Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: US INDEPENDENCE DAY (90%); HOLIDAYS & OBSERVANCES (89%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (89%); WEDDINGS & ENGAGEMENTS (77%); CELEBRITIES (77%); TAKEOVERS (74%)
COMPANY: GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC (56%); MICROSOFT CORP (51%)
TICKER: GS (NYSE) (56%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (51%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS523930 INVESTMENT ADVICE (56%); NAICS523920 PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT (56%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING & SECURITIES DEALING (56%); SIC6289 SERVICES ALLIED WITH THE EXCHANGE OF SECURITIES OR COMMODITIES, NEC (56%); SIC6282 INVESTMENT ADVICE (56%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (56%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (51%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (51%)
PERSON: VIVI NEVO (96%); RONALD PERELMAN (92%); KEITH RUPERT MURDOCH (70%); JON BON JOVI (57%); MADONNA (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (69%) NEW YORK, USA (69%) CHINA (79%); UNITED STATES (69%)
LOAD-DATE: July 28, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Vivi Nevo, center, with Susan Decker, president of Yahoo, and Chris Schroeder, HealthCentral Network chief, at the 2007 Allen media conference. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RICK WILKING/REUTERS)

Vivi Nevo, left, talks with Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman of Warner Music. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW STAVER/BLOOMBERG NEWS)

Zhang Ziyi, left

Richard Parsons, Time Warner chairman

and Vivi Nevo. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW STAVER/BLOOMBERG NEWS) (pg.C4) DRAWING (DRAWING BY GLUEKIT)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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July 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

The Young Turks of Cyberspace
BYLINE: By KATIE HAFNER.

Katie Hafner, a former technology reporter for The Times, is the author of ''A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano.''

SECTION: Section BR; Column 0; Book Review Desk; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 1020 words
ONCE YOU'RE LUCKY, TWICE YOU'RE GOOD

The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0.

By Sarah Lacy.

Illustrated. 294 pp. Gotham Books. $26.

The drumroll leading up to the publication of Sarah Lacy's book about the 20-something entrepreneurs who brought us such familiar Web sites as Facebook was certainly impressive. For months, Lacy demurred when asked to reveal the title yet talked up her project at every opportunity, causing the prepublication buzz in Silicon Valley to build. By golly, it was as if the author herself had created the next YouTube.

With the stance of an insider given unparalleled access to her subjects, the starry-eyed Lacy tells the stories of a half-dozen or so young entrepreneurs who started Web sites like Facebook and YouTube, all driven by user-generated content. Together, those sites created a post-Google version of the ''participatory'' Web known as Web 2.0.

Lacy has chosen to include, among others, Mark Zuckerberg, the 24-year-old founder of Facebook, the wildly popular social-networking site; and Max Levchin, 33, a co-founder of PayPal, the online payment system that eBay bought in 2002.

This disjointed grab bag of gossip has its elucidating moments, but as the definitive tale of the rise of Web 2.0, ''Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good'' serves as a reminder that the latter-day equivalent of Tracy Kidder's 1981 book, ''The Soul of a New Machine,'' the gold standard for technology nonfiction, has yet to be written.

The title promises an incisive, illuminating examination of just what it is that engenders serial success. Indeed, Lacy delivers on that promise with her profile of Marc Andreessen, who helped build one of the first Web browsers and made millions with Netscape, the browser company. He then started a software company, which Hewlett-Packard bought last year for $1.6 billion. Now 37, he has Ning, a social-networking company for which he has high hopes. Lacy draws a fascinating portrait of Andreessen and his need not just to best himself but to equal the successes of his mentor, Jim Clark, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who financed Netscape.

Otherwise, the title seems to bear little relevance to the book. For Lacy's other subjects, repeated success has yet to be determined. For example, it is unclear whether Levchin's new company, Slide, which makes ''widgets'' -- small, single-purpose applications for Web sites like Facebook and MySpace -- will end up making him more millions. And Mark Zuckerberg is still firmly entrenched in his first company. Yet Lacy seems hesitant to dwell on these points.

