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"Before Michael Fassbender loses control of the 340-horsepower Mustang GT the two of us are riding in, before I learn what it is to watch the world fade into a rotating blur of life-threatening objects\u2014wall, wall, other car, wall\u2014I walk into the lobby of a racetrack thirty miles outside Montreal, only to discover the wrong X-Man waiting for me. It\u2019s supposed to be Fassbender, up here in Canada shooting X-Men: Days of Future Past, meeting me at this track. That was the plan. And for a moment I think Fassbender is indeed the man I\u2019m looking at, except the man I\u2019m looking at is shorter and more cuddly than I had been led to believe, his hair longer, his stubble red, his eyes pale blue-green.\n\nHe leans against a counter, talking animatedly with a track attendant in a rich Scottish brogue, looking and sounding altogether like...\n\nJames McAvoy?\n\nI walk back outside and then back inside, like: Maybe this time it will be the right X-Man.\n\nNope. Definitely James McAvoy. Young playboy Professor X to Fassbender\u2019s swinging-\u201960s Magneto in X-Men: First Class.\n\nMy phone buzzes. The accent is Irish this time. The actual Michael Fassbender, calling to tell me he\u2019s in traffic. He\u2019ll be here soon, he says apologetically.\n\nWe\u2019re northwest of the city, where the land flattens out\u2014long low barns, wildflowers, fields like line drawings. It\u2019s a Sunday morning in early August, the weather unseasonably cool. The racetrack is here at Montreal\u2019s enormous second airport, Mirabel, built in the \u201970s and abandoned three decades later. Cargo planes still fly in and out. But that\u2019s more or less it, except for the Circuit ICAR racetrack\u2014built right out by the runway, 2.11 miles long, sixteen increasingly sharp, increasingly terrifying turns.\n\nMcAvoy is waiting for Fassbender, too. They were out the night before\u2014they\u2019ve been in Canada together since April, reprising their X-Men roles\u2014and they\u2019re both car guys, so Fassbender invited him along. McAvoy acknowledges it must\u2019ve been disorienting for me to find him standing in the lobby instead of the guy I\u2019m supposed to meet.\n\n&amp;quot;We\u2019ve decided to switch names and identities and schedules for the week,&amp;quot; McAvoy says, running with it. His accent goes full Fassbender. &amp;quot;Growing up in Ireland...&amp;quot;\n\nMcAvoy gets pretty far into the joke, narrating the Fassbender biography. The actor\u2019s birth in Germany. His childhood in Ireland. His lonely teenage metal-nerd years. McAvoy doesn\u2019t come right up to Fassbender\u2019s glittering envy-of-the-industry present, to this fall\u2019s 12 Years a Slave\u2014directed by longtime Fassbender collaborator-slash-soul-extractor Steve McQueen, in the most harrowing installment of the three harrowing films they\u2019ve made together\u2014or his other, less art-house-y new movie, The Counselor, from Cormac McCarthy\u2019s second-ever original screenplay, about a drug deal gone spectacularly wrong, with Javier Bardem and Pen\u00E9lope Cruz and Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz and directed by Ridley Scott. But McAvoy comes pretty close, tracing Fassbender\u2019s uncommonly gradual climb up the slippery, desperate slopes of Mount Hollywood, before he\u2019s interrupted.\n\nFassbender walks in. He\u2019s in bright green Adidas track pants and a black T-shirt, hair sticking up everywhere, eyes bleary and barely open. He looks as if someone rolled his body the thirty miles out from Montreal and he woke up on mile twenty-nine. It\u2019s hard to tell if he\u2019s badly hungover or just rakish. He greets McAvoy with a fraternal hug, shakes my hand. &amp;quot;Bloody traffic,&amp;quot; he says cheerfully.