Wild With Kyle, Part Deux

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – In true Wild With Kyle fashion, this week I’m pushing going extreme with my adventure/thrill seeking excursion.

Thanks to the crews at Fast Track High Performance Driving School, and Atlanta Motor Speedway for taking care of this segment for me. It was because of them that I was able to do something I have wanted to do since I was a kid.

This week I took a couple laps around the track at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Andy Hillenburg owns and operates the Fast Track High Performance Driving School, and he isn’t messing around with these cars.

Every car in his fleet (which, by the way, you can drive too) is an actual car used in the NASCAR racing series. They are a few years older and no longer racing actively, but nothing on them has been changed or modified to slow them down. They still move fast!

As part of the experience, I suited up in full racing gear. Helmet, gloves, fire resistant suit, the whole nine yards. Then it’s out for 10 laps, of full-throttle, white-knuckle, racing.

This is how it works; once you leave Pit Road, you are following a pace car, which is driven by an aspiring racer. As long as you maintain four car lengths behind the pace car, each lap you go faster and faster. If you start dropping back, or losing control, the pace car slows down and you maintain a safe speed.

My safe speed ended at 130 miles per hour. It wasn’t that I was too scared to go faster, it just got difficult keeping the car under control as I was going through the turns. It wasn’t quite as easy as they make it seem on T.V.!

But here’s the thing. Now that I’ve done it once, I want to do it again. That’s what Hillenburg said would happen, and it did. No wonder racers run for such long careers. The adrenaline rush it unreal. And there weren’t any other cars around me to fight with. Imagine what it would be like to have a track full of drivers, all fighting for the win!

Now, I’m not saying I would be any good, but if it came to it, I’d certainly give NASCAR a try…