Stock Car Driving School - Get On The Fast Track

Andy Hillenburg is a hardcore racer, pure and simple.

He's one of an elite group of drivers who have driven in both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500. In 1995, he captured the ARCA championship, and he's won two ARCA races at Daytona.

Hillenburg has also lent driving and consulting services to several film productions, including movies and commercials. He even appeared on screen in 3, ESPN's biopic on Dale Earnhardt. The guy who chases a young Earnhardt out of some short track waving a pistol? Yep, that's Hillenburg.

Oh, but that's not all. Hillenburg, a native of Indianapolis, is an astute businessman. When the shuttered former Cup racetrack in Rockingham, North Carolina, went up for auction, Hillenburg went after it. He picked the place up for a cool $4.4 million, and almost immediately announced plans to re-open its gates with a 2008 ARCA event.

This isn't going to be just any ol' ARCA race. The last several Cup races at Rockingham were 400-mile affairs, cutting-and some say, mercifully so-100 miles off previous showdowns in the Carolina sandhills. Hillenburg's ARCA race will use a 500-kilometer format.

Not only that, but Hillenburg also plans to put 50 cars on the starting grid.

Hello...Joe's Wrecker Service? Yeah, we're gonna need a little help down at the track...make that a lot of help. Bring two wreckers. Or three. Better yet, bring the whole fleet.

That sense of excitement and energy has been missing from the Rockingham community for far too long, and it looks as though Hillenburg is looking to bring it back in one fell swoop. Some might call it a gamble, buying an old racetrack and debuting its grand re-opening with a 500-kilometer ARCA race filled with 50 cars.

If good things happen to good people, though, Hillenburg's race will be a resounding success.

Still, that's not the extent of Hillenburg's resume. Hillenburg, one of the most likeable personalities in the sport, might very well be best known as the owner of Fast Track High Performance Driving School. Hillenburg has worked at Fast Track since 1989, and owned it outright since 1991. During that time, quite literally thousands of people have climbed through the windows of the school's racecars.

Some have cool day jobs. More than a few are middle-aged thrill-seekers, looking-even if they won't admit it-to maybe shake the cobwebs off their egos. They have gone skydiving. They have climbed mountains. They've done a hundred crazy things, and this is next. Almost without fail, this is also best.

They have made their way to Fast Track for the experience of seeing what it's like to drive a racecar on the same tracks where their heroes race. They go home and enthrall their family and friends with tales of their exploits. It is darn near impossible to finish up a few laps at Charlotte or Texas or any of the several other tracks on which Fast Track runs without a huge, ear-to-ear, cat-that-just-ate-the-canary grin.

These are the folks who are George Plimpton in a firesuit and helmet. Forget Plimpton's exploits in quarterbacking the Detroit Lions, playing goalie for the Boston Bruins or sparring with Sugar Ray Robinson. This is way more cool.

Others go on to careers in racing. Drivers like...oh, say...Fast Track alums Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeremy Mayfield, Aric Almirola, and Jason Keller. They're there for the experience, certainly, but experience of a decidedly different nature. They're looking for seat time on big tracks, and that's exactly what Hillenburg has to offer. They want to get on the track, go fast, and not have it necessarily feel like a tryout.

There's pressure when Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress, Jack Roush or Joe Gibbs are watching. Fast Track offers experience without the pressure.

The official driving school of ARCA, Fast Track has an advanced course for those who have already been through its more standard three-day session. Fast Track's advanced class is basically a one-on-one coaching session, and while it isn't a requirement to receive an ARCA license, it surely doesn't hurt. Essentially, for wannabe ARCA racers, it's that much more time on a track far removed from a Saturday night bullring, driving an ARCA-legal racecar.

It should be noted here that, hands down, Fast Track is awesome.

From the moment students arrive, there is a particular emphasis on safety. More than once, chief instructor Jay Hawley insists that the school is not a competition. Don't worry about what the other person is doing. Worry about your line, your consistency. To emphasize the point, no lap times or speeds are recorded.

Also more than once, Hawley mentions the need to be smooth on the racetrack. This has two purposes. First, being smooth leads to increased speed. The second is not so much something that Hawley states outright, but you catch his drift in no uncertain terms. Maintaining consistency on the track keeps students from, well, doing something stupid and busting their butts.

Make no mistake about it. These cars are real, and you can get hurt driving them.