\n\nWe are led into a classroom for a safety briefing. Maxime, a French-born former professional wheelman with immaculate gelled hair and nifty driving sneakers, is our instructor for the day. Each of us\u2014Fassbender, McAvoy, me\u2014gets a bottle of water and a piece of paper with a diagram of the course. On the page, it looks cute, a little ectoplasm of 180-degree curves and certain death. Fassbender starts drawing on his handout: first a cube, then a cube with legs, then what looks like a mailbox.\n\nToday, Maxime tells us, we will be driving a fleet of Mustang GTs. He starts going through slides. The seat, Maxime says, gives you the feel of the rear tires. The steering wheel gives you the front tires. At high speeds, you brake in a straight line, then turn; you do not do both at the same time.\n\n&amp;quot;Let\u2019s try not to spin out today,&amp;quot; Maxime says, because that\u2019s what happens when you engage both brake and steering wheel at one hundred miles per hour. The seat belt is called a nutcracker: &amp;quot;If you want to know whether your braking is good or not, feel around that part.&amp;quot;\n\nOkay? Okay. Any other questions?\n\n&amp;quot;Why do you guys use Mustangs?&amp;quot; Fassbender asks.\n\n&amp;quot;The engine in there is top-ten toughest in the world,&amp;quot; Maxime says.\n\n&amp;quot;So you can\u2019t break them,&amp;quot; Fassbender nods, like: We\u2019ll see.\n\nAlso, Maxime mentions belatedly, there is no passing on the track.\n\nWe don black balaclavas. Fassbender looks like he\u2019s about to hijack a cargo jet. I look like a hostage. We decide to ride together, for the camaraderie of it. They hand us helmets. &amp;quot;You want to hold the water?&amp;quot; he offers as I awkwardly clamber in shotgun. &amp;quot;We can share it.&amp;quot;\n\nMaxime lines us up. He\u2019ll be first, in the pace car, followed by McAvoy, then us. At the start, Fassbender begins revving the engine, the Mustang angrily vibrating in place.\n\n&amp;quot;Oh shit,&amp;quot; he giggles as we wait for the flag. &amp;quot;I think I need to fart.&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;This is a safe space,&amp;quot; I attempt.\n\nHe turns and looks at me, two skeptical eyes visible through the visor of his giant helmet.\n\n&amp;quot;I\u2019m not sure that it is,&amp;quot; Fassbender says drily, turning back toward the track.\n\nThen the flag drops.\n\n\n\nIn 12 Years a Slave, Fassbender plays Edwin Epps, a Louisiana slave-owner whose inner rot seems to sprout from the very land itself\u2014an evil man, even in comparison with other evil men. This is a film that, frame by frame, is soaked in a dread so exquisite and unrelenting as to be almost unbearable. And though the film belongs to its precise lead actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor, playing Solomon Northup, a free man kidnapped and sold at auction, it is the menacing dynamic between him and Fassbender\u2019s Epps\u2014hard-eyed, without mercy, wearing Jack Nicholson\u2019s weird head towel from The Missouri Breaks\u2014that gives the film its terrorized, furious heart. Fassbender\u2019s performance is singular in the sense that no one has even attempted what he\u2019s doing here before: a man awash in plantation liquor, angrily in love with one of his own slaves, visiting every kind of nightmare on himself and his property, human and otherwise.\n\nAnd then there\u2019s The Counselor. Fassbender shot it back-to-back with 12 Years. He plays the title character\u2014because this is a Cormac McCarthy screenplay, that\u2019s all he\u2019s actually called, &amp;quot;the Counselor&amp;quot;\u2014a self-satisfied, fainthearted lawyer whose decision to participate in a drug deal is revealed to be a very bad decision indeed. The film is a gleefully trashy morality tale: Snuff films are described in the courtliest of metaphors; roadside decapitations unfold as elegantly as ballet. The first time you see the Counselor, his head is buried between Pen\u00E9lope Cruz\u2019s legs.\n\n&amp;quot;How do you know how to do that?&amp;quot; her character asks.\n\n&amp;quot;From hanging out with really nasty girls,&amp;quot; Fassbender\u2019s Counselor responds, and you think: Here is the one actor we have today who can deliver that line with the sleazy sexiness it requires.