SERENA WILLIAMS JUST WANTS TO STOP. She is strapped into the shotgun seat of Kurt Busch s No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge, one lap into a four-lap ride at Lowe s Motor Speedway near Charlotte, N.C. The vehicle skims white paint off the concrete wall as it rockets over the start-finish line at 190 mph. Serena s eyes clamp shut, her fingers shrinkwrap the nearest hard surface. When Busch hammers his way into the first turn, all 3,400 pounds of the Charger shift into her side of the cockpit with the subtlety of an overhead smash. Beneath her feet, she can feel the right-side tires begin to bend against the strain, threatening to break the car loose and send it traveling up the 24a banking and into the wall. If it weren t for the constant, jaw-rattling snarl of the engine, she d be able to hear those Goodyear Eagles squeal as they grind apart against the blacktop. Instead, she hears Busch s voice crackle over the radio in her helmet.
*Hey, Serena, you re going to be out here driving by yourself later, he says, reminding her of the reality show that has brought her to this moment. *So you might want to open your eyes and start paying attention.
She knows he s right. Her brain knows he s right. But her body doesn t buy it. Her eyes stay shut. It s the most basic of human instincts: survival mode.
Deep down, anyone with a driver s license believes that going fast is easy. Everyone has done it, right? A little lean into the right foot as the speedometer eases past 70, 80, maybe 90 mph. But everyone has also done what comes next: lifting that same foot as a charge down your spine shifts the moment from hairraising to horrifyingthat instant when the SUV gives an unfamiliar shudder and you begin to wonder if the air bag is gonna punch you in the nose for being stupid.
*Yeah, everybody thinks they ve been there, Busch says after he helps Williams slide the belts over her visibly shaking hands. *But that moment when your body tells you to slow down before you hurt yourself? We make our living way out past that point. Way out. Wowwhen I say that out loud, it makes it sound kind of crazy, doesn t it?
Williams overhears this and gives Busch an exaggerated nod, shouting so that everyone around them can hear it: *Yes, Kurt! You are not right in the head!
The 2004 NASCAR champ gives a reassuring nod back, well aware that the tennis champ would rather be standing on the clay at Roland Garros (see page 94) than screeching over the asphalt at Lowe s. Busch then turns away with a sly smile. *Don t worry, he says. *We ll get her in the right frame of mind pretty soon, crazy or not.
So what does it take to capture that frame of mind? To ignore the warning signs, tune out good sense and push past physical and mental barriers to shave a 10th of a second off the stopwatch? What does it truly take to go fast? And how do you pass that insanity along to others?
This is the assignment for six NASCAR hot shoes during one very intense made-for-TV boot camp called Fast Cars & Superstars. The reality series (premiering June 7 on ABC) pits 12 celebrities against the clock and one another in full-fledged stock cars prepared by the Jeff Gordon Racing School. The scene on Pit Road is beyond bizarre: Busch, Ryan Newman, Jamie McMurray, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne and Jimmie Johnsonwith a combined 66 Cup wins among themteaching driver s ed to, among others, Williams, John Elway, John Salley, Bill Cowher, Jewel and, of course, the rocket man himself, William Shatner. *Please, The Shat begs, *no - warp speed - jokes.
As the celebs move closer to actually driving their race cars, jokes disappear altogether. Each of them guts out a ride like Serena s, sits through hours of classroom instruction and takes in endless advice from their assigned NASCAR instructor. *Don t worry, Newman says to Cowher. *Once you get over 140, it all pretty much feels the same.
*Sure, the coach replies with no smile, *until I hit the wall.
Newman doesn t respond. Truth is, he never thinks about the wall, never thinks about wrecking. His job isn t to worry about what might go wrong; it s to keep going forward as fast as mechanically possible. And that means maintaining a concentration level that allows him to act as a 5'11" computer, employing every nerve ending to gather data from within the cockpit and feed it up to his brain for hours on end. His eyes constantly dart from the track ahead to his instrument panel and back again. His ears listen for engine hiccups and feel for air-pressure changes that can indicate the location of traffic around him. His butt measures the car s attitude, loose or tight. His nose notices scents from tire rubs to engine smoke, instantly knowing the difference between good smells and bad. His legs and arms do the grunt work, all at speeds that make every twitch a jerk and every bump a tooth-cracker.
