Learning to drive in the sand, while behind the wheel of a Dakar Rally-winning racecar, is like taking Driver’s Ed in a Formula One car. Fresh from taking overall victory in the world’s most grueling ...

My navigator, Nicole, and I sit on the crest of a 15-foot heap of shifting sand somewhere in Dumont Dunes, California. Above us towers a thousand-foot dune, but I can’t see it in the moonless night.