For many VIR devotees, with each passing year this special event has become a tradition, and I am no exception. On November 14, 2008, I was once again at Holiday Laps with some fellow members of the Tar Heel MINI Motoring Club. As usual, we had lots of fun thrashing our modern Coopers around the full course

At the end of each 20 minute session, some of us would walk over to the information tent to make donations for another session on the track. During one visit, I noticed two raffle buckets on the table. One bucket promised the lucky winner a ride around the track in an Ariel Atom. This generous prize had been donated by TMI Autotech, Inc., the U. S. licensee for the Atom whose headquarters are located at VIR. “Very nice, and well worth it!” I thought and was just about to complete an entry for the Ariel ride when the other bucket caught my eye.

I couldn’t believe it. For a $5 donation, the bucket said, I could enter to win one of two rides scheduled that day in one of my dream cars, one of a handful of vintage race cars that never failed to leave me weak at the knees each time it streaked past me during several vintage race events on the VIR track: the McLaren M6B Can Am racer.

Within seconds, I put my entry in the McLaren bucket and crossed my fingers. I can’t begin to describe the astonishment and sheer delight I felt when, just before the lunch break, I heard my name being called over the PA as the winner of the first ride! Immediately, I rushed over to the tent where the McLaren was waiting.

Already in the driver’s seat of the M6B was its owner, Dave Handy, who I had had the pleasure of meeting for the first time earlier in the year at VIR’s annual Heacock Classic vintage races. I’d been told by many different sources that, if I wanted to know the fastest way to drive around VIR, watch Dave Handy because he knew the track better than anyone. Now, seeing him at the wheel of the McLaren, little did I suspect the master class I was about to receive – and in the wet, no less!

Donning a helmet, I squeezed myself into the aluminum trough that passes for a “second seat” in the McLaren, my shoulders parallel with the rest of the car and my lower body twisted sideways, pretzel-like, to accommodate the narrow slot. After confirming I was ready, Dave hit the starter and the monstrous V8 behind us growled to life. Slowly, the car rolled along on its full wet weather Avon tires towards the pitlane entrance. Once at the gate, the car made a quick right turn and we were off!

I knew the first lap was primarily going to be concerned with assessing rain hazards on the wet track and getting those tires well warmed up. At first, we proceeded at what I considered a moderate pace for the car, but a

fairly fast pace for me, first up through the small esses of “The Snake”, then accelerating a little on the following short straight, on through the uphill esses then to the South Bend at Turn 10.

For me, this corner was going to be the crucial test. While I had complete faith in Dave’s driving skills, I knew this corner was tricky, turning to the left but its camber leaning out to the right. I’d seen many good drivers get bitten hard in this corner, losing the back end and suddenly turning a very expensive race car into a very expensive lawn mower. I held my breath.

Rounding Turn 10, I felt the back come out ever so slightly, but Dave had it reigned in within a millisecond. His car control was truly masterful as he maneuvered down the hill and into the famous Oak Tree Bend, then onto the back straight. Picking up speed on the uphill straight, Dave soared up over the rise at the end, and then entered Turn 14 and the beginning of the “Roller Coaster”, giving one a slight taste of what it might be like going through the famous “Corkscrew” at Laguna Seca.

Coming off that, he entered Turns 16 and 17, known as the “Hog Pen” turn, and then onto the beginning of the front straight. Now the gloves came off and Dave gave it “the full beans”!

At this very moment, a small voice in the back of my brain sounding strangely like that of Captain Jean Luc Piccard uttering the word “engage!” The acceleration was shattering. The McLaren M6B suddenly kicked me in the backside and, like a catapult, propelled us through the kink in the front straight and towards Turn 1.

I had never been this low to the ground in any car apart from a kart, and I had certainly never seen the first turn at VIR approach at such an alarming rate. I knew that car and driver were both top notch, but that didn’t abate that strange mixture of exhilaration and fear I felt as part of me wished I had a

steering wheel and brake pedal too! (Yes, drivers DO make the worst passengers.) Not to worry, because in a fraction of a second, I received my first unfiltered taste of true racing brakes in action.

Ye gods! Half my internal organs ended up in the next county! We rounded Turns 1 and 2 relatively slowly, through a slight kink, and on to Turn 3, known as “Nascar Bend”. If there is one corner on this track that will have you for lunch and then laugh about it over dessert, it’s this one. If you don’t take the correct line, you’ll find yourself in the grass or (even worse) in the tire barrier. Dave slung the McLaren through this corner as if he’d done it a million times in his sleep, whipping around turn 5, up through the Snake, and then back to warp nine until he braked hard at the bottom of the uphill esses.

Suddenly, the rain returned, just hard enough to be annoying. Water came out of the louvers over the front wheels. In my mind I tried to imagine multiplying what I was experiencing in these few laps to what a driver experiences driving a full stint or two in these conditions at Le Mans. My already healthy respect for those drivers grew a thousand fold as we rounded Oak Tree. Then, on the back straight, Dave pulled out the BIG hammer!

Like the guitar amps in the movie “Spinal Tap”, the McLaren apparently had a setting marked with an “11”. We were suddenly climbing up the back straight in the neighborhood of 160+ mph, the eight cylinder orchestra behind my head screaming a symphony that even Beethoven could not top. Gravity forgot me briefly as we went over the rise at the top of the straight and, just ahead, coming at us like a speeding freight train, was Turn 14, the entrance to the Roller Coaster. Just then Dave remembered that there is also an “11” setting on the brakes too. Suddenly, all the flesh was ripped off my bones and flung into the floor of the car as we zoomed through the Roller Coaster, shot through the Hog Pen turn and then zipped back onto the front straight.

This went on for some time - three more laps to be precise. It continued to rain periodically during the run, the water flying over our heads during our blinding runs down the straights, and then flowing into the car when rounding the corners. I was riding in the fastest four-wheeled bathtub on the planet. By lap number four, although my body was screaming to be set free from the car because it was in some pain from all the hammering it was getting from the raw metal of the trough, my brain refused to listen because it was having the ride of a lifetime.

When we finally came in after five laps, Dave pulled the car into the paddock and, while still moving, cut the engine and coasted the final few feet to the staging area. I had never heard a quiet quite like that. When the car came to a complete stop, Dave asked, “Well, what did you think?” Unable to stop grinning like a lunatic, I said “That was SHATTERING!”

A minute later John Davison, Director of Public Relations for VIR, asked me how I liked it and I shouted, “I want one of these for Christmas!!” Both Dave and I were soaked on our respective backsides, but that couldn’t dampen the thrill of the experience for me. The McLaren M6B Can Am car had exceeded all my expectations, and whereas before I knew I liked going fast, after the “run in the rain” I knew I’d like to be able to drive as fast as the McLaren on a regular basis. Maybe one day.

After the run, Dave apologized for the weather, and said if I found myself out at VIR on a nice day and he happened to be there with the M6B, he would take me onto the dry track and show me what the McLaren is really capable of. OK mate, you’re on! But next time, I’m bringing old pillows and a set of earplugs!

Originally published at www.dailysportscar.com - reproduced here with their kind permission.