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You might think that roaring around Nashville Superspeedway in the 2014 Nissan 370Z Nismo and the 2014 Nissan GT-R Track Edition would get a little old. Apparently so did the Nissan representatives in pit lane, who keep gesturing at us to come in from the track.

If you've ever found yourself unable to turn away from a car commercial on television, you're probably looking at the work of Jeff Zwart. Highly regarded as a director of fast-action TV commercials, this fifty-eight-year-old from Los Angeles has been behind the camera for a number of advertising spots that people still check out on YouTube, like "Still Building Rockets" for Corvette, "Family Tree" for Porsche, and, most recently, "Cadillac ATS vs. the World" for Cadillac. At heart, Zwart is simply one of us, a driving enthusiast mesmerized by the experience of speed. We interviewed him at his shop in L.A., where an array of Soap Box Derby race cars from past decades hangs on the wall above file cabinets brimming with thousands of photographic images from a career that began in 1979.

I should start my review of the Civic Si by saying that the more expensive, more luxurious Acura ILX 2.4 to which this Honda is related is a perfectly fine automobile. The ILX is a Civic Si for grownups who would like to have their stick-shift fun in a middle-management friendly package. And this is fine, except the Civic Si is a better car.

Wearing a scarlet firesuit festooned with sponsor logos, Robert Herjavec slides between the stout metal tubes of a factory-installed roll cage and slips into the race seat of his Ferrari 458 Challenge.