A BIGGER BANG; Dodge rolls out the same Viper, only more of it.(News)

Byline: NATALIE NEFF

HURTLING UP THE HILL toward a roller-coaster complex, details from an earlier recon run start to blur. Take turn seven deep, turn in late, carry speed through turns eight and nine. Got it. Then brake slightly for 10, and quickly get back on the throttle through 11 and 12 up the hill. So far, so good. But the sharp right-hander at the top is blind from below its crest and calls for setting up properly long before reaching the turn-in. By the time the car rounds the corner and faces the steep downhill exit, it's off-line and going way too fast.

Don't lift, don't lift . . .

Sometimes the right foot has a mind of its own. It lifts.

The rear end starts to swing wide left. Quick hands, to the left, back right, left again, chasing the tail as it yaws this way and that across the asphalt, horrific visions filling the mind, of black flags, a humiliating walk through the pits, every eye fixed on the bone-head who threw grass and gravel across the track and left the rest with one fewer car to drive, a sit-down with the editor, a tarnished reputation. Ambulances and emergency rooms don't even figure, just a banged-up ego.

It feels like an eternity, but in just three or four corrections, the car straightens out, without spinning off-track or even dropping a wheel, and in time to make the left-hand corner at the bottom.

The only reminders of the slithery ride downhill are a pair of taxed adrenal glands and knees that won't stop quaking-and no one has to be the wiser, including the editor. Exhale.