How 600 Horsepower Helped Me Try For A Darwin Award

 A few years ago my wife gave me the best Christmas present ever, a bucket-list dream come true for a geezer sport-car enthusiast like me:  5 laps each in a Lamborghini Huracan (602 hp) and a Ferrari 488 (660 hp) at a track just south of Las Vegas run by Speed Vegas. They have a stable of cars you can

Me and "My" Lamborghini

drive, and although the Huracan and the 488 aren't the tippy-top of their lines, they were close enough for me to make the experience nearly stroke-inducing, which was what I was after. Now they have added some new cars to the buffet, including the jaw-droppingly delicious Corvette C8 (undoubtedly the best Vette ever). 

Ever since I was a teenager I've been a fan of sport cars, and I even owned an old classic Austin-Healey roadster which I managed to keep running with duct tape and baling wire.  It was a piece of junk, really, but it cornered well and looked really cool.  My fantasy, though, was to experience the thrill of a truly high-performance machine and Ferrari and Lamborghini were at the pinnacle of my hormone-addled dreams.

Me and "My" Ferrari

There are several of this kind of self-indulgent opportunities in Vegas, as you might imagine.  Other tracks allow you to go faster than the one I chose. For example one consisted of three straightaways connected by sharp turns at the end of each.  But the 1.5 mile track where I had my OmgI'mReallyDoingThis! experience was specifically designed to showcase ALL the performance capabilities of these marvelous machines. The back half of the course involved nearly continuous turning in both directions, accelerating and braking in between. The last turn entering the .5 mile straightaway requires that you slow to about 35-40 mph but then give it full acceleration (aka "full exhilaration") before having to brake for the sharp turn at the end.  I hit 134 in the Lamborghini and 141 in the Ferrari, and somehow resisted the siren song to go just a little faster before I hit the brakes.  Both of these cars are capable of 200+mph with enough room, but not on this track -- a good thing, according to my wife.

They don't just let you hop into one of their $300k cars and take off, however. First, they collect your money and make you sign a liability waiver which essentially says (1) you're crazy, (2) you admit that this is a very dangerous thing to do, and (3) you agree not to hold them responsible for A.n.y.t.h.i.n.g.

"Oh sure, piece of cake..."

Then there's an extensive briefing on the layout of the track and the operation of the cars' paddle shifters. Paddle shifters are a great invention which allows rapid shifting without using a clutch and without removing your hands from the steering wheel -- a far cry from my old Austin Healey that required frequent one-handed steering as you shifted with your right hand, and worked the clutch pedal with your left foot, while your right foot operated the brake and accelerator in a complex action called "heel and toe."  Anyway, in the photo you can see me pretending to understand the explanation of the best "line" through the course. After this you are fitted for a helmet (aka "brain bucket") that might allow for an open casket ceremony, if you're lucky.

Finally, you are accompanied while driving by a "coach" in the passenger seat who gives you turn-by-turn tips.  Also, he has a brake pedal of his own so as not to be totally in the hands of some crazed geezer like me who would consider this to be the perfect way to die, or who might have a coronary from the thrill of it all.  I'm not sure I would want the coach's job -- it would be a little like being a high school driving instructor at 130 mph. My couch got a little nervous that I wasn't braking hard enough at the end of the straightaway, but he never used his pedal.  I think he knows that novice drivers like me may be lulled by the (false?) sense of control these cars give you -- he was a teense more rational, plus he was young and had many more years ahead of him if he survived this gig with me behind the wheel.

An option which the track offers is a video package which includes views of the track from the front of the car, and interior shots of the dashboard instruments.  Naturally I had to have it.  

In the photo you can see the onboard display of my speed and my position on the track during one of my laps (yellow dot) in the Ferrari.  Traffic flow is counter-clockwise, and so you can see that I don't have much distance to bring the car down from 140 mph to about 40 for the next turn. However, these cars are engineered to do just that -- accelerate fast, brake fast, and corner like they are glued to the road surface.

I did pretty well and by the end of my 10 laps I was on Cloud 9. But then it got even better.  The onboard video for which I paid extra had failed during my Lamborghini laps.  I expected just a discount, but instead they gave me four more laps in the Lamborghini free!  Fourteen laps altogether! Viva Las Vegas!

Here's a link to me in action in the Ferrari. The video was taken by my wife from the observation deck. At times she had trouble finding the car in the viewfinder, so be patient.  You really can't see the back part of the track very well, but the acceleration in the straightway is very clear. Make sure your sound is turned up.

There's no deep philosophical insight I can offer here, other that perhaps this is another example of how we often appreciate things all the more when they come later in life, rather than being wasted on the young.  Also, there is a clear lesson that it's never too late for a Darwin Award, which is given to those whose deranged behavior removes them from the gene pool -- in my case before senescence robs me of that, too.