"Cripes," said Woody to himself, "I'd almost forgotten. They pass any side they want to."
He felt his knees shaking a little from nervousness, and his hands were a little unsteady on the wheel. Then he thought of Rocky watching him, changed from second to third and third to high and blasted down the track after the two cars.
There was a corner in front of him before he realized it. It seemed to be hurled out of space toward him. He dropped down into third, revving up for a second in neutral. He heard a tire scream as he pulled the steering wheel over to the left. The MG picked up a rear wheel skid, careened over to her right a little, scrabbled around the corner, and was off again. But Woody had hardly time to congratulate himself before there was another bend ahead. Again he changed down, braking hard to do so. He turned the wheel to the right, hit the accelerator, and with a car on either side of him, skated, his rear wheel protesting, round the bend.
"So that's how it's done," he said. "You slam on the brakes, change down, rev her hard, pick up a rear wheel skid, and get around." He began to feel a little more confident.
His confidence was nearly wrecked, however, when he came to bend number four. A series of signs before it marked off the distances from the hairpin; two hundred yards, one hundred yards, and fifty yards. He remembered Rocky's advice and changed down at a hundred. But he was still going too fast when he entered the hairpin. He picked up a four-wheel drift, and the steering wheel spun around crazily between his hands. Woody hit the accelerator hard three or four times and turned the steering wheel in the direction in which he was skidding. A monument of hay bales, stacked around a concrete telephone pole, loomed before him. Then they flew past, the steering wheel steadied, and he was off down the straight again.
He made five laps before he decided that he was at all familiar with the course.
"You did swell," said Steve when he got back to the pits. "But, boy, for a moment I thought you were going to wind up among the hay bales."
"Didn't you tell me that you'd never raced before?" Rocky asked.
"That's right," said Woody.
"Well, it's hard to believe," she replied. "A lot of drivers I know wouldn't have got out of that four-wheel skid. If Daddy had seen that, he'd have said you didn't have to learn to drive. You were born knowing how."