200-MPH Driving School
“Watch this for me, would you please?” asks Didier Theys, the Belgian endurance driver, indicating the digital speedometer in the 806-hp Koenigsegg CCX supercar. As I nod, Theys floors the throttle and we’re off, rounding the entrance to the lone, long runway of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the heart of the Florida Everglades.
Life in the public fast lane is for chumps. Serious speeders will want to test their mettle on the Xtreme Challenge, an event hosted by a team of Belgian instructors from World Class Driving (www.worldclassÂdriving.com ). The company has built its reputation on traveling tours, in which participants sample a handful of sports cars for a day on open roads for $1695. The Xtreme program runs $4995, presumably due to the cost of renting an entire airfield for the day and expensive insurance.
Before the fun begins, participants must first sign away their lives. Item No. 8 on the liability waiver begins with this line:
“Entrant hereby acknowledges that the activities of the event(s) are very dangerous and involve the risk of serious injury and/or death and/or property damage.”
Despite the risks, entrants are not guaranteed to break the double-century speed barrier on their own because success is not only a matter of courage. The Dade-Collier runway is nearly two miles long, but that isn’t enough to reach 200 mph before the all-important braking zone without first slingshotting oneself—practically sideways—through a big, double-apex right-hand turn that precedes the runway. Come in too slow, and the car will fail to build enough momentum. It is a perfect demonstration of slow in/fast out cornering—and the reward for smooth driving is official membership in the 200 MPH Club (which includes a certificate, a T-shirt, a baseball cap, and a crystal trophy keepsake).
I glance up as the Koenigsegg reaches 175 mph, to see Theys—a green blur of swamp grass as his backdrop—staring intently down the airstrip. The rising speedometer readout eventually slows, gaining another mile per hour every second or so. 209. 210. 211. Orange cones blur past as we hit 216 mph, then Theys lifts, pauses briefly, and brakes—hard. The factory-supplied Koenigsegg—with a price tag of nearly $1 million—is here strictly for rides. Participants get two chances to go 200 mph in three different cars and one final run in the car of their choice. Earlier in the day, autocross-style handling laps provided familiarization.
“You don’t need to go fast—the purpose early on is just to get used to the cars’ steering, handling, brakes,” Theys explains. “Then we have my workshop, where we teach you how to brake hard at high speed, and also, especially, to make the last turn before the straightaway as clean as possible to get maximum speed.”
In my first car, an orange Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, I hit 194 mph, then 196. Next is a red Ferrari 599GTB. I get to 198. On my second run in the Ferrari, I turn in too soon and—realizing I will never make top speed—immediately stop and return to pit lane. “Third time’s the charm,” I say, again rounding the runway entry toward the final apex as my instructor/passenger, Roland Linder, shouts orders: “Wait, WAIT! Turn in. NOW! Feather the throttle. feather it. NOW GO FOR IT!” Foot flat on the gas, my eyes strain to focus two miles down the tarmac, but the midday heat distorts the distant horizon into a mirage.
“Two hundred! Nice job,” Linder says. Later, in a Gallardo LP560-4. I achieve an indicated 204, though Lamborghini claims the top speed is 202 mph. Speedometers are the only devices the World Class Driving school uses to measure velocity. Even so, on this day several paying customers fall short of the mark and vow to return for the next Xtreme program in December.
Driving at a rate of about one football field a second is something I won’t soon forget, even though each two-mile run took less than a minute from start to finish. “We have racing drivers, but we are not a racing school,” Linder maintains. “This is simply a chance for people to get a feeling for speed without having a black-and-white car on their tail. It’s just for fun."