\n\nIt\u2019s hard to remember, watching stuff like this, that he hasn\u2019t been around that long\u2014that unlike, say, Brad Pitt, his co-star in both 12 Years and The Counselor, Fassbender has only been working, really working, for five remarkable years, ever since Steve McQueen saw what a decade\u2019s worth of casting directors didn\u2019t and chose him to play Irish hunger-striker Bobby Sands in 2008\u2019s Hunger.\n\nThe first time he appears in Hunger, his character is being forcibly stripped and washed. Fassbender is thrashing and naked, howling with the fury of a guy who\u2019d pretty much given up on basic human vanity, let alone a career\u2014he was 31 then and had no reason to think the next ten years of his life would be any more fruitful than the prior ten, most of which he\u2019d spent behind a bar. It\u2019s a remarkable performance, transfixing even in the moments he is barely doing anything at all: lying in a prison cell, say, his face a smiling clown\u2019s mask of blood.\n\nThe last day on Hunger, McQueen gathered everyone involved with the film and made a brief speech about his lead actor: &amp;quot;Nobody knew who he was then. But I went to the crew, and I said, \u2019Everybody here at some point in life is going to say, \u2019I worked with Michael Fassbender.\u2019 &amp;quot;\n\nToday, on the phone, McQueen sort of chuckles, thinking about that moment.\n\n&amp;quot;And I don\u2019t think I was wrong.&amp;quot;\n\n\n\n We are immediately going very fast.\n\n&amp;quot;I don\u2019t understand the gears!&amp;quot; Fassbender is yelling. He\u2019s moving the gearshift all over, like a magic wand or a broken joystick. &amp;quot;Where the fuck is third gear?&amp;quot; It does not seem to matter where third gear is.\n\nThere is no passing allowed. Maxime was very clear on that. The goal at this early moment is simply to get a feel for the track. And yet: Now we are flying past McAvoy. The cars are all wired up, and our walkie-talkie crackles angrily: &amp;quot;No passing!&amp;quot;\n\nFassbender laughs a high-pitched laugh. &amp;quot;Fuck you, buddy!&amp;quot;\n\nNow he\u2019s creeping up on the pace car. He\u2019s got our Mustang right up behind Maxime\u2019s bumper, slamming on the brakes when we get too close, which is every other turn. I\u2019m levitating in my useless passenger seat, my cheeks making cartoon shapes when we come around the curves.\n\nIt should be said that Fassbender is a beautiful driver. He\u2019s deftly painting the line Maxime is laying down, even anticipating it. Ahead of us, you can see Maxime notice it, too: Our pace car is clearly speeding up. Like: If these guys can handle it...\n\nWell, okay: We are immediately going even faster. On the turns, our car starts drifting, the two of us awash in that sickening sensation when the wheels are gripping nothing at all. There is a quick pit stop to regroup, and then we\u2019re in the car again; on our second or third lap back out, Fassbender screaming in pursuit of Maxime, we hit the second-to-last curve, a bobby pin at 15\u2014the sharpest turn on the course\u2014our car pitching toward the back of Maxime\u2019s car, Maxime\u2019s brake lights hugely red and approaching at a terrifying rate of speed, Fassbender slamming on our own brakes, yanking the wheel to begin the turn, and our car...\n\nSpins out completely. Everything is a blur as we\u2019re rotating on the track, walls coming in and out of view, Fassbender and I both just screaming until...\n\nWe come to a rest, facing exactly the wrong way on the track. We both exhale violently. We\u2019re laughing giddily. I look up happily at the world that\u2019s just been given back to me, just in time to see...\n\nJames McAvoy bearing right down on us, the hood of his car aimed squarely at the hood of ours. Fassbender and I suck our breath in at the same time, so loud it\u2019s audible: uuuuh. And then, at that last moment...