Woody made up his mind that the only way he could get over the fear and dread that he now had of racing was to race some more. In fact, he determined to do as much road racing as he could. In this decision he had a willing helper in Rocky, and in the two months after the Hansen Dam race he drove in five events. He was no longer considered a junior driver and had got over some of the thrill of seeing his name in the list of contestants at road-race events. He had even drawn mention in one of the Los Angeles sports columns as an up-and-coming driver with a lot of dash and courage.
When Woody read that paragraph, eagerly pointed out to him by Steve, he wondered how much the man who wrote it knew of his real reason for racing. Far from having a lot of dash and courage, he was always filled with caution and plain fear on the track. He only placed at all in the events in which he entered because he had a natural driving gift—an instinctive combination of judgment and timing that took him through tight spots. But he knew he could do better, a great deal better, if he could get rid of the black fear that settled on him whenever he came to a bend with half a dozen other cars roaring around him.
He wished there was someone with whom he could talk over this problem. He wished he could discuss the way his palms sweated, his limbs trembled, and his mouth went dry even as he sat down behind the driving wheel at the start of a race. He wished he could explain how those symptoms never left him all through the event; how he was filled with dread from start to finish and heartily wished he had never taken up racing.
Once he thought of mentioning it to Steve and went so far as to say he always got the shakes just before the start of a race.
"Shucks, pal, everybody has the same thing," Steve said. "But you get over it, don't you?"
Woody didn't have the courage to say no, he didn't get over it. Other drivers did and took chances and won races. But he, although he seemed to be taking chances, was actually avoiding them and getting through on sheer driving talent. He didn't drive a race with any courage at all. He drove it with nothing else but fear in his mind. If he could find some courage, he might win a couple of times. But fear held him back constantly—fear of being wrapped around a telephone pole or being mangled under the wheels of cars behind or turning over and being pounded to death in his own car.
About the nearest he got to talking to anybody about his problem was one evening when Randy and Rocky had come up to Hermosa Beach and asked him out to dinner. When dinner was over, Randy, who by now was getting along without crutches though he had a slight limp, started talking about racing. He discussed the subject as if it were a philosophy, a mode of living calling out the very best in the character of those who followed it.
Woody had never known him to be so serious before. He wasn't sure whether the conversation was being held for his own benefit or for Rocky's.
"Road racing condenses into a few minutes or hours all the problems, the fears, and the triumphs of life," Randy said, smoothing his fair hair with a thin sensitive hand. "It demands the one thing that no man can get through life without successfully. Self-reliance. There are millions of people quite talented and able who go through life being unsure of themselves. They haven't enough self-confidence to take a risk—to change their jobs, their localities, and so on. They live rather miserably without ever having fulfilled themselves.
"But in racing, such people are soon ruled out. The driver who has no basic confidence in himself will keep coming in last. Either that or he will develop self-confidence. If he remains unsure of himself, he will quit racing. Just as in life, if he remains unsure of himself, he will quit trying and seek some job that offers security rather than opportunity."