MR PORTER test drives the latest Corvette on the longest race track in the US.

“Let’s clear our minds of any distractions,” the man said. “We’re about to take a 785-horsepower sports car out on a racetrack and we want to have a clear mind.”

Believe it or not, by the time our instructor said this, over the radio from his lead car, a 2019 Corvette ZR1 identical to one I was driving, as we inched our way onto the North Track at the Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, Nevada, US, I was a picture of calm. Or at least, less terrified than when I arrived.

The previous day, approaching the ranch – a smattering of putty-brown stucco houses around the longest private racetrack in North America – on the same stretch of highway where, earlier this year, a $2m, 1390-horsepower Swedish Koenigsegg Agera RS set the road speed record of 284.55mph, I began to hear tales of triumph and terror of driving cars at terrific speed from colleagues who were also there to test drive the new range of Corvettes. As we entered the ranch through massive Jurassic Park-style gates, one of my colleagues said, “This is an amusement park for auto enthusiasts.”

If my only thought to this point had been “God, what have I done?”, a quick battery of safety classes was enough to change my mood. The Mr Ron Fellows driving school here is where Corvette owners, upon purchasing a new model, are given complimentary schooling in their news toys so they feel more in control while driving them. After three hours in the classroom, my comprehensive takeaway was: do not crash the car. And my mood had changed from relaxed to my-god-get-me-out-of-here.

Then came the news that spin-outs, spills, scuffs and even crashes were commonplace for drivers of my experience and expertise. Yet I somehow ended up strapped into a very, very fast car, whipping around a racetrack (an “oval”) at altogether unhealthy or recommended speeds. If this weren’t enough to get me out of my head, the car came complete with a ride-along instructor who, rather than counselling me on safety and handling how-tos, spent the whole time challenging me to be more aggressive. To hit the throttle harder, more heavily, to brake later, more lightly, to take turns at speeds I’m hardly comfortable cruising at on the highway.

As soon as we’d begun, though, we were through the oval exercise and onto the real mess. The second stage: barrel races, like taking a Corvette (in this case a Grand Sport) through a dressage-style obstacle course, making cloverleaf patterns of melted rubber around cones on a stretch of tarmac. Again, at speed. Utterly unnatural speed. The first driver in my group spun almost all the way out. All I could think of was the 10,000 reasons I did not want to follow suit.

Retreat, though, at this point seemed ignoble. I was more afraid of being rude than wrecking the car. At any rate, and at quite a frenzied pace, I put on my helmet and buckled myself into my harness, buckled all of that into the Grand Sport and off I went. I felt a little wobbly around the first turn, but with the car giving me positive feedback, and probably steering itself for the most part, or at least righting most of my wrongs, my mind and the world outside began to slow down. I came out of the first turn and hit 60mph in under three seconds.

The next three hours passed in a kind of adrenaline-slaked fugue. Slaloming through cones at a pace safe only for the unrestricted roads on the Autobahn in the 2019 Corvette Stingray, opening up a 650-horsepower, 650ft/lb torque ZO6 on the North Track, pushing the speedometer towards 90mph on the back straight. I basically blacked out.

But then I sort of came to, at the wheel of the 212mph, carbon-fibre land rocket ZR1. It was the instructor’s centring advice, to clear our minds lest we get distracted, that reminded me of the reality of our undertaking. I snapped back into my worry-wort self, into my amygdala-driven fear of everything, especially of travelling at ridiculous speeds around elbow turns on a real-life racetrack.

Suddenly, my hands were covered in a cold film. My joints didn’t seem to be working all that well. I was out of sorts, and in the cockpit of a supercar. And that was kind of the best moment for me in the entire day at Spring Mountain. The moment of re-entry into my ageing, jangly, familiar skin bag, into all the old neuroses, the same old fears and the rest. In returning, I recognised just how far away I had been. And for how long. Surrounded by the most amazing, obsessive petrolheads, all of them speaking in esoteric code about capabilities of magical equipment I will never understand, I felt transported. I’d gotten high on the speed, on the focus required to get there. I’d had fun – real, childlike fun – for the first time in I can’t remember how long.