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Fiat track day at Willow Springs International Raceway outside of Los Angeles.Barry Hathaway

It took exactly 12 seconds of racing school to learn my first important lesson: I have no idea what I’m doing.

This realization came to me as I entered the first turn of the autocross course, a twisting path of orange traffic cones designed to hone my skill manoeuvring at speed. Jamming on the brakes as I cranked the wheel, I felt the car losing grip and careening towards a line of cones even as the wheels pointed in the opposite direction. The brake pedal was fully depressed, the steering was all the way over and I had no idea what to do next except pray that the car somehow magically corrected itself. It did not.

This humbling lesson, along with many others, came courtesy of the Skip Barber Racing School, which has been holding track days such as these across the United States since 1975. Here, under the forgiving conditions of an empty race track, aspiring Lewis Hamiltons and Dale Earnhardts can learn how to drive fast from men and women who do it for a living.

The day began in a cinderblock classroom at the Willow Springs International Raceway outside of Los Angeles, where lead instructor Terry Earwood introduced us to the basics. “Everything starts and ends at the contact patch where the rubber meets the road,” says Earwood, a 34-year veteran of the Skip Barber Racing School and a former race car driver himself. With a pronounced southern twang and an auctioneer’s cadence, Earwood leads us through an abbreviated physics lesson augmented with a steady stream of one-liners, before letting us loose on the autocross course. “Don’t add speed to ugly,” he cautioned. “When in doubt, chicken out. The five most expensive words in motorsport are, ‘I thought I had it.'”

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The Skip Barber Racing School pairs aspiring racers with professionals on empty race tracks.Barry Hathaway

I have clearly already forgotten that lesson by the time I arrive at the autocross course, because I definitely think I have it and I definitely do not. “Visualize your path,” says my instructor Jean-Sébastien Sauriol, as I wheel the car back between the cones. “Look far ahead and use all the track width. When you’re approaching a turn, turn your eyes ahead. Hard on the brakes, turn in, look as far ahead as you can and get back on the power.” Sauriol is a race car driver and, as with all of Skip Barber’s instructors, an exceptionally patient man. From the passenger seat he delivers a steady series of instructions: more throttle, smoother on the brakes, steer now, look here. After my first few laps of the course the blood is pounding in my ears, my left leg is cramped from bracing myself against the firewall and my head is spinning. “That was good for your first-time,” Sauriol says. Right.

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A 'skid pad' helps drivers learn the principles of understeer and oversteer.Barry Hathaway

After the autocross course we make our way to an empty stretch of tarmac which a water truck has just finishing hosing down. This exercise, called a “skid pad,” is designed to help us understand the principles of oversteer and understeer and how to use them to our advantage. “We steer the car as much with our right foot as we do with the steering wheel,” advises Don Kutschall, another veteran instructor, as Earwood screeches around the skid pad, the spinning tires of his Fiat 124 Abarth laying a perfect circle of rubber on the tarmac. “Steer into the skid, stare into the turn,” Kutschall says. I realize now the rookie mistake I’d made on the autocross – I was doing neither of these things. The front tires ran out of grip, the car understeered and I locked my vision on the cones instead of where I wanted the car to go.

As with everything at the Skip Barber Racing school, I discover, mastering understeer is easier said than done. “As you add speed [in a turn], all cars will start to lose front grip,” says Earwood, now riding shotgun as I wheel onto the skid pad. Once I’ve built up some speed, he instructs me to ease back the gas, shifting the car’s weight to the front end, then open the throttle to kick out the rear. “Steer! Steer! Steer!” Earwood urges as the Fiat spins out of control, comes to a stop and stalls. “Never let the car dictate where you look,” he says. “Wherever the car is headed next, that’s where you’re looking next.” Got it. Or do I? We practise the drill a again and again, kicking out the back end of the Fiat while attempting to maintain control of its trajectory. When I eventually manage to maintain a controlled skid I want to whoop with joy. “It’s fun when you get it right!” I say. “That’s what she said,” Earwood says.

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The day's final test comes on a 2.5-kilometre road course.Barry Hathaway

My final test of the day requires putting all of my newfound skill to use on Willow Springs’s 2.5-kilometre road course. “Imagine a string tied from the steering wheel to the big toe of your right foot,” says Earwood, who takes us around the track in a passenger van before letting us loose on it in our Fiats. “The more your steer, the less you can accelerate. Add steering, take off speed; add speed, take off steering.” It occurs to me that Earwood could probably make better time in this Ford Transit van than I could in a race car. I try to recall the lessons I’m about to put into use: Hands at nine and three, eyes looking where I want to go, foot trailing gently off the brakes, finding the apex of the turn and gunning the throttle in the exit. Smoothness. Use all of the track. Eyes ahead to the next turn. I tighten the strap on my helmet, climb into my Fiat 124 and start the engine. How hard could it be? It turns out, very.

The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.

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