*Talking with these guys, their mind-sets are similar to a serious surfer s, says wave legend and Fast Cars contestant Laird Hamilton. *If I spent my time worried about all the things that can go wrong on the board, I d never get on one. But during a run, I m working overtime, constantly anticipating and reacting. Your concentration won t let you think about all the uncontrollable forces around you.
The best racers believe that inborn skill is the secret to being the eye of a hurricane. Dreamers can spend all the money and time in the world on mental conditioning and physical training, but in the end, either they can do it or they can t, period. And that makes teaching it damn near impossible.
*I think it s the same reason that a lot of the greatest athletes have had a hard time as coaches, says Elway, citing Magic Johnson and Ted Williams as examples. *They didn t know how to teach their players to do the things that they did because they could naturally do things that no one else can.
Like Magic s leading the break or Teddy Ballgame s counting seam rotations, a great racer experiences his environment in slow motion, no matter how fast he s moving. It s this ability that allows Dale Earnhardt Jr. to calmly push his radio button and tell his team that he just watched a replay of their pit stop on the Jumbotron as he drove by it at 190 mph, six inches off someone else s rear bumper.
Nature says that the average man on the street can t drive in Junior s shoes, but human nature says that he still wants to try. The Jeff Gordon Racing School is one of three full-time driving schools that operate year-round at Lowe s, zipping bankers and mothers into firesuits to take their shot at the track record. They always feel like they re going 190, but few break 130. Skill is skill, and even the greatest communicator can t transfer his talent to someone else s body.
But here, in the name of reality television, such obstacles must be scaled. So the drivers ignore the intangibles and stick to what they can teach. They talk about hand positioning, running the correct line around the track, braking and throttle points. *Don t get me wrongall that is great, pro wrestler John Cena says of learning the basics. *But every time I cross the line, I m screaming, (r)How fast was that?
*People ask me all the time what it feels like to go fast, says reigning Cup champ Johnson. *But I honestly don t think about it. None of us races for the thrill of speed; we race to compete. Speed is relative to where you are, where your car is in relation to something else. When you blast off Pit Road, you feel the acceleration, but during the race we always talk about going slow to go fastthinking slow, hitting your marks on each lap, getting into a rhythm, going fast without thinking about going fast. I know that s not the sexy answer everyone wants, but it s how to win races.
Says seven-time rodeo world champ Ty Murray, *Kurt keeps telling me, (r)It s not about speed. He said it s about catching the car in front of you, about the competition. The speed comes with the chase. But that race car is a lot like a bull. If it ever really wants to take the time to remind you that what you re doing is dangerous, it can do it anytime it wants.
And this brings us back to the wall-banging worries of Cowher and the rest. There is one time when every racer, no matter how many laps he may have run, is reminded just how fast his hide is hurtling.
*When something goes wrong, says Carl Edwards, *you ve been in your rhythm and you ve been passing people, and the car is handling great and you re in that comfort zone - and then all of a sudden, the back end of your car breaks loose, and you get that red rush down your back, and your brain goes, Oh hell, we re going too fast! There are times when you can save it, but you react so fast that you don t know what you
did. When you can t save it, you just brace yourself and hope it doesn t hurt too bad.
*Excuse me, interrupts Salley, four-time NBA champ and current Edwards protg. *I m already not real sure how they are going to cram my 6'11" ass in this car, so let s please stop talking about wrecking and hurting and all of that.
They do get The Spider in his car (after moving back the seat and rearranging everything but the engine). And Edwards never mentions wrecking againnot even as a couple of the celebs find their way into the wall during a long day at the track.
After the superstars put their fast cars up for the night, they stroll through the infield media center en route to the catering tent, still laughing and talking with their Nextel Cup coaches and acting like they understand. On the security desk sits a dog-eared copy of the North Carolina Driver s Handbook, where a guard has been brushing up for his driving test. It s opened to page 49. The chapter is *Your Driving, and one sentence on the page is highlighted: *Driving at high speed is more dangerous because each additional mile traveled per hour reduces the driver s ability to control the vehicle.
True enough. But let s not tell that to anybody here. They don t want to hear it anyway.
Call it instinct. Survival mode.
Are great racers born or made? E-mail us at post@espnmag.com.