THIS AIN'T NO SPA TREATMENT; Flinging mud is part of the fun at sprint-car school.

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

Somewhere between the World Rally Championship and the sand drags lies the realm of the sprint car. Sprint cars are 1200-pound, 650-hp, alcohol-fueled racers built to go sideways on dirt. If that doesn't sound like a recipe for terrific fun, then you may be reading the wrong magazine.

Crashing along over lumpy clay while flinging dirt all over the cement walls of a quarter-mile circle track is fun, dang it, even if you're not perfect at it. After a half-day and 25 laps, we found the best approach: Hammer the throttle, lift off the gas for a second to get the whole rig sideways, line up the car for the next straight, and mash the throttle again, with massive rear tires flinging clay all over the place.

Instructor Cory Kruseman suggested briefly hitting the brake to get the sprint car sideways, but all we ever got when we applied that method was understeer. We must have been doing it wrong. Kruseman should know how to do it right, since he is the 2006 USAC/CRA Sprint Car champion, two-time Chili Bowl Champion, two-time USAC Indiana Speed Week Champion, a nonwinged World Sprint Car Champion and a host of other titles that end in "champion.''

We took the half-day, "basic'' version of the school. For a little more money, we could have gotten a whole lot more laps and surely would have made the show by the next Saturday night. Indeed, many of Kruseman's students go on to take part in his arrive-and-drive program, where-for $1,200 a night-they can fling 650-hp, methanol-fueled, Kruseman-prepared sprint cars around Ventura's clay bowl all season long. Or until the money runs out.

In his career, Kruseman has raced IRL cars, Craftsman Trucks and winged sprint cars, too.

"But absolutely the most fun you can have is those cars right over there,'' he said, pointing to our class's two Ventura Racing Association beasts. "Without the wing, the cars move around a lot more, and keeping it pointed in the right direction is more up to you.''