\n\nMcAvoy jerks his wheel. His vehicle slips narrowly past ours, the two of us grim and silent, watching him go by, Professor X come to Magneto\u2019s rescue once more.\n\nAnd then Fassbender fires the engine back up and takes a couple of extra laps, because we missed one, spinning around in place\u2014and because once we start driving again, the car immediately runs out of gas, as if it, too, were traumatized, so we have to stop off in the pit and refill\u2014and Fassbender expects to get in all the time he\u2019s owed, even though all the other cars are now finished and off the track, even though our walkie-talkie is again blaring: &amp;quot;Mustang, back to the pit, please. Mustang back to the pit.&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;Don\u2019t give me a car that doesn\u2019t have any juice in it,&amp;quot; Fassbender retorts indignantly at the one-way walkie-talkie, and around again we go.\n\nAfterward, I see McAvoy in the men\u2019s room. He yells over across the urinals: &amp;quot;That was crazy, ay?&amp;quot; I nod: Yeah.\n\n&amp;quot;Michael,&amp;quot; McAvoy says, zipping up. &amp;quot;He should\u2019ve been a race driver.&amp;quot;\n\n\n\n A few lessons about success in Hollywood, from a man who would now know:\n\n 1. The words that come out of your mouth no longer mean anything.\n\n&amp;quot;I make a lot more friends, you know what I mean? You become a lot more successful in terms of, like, talking to a girl. She\u2019s all of a sudden more interested in me. I know that, like, three years ago, she would\u2019ve walked away after two sentences left my mouth. I remember I was sitting at this table at this thing, and I was talking to this girl. I was like, \u2019God, I am so boring right now.\u2019 But she was like, \u2019That\u2019s so interesting!\u2019 I was like, \u2019You know what? Five years ago, this would not have been interesting.\u2019 &amp;quot;\n\n 2. Buy gold.\n\nConversations with Michael Fassbender sometimes go in surprising directions. He has not been spending much of the money he\u2019s made in the past few years, he tells me, apropos of not much, from acting in X-Men and Scott\u2019s Prometheus and Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Inglourious Basterds\u2014he still lives in the same East London bachelor apartment he\u2019s had since his twenties\u2014and that presents an interesting conundrum:\n\n&amp;quot;It\u2019s probably not good in the bank,&amp;quot; he muses, as though this is the first time this notion has occurred to him. &amp;quot;You need to get it out of the bank.&amp;quot;\n\n Out of the bank?\n\n&amp;quot;You hear, \u2019Oh, we\u2019re in this much debt.\u2019 It\u2019s like, where is that money?! All these numbers: Where do they come from? One hundred billion whatever, these numbers. I\u2019d like to see a room with that amount of money. There is no room that could take that amount of money. That money doesn\u2019t exist.&amp;quot;\n\n But you\u2019re in the same spot, right? I don\u2019t know what you get for X-Men, but you\u2019ve never seen $7 million in a room, either.\n\n&amp;quot;No, but what I\u2019m saying is like, countries going, \u2019We\u2019re in this much debt, and we\u2019ve got to get it together to pay off this debt.\u2019 It\u2019s like, \u2019You\u2019re never going to pay that debt off. It\u2019s impossible.\u2019 I worry about currency and money. Inflation, bang, and next thing, a million\u2019s not worth anything. Like in Germany before and after the war, when it really crashed. It was like 2,000 marks for a loaf of bread or something, you know what I mean? That\u2019s why you\u2019ve got to get it in bricks and mortar.&amp;quot;\n\n Perhaps it\u2019s time to upgrade to a new apartment.\n\n&amp;quot;Or some gold.&amp;quot;\n\n You should buy a house made out of gold.\n\n&amp;quot;I want that gold house.&amp;quot;\n\nForgive him\u2014we\u2019re drinking beer at a bar off the racetrack, and we\u2019re both still alive, so why not a gold house? Gold houses for everybody!