The cars then make two orderly laps around the track to warm up, ratcheting up the tension another notch. And when the drivers hit that second lap, the green flag drops and the power of the cars, after weeks of tease, is finally unleashed. In seconds it's 1916 and these machines throw off a sense of barely controlled menace, like seeing a Bengal tiger face to face at the zoo. Yeah, you're on the other side of the bars, but that doesn't dissipate the awe, and the secondary knowledge that anyone who would go in there — from grizzled vet to little miss Penelope Pitstop herself, Sarah Fisher — is a hardcase lunatic.