I took the three day Panoz racing school along with a 4th lapping day at Road Atlanta to get my regional license. I think it was money well spent and would highly recommend it to anyone looking at getting into racing, but $3800 is no small amount of change. I had done some auto-x and a lapping day over a couple years before taking the school. So I don't have a whole lot of experience.

I feel I came out of the school with enough experience to go racing. I did a race at Road Atlanta in Februrary and that was my first (in anything) ever. My goals were to stay out of people's way and not crash (especially into someone else). I think I did that very well and managed to actually race somebody else who was as slow as me at the same time. I even went 6 seconds faster in the race than I did in qualifying (guess I have to learn to push a little harder ). Frankly, the driving was the easy part of the weekend. Trying to learn all the procedures and everything else involved in a race weekend was much more difficult.

I don't think you need a whole lot of experience to be able to go racing. I do think you need the right mental attitude. I know my car control skills aren't the greatest at them moment, so I don't push beyond a certain limit. That limit is increasing each session I'm in the car.

To me, a problem is somebody driving beyond their skills and constantly running off the track or, worse, running into other people. I don't think requiring extra driving time before racing will help that situation.

I think the only thing requiring HPDEs or some other car time before a school will accomplish is making it harder and more costly for people to get into racing. I don't think it will solve the "bad driver" problem.

David