the car's direction once again pointing toward those... those cones! The orange wall approached rapidly and I pointed the car around one last pylon before moving on to the next lot. The wall of cones was intact!

Freed of my demons, I headed off to complete the course. A slight left curve pointed the car into another hairpin back to the right, down through another slalom, back to the left, and then to the right in a quick chicane. One last right-hand hairpin and the final gate popped up.

Broadcasting on the radio, the announcer reported on our performance, stating the driver's name and time, neither of which I comprehended. I was concentrating on the detail that followed: How many cones did I take down? The voice on the radio ended his report with one simple word: clean. No cones!

With one successful run behind us, Ben cheered along with me, before bringing me back to earth. "Now we go for time!"

The fourth run goes quite similar to the third with the evil corner unharmed as the Red Beetle made its run. Either my intense concentration or the pounding adrenalin was making me selectively deaf because, once again, I didn't hear the radio man give my time. I only wanted to hear that delightful word one more time. Clean. And I did.

Ben had actually been listening to the rest of the message. He turned to me and announced, "I think you're in first place!" A truly unexpected outcome, but I tried not to let it go to my head.

My racing for the day completed, I parked the car and wished Ben good luck on his runs (all four of which were clean, by the way). After making the first of them, he returned to the grid where I was working and, once again, thanked me for the earlier rides. At that point, I realized how much value there was in a pre-race ride where I could have memorized the course just as Ben had. This learning experience came too late for that day, but would prove handy for my next autocross outing!

Working alongside me on the grid was a fellow competitor in the G-Stock class. I asked what he drove and how his run had gone, hoping to hear it wasn't as good as my 83.533-second run. He was driving a 2007 Saab 9-3