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" I&amp;#039;m really an ordinary guy who gets to do extraordinary things--like get in somebody else&amp;#039;s car and try to go 200 mph. You see, the Porsche people had been to my garage and I took them for a ride in my Stanley Steamer. The next thing you know, they&amp;#039;re asking me to take a Carrera GT to Talladega and set some records. I guess they thought if an average pinhead like Jay Leno could drive one of these cars at 200 mph, it would show how safe and reliable the car is. In case there isn&amp;#039;t a Carrera GT on your block, it has a 5.7-liter V10 that puts out 605 hp. It also has air conditioning, a stereo, a navigation system and a cockpit full of leather. The fact that it can go nearly 200 mph on a racetrack is amazing. Talladega is pretty amazing, too. Formerly known as Alabama International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway is 2.66 miles around with, essentially, three major turns. And it&amp;#039;s banked steeply. You may not realize how steep that 33-degree banking is, but when I tried to walk across the track to the outside wall, I couldn&amp;#039;t stand upright. I had to get down on my hands and knees. At anything less than 100 mph, your car sorta falls off the track. I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;m a particularly skilled or talented driver. But I don&amp;#039;t tend to overreact and, if I watch someone else do something, I figure I should be able to do it, too. Right? If I don&amp;#039;t panic, that is. Luckily, I had a terrific teacher in David Donohue. His father, Mark Donohue, was one of America&amp;#039;s best drivers 30 years ago. He won the Indy 500 in &amp;#039;72, and raced in Formula One as well as in the TransAm and CanAm series. He also set a 221.160-mph closed-course speed record at Talladega in a Porsche 917/30 on Aug. 9, 1975. That was just 10 days before he was killed while practicing for the Austrian Formula One race. It just seemed right for his son to return to Talladega in a Porsche and set some records. David was patient with me. Maybe more patient than I would be if someone came up to me and said, &amp;quot;Jay, this is Larry Johnson; he&amp;#039;s a machine operator from Des Moines. We want you to teach him to do stand-up comedy on The Tonight Show.&amp;quot; We spent a lot of time in the car, first with David driving, telling me what to expect. It&amp;#039;s fascinating, the things that go through his mind. For example, he told me to be careful because parts of the track were in the shade so they&amp;#039;d still be damp in the morning. He pointed to the painted stripes and said, &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s still some dew on the lines, and you might slide on that.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s noticing dew on white lines and I&amp;#039;m thinking, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t hit a deer out there!&amp;quot; These details are things that have never even come into play for me. I have never been this intimate with an automobile in my life. It&amp;#039;s like reading a how-to manual for something you&amp;#039;ve done all your life and finding out there&amp;#039;s a lot more to it than you ever knew. For years I&amp;#039;ve heard racers say, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t get off the throttle too quickly going into a corner or the back end will come around.&amp;quot; I was on the straightest part of the track, and I had just passed the time traps. As I went through, I lifted my foot maybe a quarter of an inch, to slow down. And just as I lifted, the back of the car whipped around. Uh-oh. You think: So that&amp;#039;s what those race car drivers were talking about. I spun five times, but I managed to call up what I&amp;#039;d learned in a few driving courses. I could hear all my instructors&amp;#039; voices saying, &amp;quot;You will always hit what you&amp;#039;re looking at.&amp;quot; I saw the wall coming up and I quickly turned my head, and cut the wheel to go where my head was turning. Then I stepped on the brakes. As the car spun, I turned my head the other way, cut the wheel, and the car immediately went in the direction I was looking. I avoided hitting the wall. All I could think was, &amp;quot;Wow. That stuff really works.&amp;quot; What&amp;#039;s really important is concentration. And I&amp;#039;m not a guy who concentrates well. Back in school teachers would tell my parents, &amp;quot;Jay has the ability. He just doesn&amp;#039;t apply himself.&amp;quot; On the track, I&amp;#039;d come to a corner and say to myself &amp;quot;concentrate.&amp;quot; So I would pay attention. But at the next corner, I&amp;#039;d have to remind myself, &amp;quot;Here comes another one, pay attention!&amp;quot; I can&amp;#039;t imagine doing this lap after lap after lap, with 30 guys around me. Like most people, I hadn&amp;#039;t gone close to 200 mph--anywhere. Now, I can tell you, driving that fast is different from any other kind of driving. It&amp;#039;s like having sex in the middle of a tornado; it&amp;#039;s exciting, but there are a lot of scary things happening at the same time. David would say to me, &amp;quot;Remember, every time you blink, you&amp;#039;ve gone the length of a football field.&amp;quot; You quickly realize that the drivers who do this are real athletes. I watched David circle the track. He&amp;#039;s looking for ways to lower his lap times by hundredths of a second. I&amp;#039;m just trying to stay alive and not wreck the car. I mean, he&amp;#039;s looking at dew on the white lines. Besides going after records, I was glad to validate what I&amp;#039;d said about the clutch in the Carrera GT (&amp;quot;Jay Leno&amp;#039;s Garage,&amp;quot; Jan. 2005, page 52). If you do three or four big burnouts in, say, a Lamborghini Countach, or even a Ford Cobra, you&amp;#039;re gonna smell something. Or the clutch is gonna tighten up on you. At best, you&amp;#039;ll have to wait and let it cool down a bit, and at worst, the clutch will just go up in smoke. With this Porsche&amp;#039;s ceramic clutch, we did around 50 burnouts, trying to find the best way to minimize wheelspin off the line. It never slipped and kept working fine. Ultimately, David was able to circle the track flat out all the way. That&amp;#039;s quite an achievement. He set a Grand American closed-course, flying-start speed record of 196.301 mph, and he did 198.971 in the measured mile. I set three Grand American standing start records myself. The fastest, from a complete stop, was 156.603 mph. My fastest lap was 182 mph--with the a/c on! Some people like to win Emmys, some people like to win Oscars. I like it when someone says, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s a Porsche Carrera GT, go do as many burnouts as you feel you need to.&amp;quot; Porsche has auctioned the Leno/Donohue record-setting car. Proceeds will benefit the children of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Click here for more. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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