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"Be safe," Haynes says sternly. "We can't stress that enough." Haynes reviews some of the information we got in the van ("It's a four speed, so don't try and put it in fifth.") and explains "the cars are set up tight, so it is almost impossible to spin out," which seems to ease the crowd. His final caveat, though, seemed directed right at me -- "The cars are set up to go left, but you have to steer it. It does not steer itself." There were no questions from the gallery, so with that final word we headed to the track.

On the way out, I asked Haynes the one question everyone seemed afraid to utter -- "If I break it, do I buy it?" He said the school's liability insurance covered any accidents and that I had nothing to worry about. I felt my confidence and my future top speed increase exponentially.

It was a pretty warm day, in the low 80s, but the instant I got outside sweat began to cascade off my body because of the full body quilt I interned in. As I waited for my turn, precious fluids seeped out of me and I began to feel a tad dizzy. When my V8 chariot was ready, I was helped inside by Sammie Lee, whose tight fitting black stretch pants and bulging cleavage were a definite concentration sapper.

Once strapped in for my eight-lap ride, I fired up the 450-hosepower power plant and followed behind both an instructor and another student out of the pits, shifting smoothly from first to second and then into third. As the car banked up onto the track, I accelerated into fourth and immediately realized that this was going to be much harder than I thought. The track is a tri-oval, which means the front straight is basically one long banked curve. The entire time behind the wheel, you have to wrestle the car into its groove and you're constantly having to reorient your pitch and place on the track.

As I struggled to keep my line, I noticed that the two cars in front of me were leaving me in the dust. I cranked on the gas and tried to catch up, but as I did the car became even more of a challenge to drive. The faster I got, the harder it was to maneuver my head because of the strong G-forces, and it felt as if my powers of coordination were going south.

I gradually caught up to the pair in front of me, getting up to about 135, but as I did my car got squirrelly and the dreaded cones began to snap at my fenders. At the start of the sixth lap, my head was swimming, my core body temperature was soaring, my arms and back were aching and I flaked -- I slipped a bit coming out of turn one and the right front fender began voraciously chowing down on tasty little red cones. Coming out of the turn I slowed up and regained my balance, but the damage was already done.

I coasted through my last two laps, dreading my ride back into the pits. It would turn out that I was the only one in the class who feasted on cones, and as I glided to a stop I could see one of the instructors racing over to place the dunce cone on my head, while the former Miss Nude World was pointing and smiling in my direction.

My ride had been a blast -- you haven't lived until you've barreled down a straightaway at about 140 and then slammed into a high-banked turn. But my time behind the wheel also taught me a little more about hubris and it ended my internal debate on the status of NASCAR as a legitimate sport. If I was a bowl of warm Jell-O after eight laps, only a real man, and a real athlete, could rock and roll through 500.