Let me tell you about Autocross (or Solo) racing. This is the most popular and most affordable racing you can get into. You can drive your daily driver car or you can drive a heavily modified car. There are even classes for go karts and formula cars. This is where you go to see what you can do and not worry about rubbin' or bumping anything but orange cones.
The event master will find a big parking lot or even airport tarmacs where available and set up a challenging course of traffic cones. You have fairly decent speed areas maybe long enough to get up to about 60mph max, slalom areas to test your reflexes, and then you have very technical slow areas where you need to keep some momentum to help your time. You run your car as fast and hard as you can all alone against the clock. Every cone knocked over subtracts 2 seconds from your time, and if you miss a cone (out of bounds) you are DNF'd. Six runs and your best time is recorded. Fun thing about autocross is you don't even have to be a member. Just show up, pay your entry fee, sign an insurance waiver, and go!
http://scca.com/divisions.aspx If interested, click on the map of regions and go to their website. Most are heavily involved in autoX/solo and you can see their schedule for events.
Since Indianapolis Raceway Park kicked my butt a couple weeks ago (see Weasy Wracing Part Deux) I felt my confidence in the "Snot Rocket" Neon fall...after having such a good time at my driver school at Blackhawk Farms in April. IRP's road course really was bad as far as maintenance and could use a lot of work so I pretty much shook it off and racked it up as just a drive to help get my license. Chad (my buddy and the car owner) thought a fun run at my region's next solo event might help out so this weekend as part of our city festival, the Fort Wayne Region of the SCCA put on an autocross event. We signed up as co-drivers in the Snot Rocket meaning we'd both be able to do our 6 runs by taking turns driving.
Autocross is it's own community since it's grass roots racing at it's finest and you get to help out with the event as well as drive in it. You show up and get split into two or three race groups and if your group isn't up...you work a corner. Main responsibility is resetting cones if they get knocked over, and reporting downed cones for a deduction in time for the offending driver.
The two on the right are me and Chad working.
After two hours of the first group getting their runs in it was our turn.
Here's the gang. Me, a work buddy I talked into coming with his own car (Josh), Chad, and the little guy is Chad's son. Chad's son was the luckiest kid in the world today. In autocross you can take passengers with you...and he rode along with me, Chad, and Josh for a total of around 8-10 runs.
Had to get one of just me and the Snot Rocket (see the sticker above the Tire Barn sticker
)
I kind of went into this with a feeling of "yeah, whatever...driving solo in a parking lot". After running door to door on road courses at 120mph this seemed like it might be a little boring (and do you have any Grey Poupon?). Well, it ended up being a blast. The course was set up quite well, and with my wife finally at one of my events I decided to give her a show.
Gridded up...waiting for my turn.
Took Chad as my passenger for tips since he's done autocross for years (as well as road racing).
Geezer and the link he gave me for tips..."where your eyes go, your hands will follow"
Took Josh (total noob) with me to show my lines...he looks scared
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Gotta love fwd and kickin' out the back end...series of pics going through a hairpin...
Brake to set the nose...
Let the back end slide out...
Gas hard to get straightened out...
And go go go!
Running with Chad's son as my pax
Hard to see, but notice a head in the middle seat...poor kid's head was swaying back and forth with my aggresive driving...and he loved it! This pic he lost his grip on the roll cage and his head almost went into my lap
Big smile...
Swinging around to the finish line (90 degree corner)
And braking after the finish to check my time
My biggest competitor was Chad since I was just there for fun. His best lap was 56.9 (I said he's been doing this for many years) and I finished my best at 57.4 (my first ever autocross...half a second slower). I wasn't paying attention to any of the other car's times until late in the runs and realized I was quicker than a lot of them. I ended up just unwinding and having fun in the car...and without realizing it I had done pretty well. After the event ended I was awarded a 2nd place trophy for G Stock class (Chad got 1st place) and I received a 1st place trophy for a Novice driver (fastest Novice out of about 10 other novices).
Yeah, it's not road course racing, but it's still a lot of fun in it's own way. I'm running a double regional road course race at Nelson Ledges next weekend, and now seriously thinking about running the next autocross event here on August 3rd.
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These road courses are small enough even with some long straights that there's no time to do anything but keep your SA and work the pedals, gears, and wheel. The Viper driver in the video didn't make a sound until he realized "this is gonna hurt...and be expensive". 
) of a BS-Class daily driver 'crosser. Where to practice, and better yet, how, without garnering the attention of the town clowns is fast becoming my prime concern. Well, that and not letting the wife find out I want to (GASP! HORROR!) actually race the beast. Cripes, it was bad enough with her in the passenger seat during a rather "spirited" test drive of a Mazdaspeed 3. The following smiley sequence describes it better than I can in english: 
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