Personal observation, obviously a small and fairly biased field, but it's what I've seen locally.
I started Autocrossing myself in about 2000 or 2001, then got into DEs because I wanted more speed. I did DEs and autoX for a few years, then decided to concentrate my money on DEs.
During that time, I watched many of my friends go through the same path and 'graduate' to w2w racing.
I finally went through the driver's school myself last summer, and most of the people there I knew from running DEs in the past, with the exception of a few "kids" that went directly from karts to racing. Just about everyone else there had done DEs for at least a couple years before they went racing.
Many of the people I race with, I also see participating and instructing at HPDEs for various local clubs like Driver's Edge, NASA, PCA/BMWCCA (they play together locally..), Viper and Corvette guys, etc.
So that's obviously hard, official data... But that's what I've seen. YMMV.
And then there's that blabbermouth in his Nissan that just won't take a hint he's not wanted.
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