The writing is, at best, informal. For instance, the last time I checked the American Heritage Dictionary, in spite of how computer trade journalists might choose to use the word, ''architect'' was not recognized as a verb, to say nothing of ''rearchitect.'' And Lacy's fifth-grade teacher would no doubt wince at the profusion of incomplete sentences. (''Probably a good thing few women work there.'' And ''The time Jay and Marc were chatting when Sumner Redstone sauntered up.'') Then again, everything happens so quickly in Silicon Valley that perhaps there is no time to write a proper sentence.

Some of the reporting is impressive in its sheer detail. Lacy obviously spent a great deal of time with these celebrated entrepreneurs. Her descriptions of their business meetings come complete with snatches of you-are-there dialogue, a la Bob Woodward. The reader also learns who wears boxers, who cuts his hair in a hip style and who shucked his nerd-wear in favor of jeans and Pumas.

But the details don't add up to much. The reader hears a great deal about Levchin's fear of swimming but surprisingly little about what has driven Levchin, who is from the former Soviet Union, to start companies. And rather than following a straight narrative arc, Lacy jumps from one story to another, then doubles back again -- to confusing effect.

Paradoxically, it is when Lacy gets impersonal, and dispenses with her name-dropping tone (she refers to Zuckerberg throughout as merely ''Zuck''), that she is at her best. Her explanation of how venture capital works is instructive and clear, perhaps one of the best yet written for a general readership.

And she skillfully describes a tension intrinsic to the Web 2.0 world: thanks to low start-up costs, the newest entrepreneurs don't need venture capitalists, and even view them with disdain for the role they play in diluting individual wealth. Yet Lacy offers vivid descriptions of meetings between entrepreneurs who eventually wind up strapped for cash and of the venture capitalists with the means to help.

A columnist for BusinessWeek.com and a co-host of ''Tech Ticker'' on Yahoo Finance, Lacy has a tendency to throw out numbers in too cavalier a fashion. For instance, she describes ''the mighty $195 billion Google juggernaut'' that bought YouTube in 2006. But at the time of the deal, Google's market value was far less than that.

Lacy's book is an outgrowth of an article she wrote for BusinessWeek in 2006. The unfortunate headline on the cover -- ''How This Kid Made $60 Million in 18 Months'' -- proved an embarrassment to the magazine. The cover photograph was of a young man sporting headphones, a T-shirt and a 5 o'clock shadow, smiling broadly and giving two thumbs up to the camera. It was Kevin Rose, who would become one of Lacy's principal subjects in this book. Rose, 31, is a co-founder of Digg, a Web site that allows its users to collectively decide which news accounts on the Internet deserve top billing.

As it turns out, the $60 million referred to the estimated value of Rose's stake in the company. He didn't make 60 million of anything, and until the company is sold or goes public, the $60 million in question is as good as Monopoly money.

One of these days, perhaps by the time Kevin Rose does indeed become wealthy, someone will write a richly textured book that chronicles with insight and acumen the rise of the most recent crop of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Sarah Lacy's ''Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good'' is not that book.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WEB 2 (91%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (90%); BOOK REVIEWS (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); INTERNET BROWSERS (85%); SOFTWARE MAKERS (78%); NON FICTION LITERATURE (77%); COMPUTER NETWORKS (71%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (78%)
COMPANY: FACEBOOK INC (57%); GOOGLE INC (56%); PAYPAL INC (55%); HEWLETT-PACKARD CO (52%)
TICKER: GOOG (NASDAQ) (56%); HPQ (NYSE) (52%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (56%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (52%); NAICS334119 OTHER COMPUTER PERIPHERAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING (52%); NAICS334111 ELECTRONIC COMPUTER MANUFACTURING (52%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (95%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (58%)
TITLE: Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good (Book)>; Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good (Book)>
LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: DRAWING: From top, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin and Marc Andreesen. (DRAWING BY HINTERLAND)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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July 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Start-Up Status Gone With the Skate Ramp
BYLINE: By ELLEN ROSEN
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; SUITS; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 216 words
When is a fledgling company no longer a start-up? Once the skateboard ramp disappears, says Rob Kalin, the founder of Etsy Inc., an online emporium of handmade goods based in Brooklyn.

