Blasting along at 160 m.p.h. in the passenger seat of a $250,000 Ferrari 488, with Michael Fassbender behind the wheel, I think of something he said before we got in the car. We were chatting in an air-conditioned trailer on the infield of the racetrack we’re lapping, the Circuit of the Americas, in Austin, Texas, and I asked Michael how he was feeling, given that he was about to take my life in his hands.

“I’m fine with it,” he said, smiling. He’s often smiling. “I hope you’re O.K. with it.”

Turns out, I am. In part because I think Michael Fassbender could convince me—probably most people—to do almost anything. Charming and contemplative and exceedingly handsome, with the piercing Follow Me eyes of a cult leader, Fassbender exudes focus without seeming at all cocky.

Perhaps more important, I know that Fassbender has been training for the past year to compete in the Ferrari Challenge series, a competitive global racing program for committed Ferrari owners. Each Challenge driver must acquire a race car—the $330,000 488 Challenge is Fassbender’s choice, a more potent and lighter version of the road car in which we did our laps. They must join a private racing team and commission a coach and a mechanic. Then they must work tirelessly on their skills, training at a certified Ferrari driving school, practicing on the track and on ultra-advanced computer simulators, and constantly rehashing telemetry data—precise measurements of speed, braking, acceleration, and turning—to try to improve their time and position in each of the half-dozen races that make up the annual schedule.

“He’s very competitive,” Fassbender’s coach, Martin Roy of Scuderia Corsa, tells me in the paddock. “He wants to perform.” In one of the four races he’s completed so far this season, Fassbender placed third, an achievement given that this is his first year in the program. And that, despite a lifelong love of speed and racing, for 20 years before this, he didn’t even own a car, getting around London on a motorcycle.

I can feel Fassbender’s subtle perfectionism as we rip through the Austin track’s 20 turns. As he rifles off gearshifts, saws the steering wheel, mashes the pedals, he calls out every little error. “Missed that apex.” “Brakes are cooking.” “Slidey, slidey.” “Don’t want to hit those.” He admits that he talks to himself when he’s in the car alone as well, especially when he screws up. What does the Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and BAFTA-nominated actor say to himself in the privacy of his race car? “You fucking idiot.”

In the heat of the race, with dozens of cars speeding around in tight proximity and at triple-digit speeds, you don’t get another take. Before his first Ferrari Challenge event some weeks back, Fassbender confesses that, “I was so nervous, I thought I was close to throwing up.” (He now eats at least two hours before getting in the car, a practice I should have followed.) In a subsequent race, he braked too hard going into a turn, ran off the track, hit a patch of wet grass, and spun out wildly, stopping only when he bumped against the wall of tires that protectively banks the track. And in the race after that, he had his first contact with another car, “just a tiny kiss.” There was no damage, but it shook him. (After I left him in Austin, Fassbender had a mishap in a race, lost control of his car, and crashed into a wall. He was unharmed and eager to continue in the series.)

Fassbender tells me that his interest in racing derives equally from its requisite focus, its iterative technical precision, and its exhilaration. “The speed has always been something that has attracted me,” he says. “But I’ve always, sort of, gotten a kick out of trying to become one with the machine—I’m so far away from that, but that’s the goal. To sort of have that symmetry between you and the car.” He says that it happens on occasion, “Little moments here and there.”

I get to witness some of these moments as we pass through the snaking series of turns in the final sequence of the loop, just before we return to the big opening straight. “This is my favorite section,” Fassbender says, eyes ahead around the next bend, elbows flashing up and down in his bright red Ferrari race suit. “I like the S’s,” he says, serene delight visible through the open visor of his racing helmet. “Just . . . the flow.”

Fassbender is plotting ways to integrate racing even further into his life. “I’m working on something at the moment with my production company [DMC Films],” he says. He’s not ready to provide details, but he adds, “It’s always been front of my mind to do something about racing, and to bring it to either the big or small screen. To do a series.”

After years of not owning a car, Fassbender is now the proud owner of his own Ferrari, an F12tdf, the $485,000, up-powered, limited-edition version of the brand’s ultimate V-12-powered sports car. He broke in the car with a nearly 1,500-mile voyage across Europe, to his new home in Portugal, a trip he took with his girlfriend, Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander.

“I picked it up [at the Ferrari factory] in Maranello, and we drove it to Lisbon,” he says. “It was a little nerve-wracking in some of the narrower streets in France and Spain, and parking in underground car parks. There were definitely some sweaty moments. But it was great.”

Vikander was there on the track in Austin to support Fassbender, and has attended some of the races in which he’s competed. “She understands that it makes me really happy,” he says. She even consented to take a “hot lap,” a full-throttle drive, with the Challenge series’ head coach, championship racer Didier Theys.

“She loved it,” Fassbender says. “I think racing is something that she’d really get into, actually. Though I hope not, because she’ll probably end up being faster than me.” He smiles broadly. “She doesn’t have a driver’s license, though. So I’ve got a head start on her. But she’s a quick learner.”

Correction (4:10 P.M.): Due to an editing error, when first published this article misidentified the results of Fassbender’s race. He finished third.