Acessing Game Physics & Best Learning Method

Hi,

I've bought the Game Programmers Guide to the Torque Engine and I've been reading through it alot. I notice it deals mainly in TorqueScript which has limited access to the engine itself. I did however notice that some of the physics TorqueScript allows one to use are quite good such as damping coefficients of wheel suspension and travel and the like.

So I wonder would one need to access the engine's physics stuff to make good realistic vehicles and if so how could it be done for this?

I'll need to access the engine at some point as I need the code to be fast so I can't risk programming everything in TorqueScript but the book doesn't make it clear how this is done. Is there some kind of Editor available for this task, so one can write in C++ not TorqueScript?

Also as my last question I've found reading through the book quite hard now (150+ pages in). Should I leave off reading it anymore until I've bought the engine to play with and just dip into the book as I go? Would it be best to learn that way?

Sorry for so many questions but I'm new to all this stuff, but I do have a grounding in C++ and scripting in other engines (Operation Flashpoint).

Thanks for any help offered.