And while Etsy is only three years old, Mr. Kalin got rid of the ramp six months ago. But that wasn't the only change: he knew he needed professional management. ''We hit a point in growth that we needed people who have done this before,'' he said.

As a result, Mr. Kalin, 28, has relinquished his role as chief executive to return to the creative side of the company, which has more than 60 employees and sells 15,000 to 20,000 items a day, Mr. Kalin said. Taking his place is Maria Thomas, who was hired in April as chief operating officer. Also joining the company is Chad Dickerson as chief technology officer. Mr. Kalin will remain as chairman and will focus on creative efforts as well as the establishment of etsy.org, intended to coach vendors on producing their wares and also to establish an educational arm to guide them in running and expanding their businesses.

Mr. Kalin said he informed his company of his changing status ''by calling an all-hands meeting. I put on bright coral nail polish. I told them: 'As everyone knows, a male C.E.O. can't wear nail polish. So I'm not C.E.O. anymore.' ''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (90%) NEW YORK, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: To tell Esty's staff that he was stepping down, Rob Kalin painted his nails and said

''As everyone knows, a male C.E.O. can't wear nail polish. So I'm not C.E.O. anymore.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY JESSICA DIMMOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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546 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

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July 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Scandal! Fleet Street Without Sex!
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section WK; Column 0; Week in Review Desk; THE WORLD; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1287 words
DATELINE: LONDON
-- As the Formula One motor racing season embarked on its 18-race schedule around the world earlier this year, the entrepreneur who turned the high-octane glamour of races at Monaco and Monza and Melbourne from an aficionados' passion into one of the richest of all sports -- and himself into a billionaire -- had a tongue-in-cheek lament. The only thing wrong with the sport, he told an interviewer, was that ''there aren't enough sex scandals.''

Soon enough, the 77-year-old Bernie Ecclestone, a man who started in business after World War II trading spare parts for motorcycles, got his wish. Max Mosley, his partner in building grand prix racing to the point it is at today, walked through a late-afternoon winter drizzle in London and into a ''honey trap'' that generated Britain's most notorious sex scandal in years.

What followed ended up emblazoned across the front page of The News of the World, a Sunday paper with one of Britain's highest circulations, under the headline ''F1 Boss Has Sick Nazi Orgy With 5 Hookers.'' The story, retailing five hours of sado-masochistic role-playing by Mr. Mosley and his partners, rocked the image-conscious world of Formula One, and ended up, earlier this month, at the center of a High Court lawsuit filed by Mr. Mosley alleging invasion of privacy.

The lawsuit's conclusion may prove a watershed for press freedom in Britain, one that celebrities with less-than-picture-book private lives come to see as their red-letter day. Delivering his ruling on Thursday, the judge, Sir David Eady, handed victory to Mr. Mosley. On the key point, he ruled that there was no evidence that the Chelsea session ''was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behavior.'' Thus, there was no defense of a ''legitimate public interest'' in its disclosures. He awarded Mr. Mosley damages of about $120,000, and legal costs that could approach $1 million.

If there was anything of Solomon in the judgment, it may have been in the judge's decision not to award Mr. Mosley the millions in punitive damages he sought. Behind abstruse legal argument, Justice Eady may have been reluctant to reward Mr. Mosley too generously for what he said in his ruling was ''reckless'' behavior; he may also have been concerned about criticism of his ruling that he would have known was coming. Another tabloid, The Daily Mail, citing a succession of privacy cases in which the judge had ruled against newspapers, described him after this ruling as ''single-handedly creating a new, tougher privacy law'' in Britain.

A welter of voices, among leading lawyers who have defended newspapers in invasion-of-privacy cases and among the country's leading editors, have said the Mosley ruling could serve as a precedent for preventing British newspapers and broadcasters from exposing anything much about the private lives of public figures. Under the standard Justice Eady found missing in the Mosley case, the ''unconventional'' behavior that tabloid journalists in Britain have regularly chronicled among certain celebrities -- adultery, for example, or visiting a prostitute -- would have to involve, in the future, some element of criminality, or activity conflicting starkly with the public image fostered by the individuals involved.