\n\nTwo more lessons. We\u2019re talking about how single-minded, how borderline delusional, one has to be to decide at 17 that you\u2019re going to be an actor\u2014Fassbender can date it to that exact age, 17, when he was working in his parents\u2019 restaurant in Ireland\u2014and then nurture that dream through more than a decade of failure. In the bar, he ticks off the jobs he had, his near misses: barman, an unsuccessful audition for Ben A&amp;amp;#xB1;eck\u2019s part in Pearl Harbor (&amp;quot;Disney sent me a really nice note!&amp;quot;), unloading bos off trucks, doing market research for Dell and the UK\u2019s postal service, the Royal Mail. While working on behalf of the latter, Fassbender was tasked with following up on complaints; no call could last longer than ten minutes. &amp;quot;You\u2019ve got to hang up on these, like, lovely old people.&amp;quot; So, next lesson:\n\n 3. Be selfish, at least for now.\n\nWhat these jobs had in common is that none of them conflicted with the auditions he continued to go on with little to show for it. &amp;quot;I\u2019m kind of selfish with the hours that I put into the work,&amp;quot; Fassbender says. He was selfish even then, when there wasn\u2019t much work to be had, and still is now at age 36, when he\u2019s among the most in-demand actors in his entire industry. We talk about the toll this selfishness might take on a person\u2019s life, on one\u2019s ability to do right by friends, family, partners. Which leads me to ask, in a way I regret before I even finish asking:\n\n Does that selfishness extend to women, too? Since you started acting, what\u2019s the longest you\u2019ve dated someone?\n\nHe\u2019s not sure he likes this line of questioning. (&amp;quot;I\u2019m not sure I like this line of questioning,&amp;quot; he says.) But then: &amp;quot;I think the longest relationship that I\u2019ve been in was two years. I started doing this when I was 17, so I guess in my dating, adult life, that kind of covers it.&amp;quot;\n\nThere\u2019s a moment in The Counselor about Fassbender\u2019s character and his relationship to women. Bardem\u2014in tinted Elvis shades, a halo of spiky hair, his shirt covered in butterflies\u2014playing Fassbender\u2019s partner in crime, Reiner, delivers a judgment on the Counselor that could well, I venture, apply to Fassbender himself.\n\n&amp;quot;Do you know why women like you?&amp;quot; Reiner asks.\n\n&amp;quot;Because I\u2019m a good fuck?&amp;quot; responds the Counselor (which is maybe another line only Fassbender could deliver, but no matter).\n\n&amp;quot;Yeah, right,&amp;quot; Reiner says. Women like the Counselor, he goes on, because &amp;quot;they can sniff out the moral dilemma.&amp;quot;\n\nAs Fassbender points out to me, those are Cormac McCarthy\u2019s words and not about him at all\u2014and yet they are a perfect description of his talent as an actor: You can sniff out the moral dilemma. There is a kind of unresolved calculus there, whether in 2009\u2019s Fish Tank, in which Fassbender plays a hungry-eyed security guard whose tender care for his girlfriend\u2019s young daughter is revealed to be something quite other than tender, or 2012\u2019s Prometheus, where Fassbender plays an android whose curiosity about how humans work disastrously outstrips his inclination to aid them. In Shame, he portrays a man brutally hollowed out by his own desires; in David Cronenberg\u2019s A Dangerous Method, his character hollows out others the same way. Even X-Men: First Class\u2019s Magneto, in Fassbender\u2019s measured performance, is a man who regards his own gradual corruption with a wry fascination\u2014Let\u2019s just say I\u2019m Frankenstein\u2019s monster. Over and over again, he plays men who want to be good but probably are not.