti cars is more or less standard: same wheelbase, same width, same height. And of course, the cars are quick enough to peel asphalt off the ground like the skin of an orange.

"They're fast--very, very fast," Lutz says. "You do the math: 600 horses pulling 1,800 pounds. That adds up to more speed than our students will ever need."

As Lutz notes, the Indy-style cars are also remarkably responsive to driver input. Unlike stock cars, which roll and rattle with every turn, the Andretti cars require only the slightest adjustments to navigate the track's curves. And since all the shifting is done by the rear-end gearbox, the only thing the driver has to worry about is following the instructor's path and enjoying the ride. "The cars literally feel like they're on rails," says Lutz. "The faster they go, the more downforce that's created, the stabler they are and the better they feel. It's kind of the opposite of what people think. The faster these cars go, the easier they are to drive."