The concerns in Britain follow a legal trend based on the country's Human Rights Act, which was passed in 2000 and imported the provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights. The convention lays down one of the broadest privacy protections in Western law, guaranteeing an individual's right to respect for his or her ''private life, home or correspondence.''

With its rulings in high-profile privacy cases in recent years, Britain now appears well advanced toward adopting the more restrictive attitudes on press freedom common in Continental Europe, and away from the First Amendment freedoms that protect the news media in the United States.

Mr. Mosley, now 68, was ripe for the taking, at least by the standards of Britain's attack-dog tabloids. He had been for 15 years president of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, or F.I.A., which regulates international motor sport. He is obtrusively rich, with homes in Paris, Monaco and London. But what made him a special target was that he was the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, Britain's prewar fascist leader, and of his wife, the former Diana Mitford, and that Hitler was guest of honor at their 1936 wedding in Berlin.

Early this year, the court was told, Mr. Mosley had been warned by his friend, Mr. Ecclestone, that his private life might be under surveillance. His often high-handed supervision of Formula One had made him unpopular with many in motor sport, even as he made grand prix racing immeasurably safer than it had been.

Eager for the sadomasochistic spankings that had been his passion for 45 years, as he told the court, Mr. Mosley ignored Mr. Ecclestone's warning and walked to an apartment on the Chelsea embankment, not noticing a van at the curb with a hidden video camera. Inside the flat was another camera, the size of a sugar cube, in one woman's brassiere. The News of the World had promised the blonde with the camera $50,000, a figure it dropped to $24,000 when the most lurid ''Nazi'' scenes it sought, like a ''sieg heil'' salute from Mr. Mosley, never materialized.

Britain's more upmarket newspapers have tut-tutted at The News of the World's ruthless methods in the Mosley case, and even the newspaper's editor, Colin Myler, seemed eager to distance himself by saying the setup was arranged while the editor was away. But there has been scant sympathy in any of the British press for Mr. Mosley, who acknowledged in court that his wife of 47 years, Jean, has been ''devastated'' by what she has learned of her husband's secret life, and by his insistence that there was no shame in what he did.

The widespread opprobrium in the press has been compounded by elements of the Chelsea session, including a mock lice-inspection of Mr. Mosley's hair, the wearing by two women of German-style military jackets and the guttural count in German that Mr. Mosley gave as he spanked one seminaked woman; if not Nazi in inspiration, they were at least insensitive to history.

But Judge Eady said that moral considerations had no role to play in deciding whether press intrusion into an individual's privacy was justified.

That led several newspapers to conclude that the new jurisprudence would have prevented the publication of many of the sex scandals that have broken around well-known figures in Britain in the past 30 years. In one case they cited, a lord accused of having met a prostitute in a seedy London hotel eventually received a prison term for perjury.

The new standard seems likely to lie in the kind of protection that Judge Eady gave when he issued a ''gagging order'' in 2006 to prevent a British newspaper from running a story about a famous sportsman who was having an affair and argued that his wife might harm herself if his adultery was exposed. After the Mosley verdict, The Daily Mail cited the ruling in the sportsman's case, like the Mosley one, as one ''which could and would be used by politicians and other public figures to hide embarrassing facts about themselves.''

