REPORTING FROM ... THE INSIDE OF AN INDYCAR COCKPIT

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"Let's put the women and children to bed, and go hunting for Reporting From opportunities."

The clouds over the Kansas Speedway are thick, leftovers from thunderstorms last night. Still, the track at noon doesn't have enough moisture to soak my socks as I change into a fire suit along pit road. I've already filled out a half-dozen pages of release forms, signing away my rights to sue should something go wrong. Or if it doesn't. I'm readying for my IndyCar ride around the 1.5 mile tri-oval.

My suit, and my ride, is orange and black with a bright Hewlett-Packard logo. After zipping the oversized fire suit, I get help putting on race gloves from Scott Jasek at The Indy Racing Experience. Jasek also helps me find a helmet and shoes. While I'm lacing the shoes, a passenger is getting strapped into a car painted white with National Guard livery. The engine starts, angrily, and the car shoots off pit road. The scent of burning ethanol, first cousin of burnt popcorn, fills the air.

My ride is here. Handing Jasek my camera, I climb a stepladder and ease into the cockpit near the driver, Stephan Gregoire. Two crewmen buckle me down and hook my helmet to the chassis, locking body in the cockpit and head to the machine. Ostensibly, now I'll neither fly out or snap my neck. Of course, the IndyCar Experience is safe. It's the airplane assurance: "The ride is safer than my drive to the speedway…" Or whatever. It's 180 mph on a high-banked oval inside a car barely tall enough to show light between itself and ground.

With wide nylon straps across my chest and my head bolted to the chassis, a sense of claustrophobic inevitability comes over me. I'm trapped, like someone on a roller-coaster that's slowly creeping to the top of that first big drop. There is no countdown, no slow build and release of excitement. We simply leave the pit with a force that throws me back and a sound that shakes the lower half of my body. As Gregoire hits second gear, it feels like we are grabbed by a tractor beam. The car turns hard left and I slam violently against the inside of the capsule. A nauseated panic grips my stomach. We are on the backstretch. The speed and angle of the track is otherworldly, and when I look up the grandstands are in the sky.

Stephan goes high down the back straightaway, building speed for Turns Three and Four. Heading for Turn One, I'm back on earth again; grandstands to the right, pit road to the left. I raise a fist to test the wind. The force knocks it back. It feels like it could tear my arm off.

That lap was the warm-up.

He goes high into Turn One and deep through Two, popping up on the backstretch. When he goes high and outside at the top of the next turn, I expect him to lift from the accelerator, coast down to the white line and accelerate again at the bottom—like a stock-car driver. But Indy drivers don't lift. We accelerate right down into Three and catch Four so hard it feels like we leave the ground and fly past the flag-stand.

On the cool-down lap I'm trying to soak in the experience, consciously imprinting a memory of the hornet's whine in my chest, the force of wind and the blur that accompanies a near 200 mph.

We flinch left off the track at Turn Four and it's over. He's down shifting, throwing my body forward. As the safety gear is undone, I retreat from the vehicle, get the helmet off, climb to the step ladder and raise my arms in victory, almost on instinct. After changing back into normal clothes, I walk around for twenty minutes, talking to anyone who'll listen to me jabber, and waiting for my heart to slow down.

[Ed's note: For a clip of Hampton Stevens' ride, go here. ]

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