\n\nAnd there is, I point out, a suspicious ease with which Fassbender\u2019s characters break bad, one after another. We\u2019re on our second beer at this point, and I\u2019m reeling off the litany of roles, all these characters on the wrong side of right. It\u2019s not immediately obvious, from the way he is in person, why he gets cast this way. He says man and bro and brother a lot. He\u2019s cheerful if evasive, or maybe just not that self-reflective at all. Which makes you wonder\u2014as I do out loud\u2014whether there is something buried in the man himself that makes all those roles possible, some looming darkness or inner flaw.\n\nTo which Fassbender responds with a grin and a sly look: &amp;quot;I don\u2019t know. Did you feel like it got dark in that Mustang?&amp;quot;\n\n Except for the part where we almost died, no. But I\u2019m asking you.\n\n&amp;quot;Let me put it to you this way, right? A lot of comedians are dark personalities, but they\u2019re making people laugh. So, you know, it can flip the other way. People that are playing dark roles can actually be quite light. It doesn\u2019t necessarily go hand in hand. I think sometimes maybe people that are lighter can access that darkness easier, whereas people that are dark don\u2019t like to access it.&amp;quot;\n\n Right. It\u2019s too close.\n\n&amp;quot;Yeah, it\u2019s too close. It\u2019s too much maybe part of them that they don\u2019t want to reveal. I know that I\u2019ve got darkness, but for the most part I try and smile as much as I can, you know? I mean, David Cronenberg said it annoyed him that I used to come to work happy all the time.&amp;quot;\n\nAt some point during this exchange I notice what\u2019s actually printed on his black T-shirt: hundreds of tiny skulls, each smiling a little smiley face.\n\nWhich gives us our final lesson:\n\n 4. You don\u2019t have to be dark to play dark.\n\nBryan Singer, Fassbender\u2019s director on X-Men: Days of Future Past, tells me over the phone that he\u2019d just finished shooting a scene where Fassbender was completely backlit, and that even his backlit outline had &amp;quot;character&amp;quot;\u2014you can hear the italics when Singer says it. Such is the natural intensity of Fassbender when you put a camera on him. &amp;quot;But it\u2019s an intensity that falls away when he\u2019s having fun or in present conversation,&amp;quot; Singer says. &amp;quot;Which, thank God. Because otherwise I wouldn\u2019t be able to have dinner with him.&amp;quot;\n\n\n\nHe\u2019s been working so much the past few years that when I ask what his civilian, nonwork life is like, he shrugs and gestures around at the track: &amp;quot;We just did it today.&amp;quot; In the fifteen months between March 2011 and June 2012, Fassbender had six films come out\u2014X-Men: First Class, A Dangerous Method, Steven Soderbergh\u2019s Haywire, Jane Eyre, Prometheus, and McQueen\u2019s Shame, the last of which spawned a labor-intensive and ultimately fruitless Oscar campaign for his lead performance as a grimly compulsive sex addict. After months of promotion and glad-handing and being told over and over that he was a lock for an award, he ended up not even being nominated. (As he told this magazine last year: &amp;quot;It\u2019s a vanity thing. It does become important to you. And it shouldn\u2019t.&amp;quot;)\n\n The Counselor is too defiantly bloody and operatic to threaten much in the way of Academy Awards, but 12 Years a Slave seems likely to be a different story. It is hard to imagine Fassbender\u2019s Epps not being in the Oscar conversation. Which is a problem that Fassbender\u2014who has been down this road and has no desire to try it again\u2014has already solved.\n\nHe is going to New Zealand. He\u2019s got a production company he started with a pal, and they\u2019re doing their first feature. Production begins mid-October. After that, he\u2019s shooting Macbeth with Marion Cotillard. &amp;quot;I\u2019m going to be busy working,&amp;quot; Fassbender says. &amp;quot;I just don\u2019t really have time.&amp;quot;\n\n But people have a way of being like, &amp;quot;You need to be at this luncheon.&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;That\u2019s just not going to happen, because I\u2019ll be in New Zealand. I\u2019ll be on the other side of the world. You know, I get it. Everybody\u2019s got to do their job. So you try and help and facilitate as best you can. But I won\u2019t put myself through that kind of situation again.