That likelihood seemed undisturbing to some who take the celebrities' side in their battles with the press. Desmond Browne, a prominent lawyer, told the BBC after the verdict that it underscored an emerging principle in British law, that ''it is not for the media to expose sexual conduct which doesn't involve a significant breach of criminal law, whether they do so out of prurience or out of a moral crusade.'' He added, ''In a sentence, titillation just won't do.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); AUTO RACING (90%); LITIGATION (90%); DECISIONS & RULINGS (87%); FORMULA ONE RACING (78%); CELEBRITIES (78%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (77%); WORLD WAR II (74%); SPORTS & RECREATION EVENTS (73%); FREEDOM OF PRESS (72%); SETTLEMENTS & DECISIONS (71%); SUITS & CLAIMS (71%); LAWYERS (70%); JUDGES (69%); PRIVACY RIGHTS (69%); COSTS & ATTORNEY FEES (69%); PUNITIVE DAMAGES (69%); DAMAGES (69%); LAW COURTS & TRIBUNALS (64%); MOTOR VEHICLES (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (90%) UNITED KINGDOM (90%); ENGLAND (90%); MONACO (88%)
LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: THE WINNER: Max Mosley surrounded by his tormentors (but not the kind he likes) outside the high court in London on Thursday after victory in his invasion-of-privacy suit. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LEON NEAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES)

THE LOSER: The News of the World.

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

547 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
July 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Behind the Wheel at a Club With a $125,000 Entry Fee but No Speeding Tickets
BYLINE: By JAMES BARRON
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 23
LENGTH: 1378 words
DATELINE: MONTICELLO, N.Y.
So the guy in the passenger seat -- a guy who could be at the wheel in one of those television commercials where a car going backward does figure 8s while the words ''professional driver'' flash at the bottom of the screen -- says, ''Go ahead.''

I floor the accelerator, and two things come to mind. No, three.

The first is, this is probably not a good time to think about my carbon footprint. I am at the wheel of what the manufacturer says is the world's fastest production car, with 16 cylinders, 1,001 horsepower and 10 radiators. Its thirst for gasoline is also breathtaking. The Environmental Protection Agency says it gets only 14 miles a gallon in highway driving and even less in the city, a mere 8 miles a gallon.

Here I am, all but flying down what used to be a runway for small planes. Now it is a straightaway at a new automobile racing club that costs $125,000 to join. The car, a Bugatti Veyron, can go more than twice as fast as some of the Cessnas that once took off and landed here.

The second is -- well, at 110 miles an hour in a $1.8 million car, I forget the second thing.

The third is, please, God, let the brakes work.

The idea was to channel my inner Mario Andretti and see what it would be like to be a dues-paying member of the new racing club, the Monticello Motor Club. It was dreamed up a couple of years ago, when the economy was better.

Now, with the club scheduled to open on Sunday, officials say they are close to the limit they set of 125 ''founding'' members -- the $125,000 crowd. They will not say how close, but they maintain that the sputtering economy has not deterred the big-bucks, big-horsepower types they are looking for.

The club was planned as a place where people with exotic cars could push their Ferraris, Lotuses and Ford GTs to the limit without worrying about speeding tickets, a place where weekend Bobby Unsers could rev their engines and squeal the tires all they want. But these engines do not make that ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa noise that Walter Mitty thought he heard. They roar.

Some say that roar is one of the most promising sounds the area has heard in a long time. ''The type of clientele that are members will bring a lot to our community,'' said Anthony P. Cellini, the supervisor of the Town of Thompson, N.Y., which includes Monticello. ''The Town of Thompson, the Catskills -- we were once known as the hospitality capital of the Northeast. This is another part of the puzzle to bring us back.''

But some neighbors complain that an automobile racetrack is a throwback to an age before high gasoline prices made fuel economy big news. ''The Town of Thompson is going blacktop when the whole world is going green,'' said Ann M. Culligan, whose house is 1,200 feet from the club's property. ''We've heard all the construction. We hear everything. We should have our blue sky, our green trees, our fresh air.''

At the club, real members will get to hang out with car aficionados like Jerry Seinfeld who have paid the $125,000 (up from $100,000 just a year ago). Someday, members like him will hang out in a clubhouse. It has not been built yet. For now, they get the second floor of an air-conditioned ''tent'' with glass walls. Like the crowd they cater to, the club's owners are also big spenders. The president, William McMichael, estimated that the club had spent $5 million on impact-absorbing guardrails, in case novices misjudge a turn and spin out.

Mr. McMichael, 41, a former health care entrepreneur who is an exotic car enthusiast himself, said he wished the club had been his idea, but it was not.

A real estate developer bought the airport several years ago and had considered building big-box retail stores there. But the developer settled on a racetrack because, Mr. McMichael said, ''it was already approved for noise.'' The ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa factor.

Mr. McMichael signed up as a member in mid-2007, when the track was still only a blueprint, and was soon hired as a club official. Then, with a group of investors, he bought out the developer.

So what about the economy?

''Ari and I have been contemplating that since last fall, when we saw the economy teetering,'' Mr. McMichael said, referring to the club's chief operating officer, Ari Strauss. ''Most members have an average net worth of $20 million and seem to be unaffected by the cycles the economy is going through.''

Or, as Mr. Strauss -- who started a company called Figleaves.com in 1999 to sell underwear and was the general manager of Walmart.com before he and his brother started a medical software company -- said: ''One hundred and twenty-five thousand is just not a lot of money to them.''

This is why private racing clubs have been taking shape around the country, and speed seekers know every turn. They also know how much track time they get for their money -- at Monticello, they are guaranteed 200 days a year.

The track is not all that Mr. McMichael and Mr. Strauss have in mind. Circling the track in his Ford GT, Mr. Strauss said they had set aside 100 acres where they could build townhouses and condominiums with a view of the main straightaway. ''Imagine a 4- to 12-car garage with living space over it,'' Mr. Strauss said.

That sounds like what Myrtle hated about life with George before Tom Buchanan in ''The Great Gatsby.''

But this is about driving. What happens if, like Daisy, I have an accident?

''You're responsible,'' Mr. McMichael said. ''If you damage things and push beyond the limits of the car or your own limits...''

His voice trailed off.

''Well, that's why we have instructors,'' he said. ''Our membership base knows they're not the next Mario Andretti. They're not looking for the next two-hundredths. But we will tightly control the track and make sure our members are operating safely.''

So the Bugatti came with Butch Leitzinger, who has won the 24 Hours of Daytona three times and the World Sportscar Championship twice. He drove around the track once with me in the passenger seat. Then we switched places.

The Bugatti has paddle shifters on the steering wheel for changing gears rapidly. They look familiar. My Volkswagen GTI has them. Mr. Leitzinger said the Bugatti's shifting mechanism worked more or less the same way.

You could buy more than 60 GTIs for the price of one Bugatti, and my car can go fast.

But the Bugatti can go faster. It can go from zero to 60 miles an hour in 2.3 seconds. Another test driver, James May, hit 253 miles an hour. But speed is one thing. Going the distance without a pit stop is another. Mr. May was quoted as saying ''the tires will only last for about 15 minutes, but it's O.K. because the fuel runs out in 12.''

It has a spoiler that pops up at 137 miles an hour, creating what the engineers call ''downforce'' to keep the car from going completely airborne. I said ''completely'' because of something that John Hill, a Bugatti executive who was at the clubhouse, had told me earlier: ''At top speed, I think the front end of the car is two and a half inches off the ground.''

That did not happen with me at the wheel. Maybe I could have gone fast enough for the spoiler to do its thing, but when we pulled onto the straightaway, there was a pickup truck on the left side, halfway down. The grounds crew was at work.

Mr. Leitzinger told me to drive past the truck slowly -- slowly in the Bugatti meant about 40 miles an hour -- and stop, then hit the accelerator. He was taking no chances. He did not want to risk having the truck pull out in front of us.

We circled the track a couple of times -- top speed, 60 miles an hour. The third time around, as I pulled alongside the pickup, it drove away.

Finally I had the track to myself, for my short ride in a fast machine.

I did not smoke the tires. I did not notice my head being forced against the headrest or, as Mr. Leitzinger put it, ''your heart being thrown against your back.''

A colleague who drove a Bugatti Veyron last year said that it was all but impossible to describe the sensation unless your job description involved flying fighter jets or being shot out of circus cannons. It is jaw-dropping. It is grin-inducing. I said something like ''yee haw,'' or maybe ''whoooa.''

And the brakes worked fine.