&amp;quot;\n\nHe goes on a bit about the process of campaigning for one of these things. &amp;quot;It\u2019s just a grind. And I\u2019m not a politician. I\u2019m an actor.&amp;quot;\n\n Around Oscar season, the lines get pretty blurred between those two things.\n\n&amp;quot;Not if you\u2019re not there!&amp;quot;\n\nHe says he wants to slow down eventually, workwise, but that hasn\u2019t happened yet. There was maybe a two- or three-week break between 12 Years and The Counselor, and then The Counselor stopped production for two weeks so that Ridley Scott could mourn his brother, Tony, who died last August. The film is very much in the spirit of the younger, more gonzo Scott brother\u2014violent and stylized and wildly over the top\u2014which Fassbender thinks is apt: &amp;quot;In a way, it was kind of more of a Tony Scott [movie] than a Ridley, you know?&amp;quot;\n\nAfter The Counselor, he went straight into shooting the new Terrence Malick film, which may or may not be about love and the Austin music scene. In that Malick way, Fassbender is still waiting to find out if he made it into the finished film.\n\n&amp;quot;I\u2019m not sure,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I\u2019ve got to go actually and do some more voice-over.&amp;quot; There is, he adds wryly, &amp;quot;just like reams and reams of that.&amp;quot;\n\n\n\n&amp;quot;This is where we have fun, dude.&amp;quot;\n\nAnd now he\u2019s really grinning. From our spot by the bar, he points to a separate track, a cluster of tiny four-wheel karts and their winding course, marked off by big piles of tires. &amp;quot;I love this shit,&amp;quot; he says. Fassbender finds go-karts relaxing\u2014&amp;quot;If I have free time, this would probably be the thing that I like to do most,&amp;quot; he tells me earnestly\u2014even though he knows it\u2019s a bit funny, a grown man with a passion for a child\u2019s game.\n\nAnd so, lightly buzzed, we find ourselves surrounded by teenagers in our second safety briefing of the day. The helmets go back on. If they wave a black flag, the instructor explains, that means they want to talk to you, because you are doing something wrong. Red flag means stop. Blue flag\u2014&amp;quot;means there\u2019s someone faster behind,&amp;quot; Fassbender interjects, as though maybe he\u2019s prompted a few blue flags in the past. It\u2019s ten or eleven laps per race, assuming you don\u2019t crash first.\n\nOut by the karts, he approaches a mechanic. &amp;quot;Hey, brother, which one is the fastest one?&amp;quot; The guy says 22 or 7. Fassbender claims 22.\n\nWe take to the track. In the little cockpit, I\u2019m trying to sort out the speed, the brakes, the power-to-weight ratio. I\u2019m angling across a turn on lap two or three in what I deem to be a pretty fine manner when, just inside my line, a kart shoots past, lightly clipping the front of mine, Fassbender cackling as he goes by. But it\u2019s the next time he passes me, a few laps later, that feels like an indignity.\n\nWe do the course twice. The second time, I am ready. I will not be shamed. I am driving like Mario Andretti, or what I imagine Mario Andretti drives like, having never seen Mario Andretti drive. I make it six times around the track. But then it is lap seven and my kart is shuddering in a now familiar way, because Fassbender is going by me again, bouncing his kart off the side of mine.\n\n Not this time, I think.\n\nI floor it, come around the next curve like vengeance itself, slide off the track entirely, and end up buried in a pile of tires. A black flag goes up, mockingly, by the finish line. Ahead of me Fassbender is already slipping off into the distance, his left arm extended out in a valedictory wave.\n\nZach Baron (@xzachbaronx) is GQ\u2019s staff writer."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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