Most people have the good sense to stick with what they do well. Unfortunately I am not most people, and that sad fact has led me on a whirlwind tour (or as my girlfriend might describe it, were she not so charitable, a downward spiral) of different cars and plans since my relatively recent introduction to the world of motorsport with the Audi club. In the process I’ve met great friends, brought five different cars to the track, gone from green student to instructor and learned quite a bit about the finer points of driving, car setup and maintenance. The most humbling lesson of all, though, is this: Don’t get cocky. You’re still a rank novice in somebody’s book, and you probably always will be. And now I have the SCCA Club Racing Novice Logbook to prove it.

Now, most people looking to go closed-wheel road racing in New England will wisely call up Andy Bettencourt at Flatout Motorsports or Dick Shine of Shine Racing Service and rent an arrive-and-drive race car for the one of the SCCA’s mandatory licensing schools. No need to keep your eye on fuel, oil levels, tire pressures, or even worry about blown transmissions or spent clutches. Their crews will keep your rig up and running so you can focus on the act of driving. Like a true novice, I thought of a better idea.

I’ve been driving a Mazda RX-8 on track for the past year, and a more intuitive, well balanced, free revving and fun rear wheel drive sports car you will not find (at least not new) for the money. I loved mine so much that when in January, Steven Burkett’s T-3 RX-8 race car showed up for sale on an SCCA forum, it turned my entire plan for going racing inside out. Rather than find a ratty RX-8 to laboriously build up over time, I could jump right into a lap-record-holding car with a scant 7,000 miles on the clock that had been meticulously prepared and raced by the co-owner of one of the St. Louis region’s most respected rotary race shops. I flew out the following weekend and left him a deposit.

When I got home, I whipped out a pen and paper and began tallying the costs for the first season. Tow vehicle, trailer, registration, insurance, tires, brake pads, rotors, fluids, gas, racing schools, SCCA licensing, entry fees, and then what about failures or (gasp) damage? My wallet cried itself to sleep that night.

In the morning I began shopping for the seediest-looking middle-aged diesel panel van that very-little-money could buy, a mission the outcome of which can only be described as a resounding success. The van I purchased is a 132k mile white 1995 Econoline one-ton with barely legible outlines of the former vinyl emblem reading “White’s Oil Heat” on the side. The upside is 15 mpg towing. The downside is the suspicious looks I get whenever driving through a school zone. Supplemented with a brand spankin’ new Dively EconoTrailer that is through some bizarre Internet logic rivaled in price only by ten-year-old dilapidated examples of the same model on Craigslist, I was ready to tow. Throw in a new race seat and custom bracket fabricated to mate it to the the sadistically designed floorpan of the Mazda with the expert help of Tyler Brown, and I was ready to go racing.

If you’ve ever been to one of the excellent high performance driving schools put on by the Audi club, you probably know the welcoming, laid-back atmosphere of knowledge sharing and encouragement that they embody. My SCCA racing school this April at New Hampshire International Speedway was a little different.

First they broke us up into our race groups by class rather than experience. Group 1 was Miata central, and the largest group by far. Group 2 was the open wheel and spec racer crowd. Group 3 was the catch-all closed-wheel group where I found myself, which meant a potential range of about 700 horsepower. The evening before, I’d noted with some apprehension that there was a GT-1 car in the group, knowing full-well how scary it might be to find a student at a racing school who’d never been on track before in an 800 horsepower race car. I was pleased to discover that it was a misprint and it was actually a quick driver in an ITB Mk 1 Volkswagen GTI. One who would even kindly lend me a fuel can and funnel when I ran out of gas (twice).

The morning’s class began with a brief introduction of the Group 3 instructors, which devolved quickly into a debate over who the biggest cheater among them was. Ultimately the group leader’s bid prevailed. Then after a brief look at the track map it was time to go over flags. We’d been given the run-down on the flags by the Flagging and Communications chair the night before, but this morning’s session had one key difference. The full course yellow flag, we’d been told previously, meant: no passing, slow down. Our fearless leader promptly dispelled this harebrained notion. The full course yellow really means: no passing, speed up! Obviously, avoid the obstruction, but the racer’s next priority is to close the gap to the pace car and make back as much time on the leaders as possible before a restart.

The same attitude was evident from the on-track sessions as well, where instructors would go out in their own cars and taunt students with late-braking passes, line crowding and three-wide moves through the NASCAR south oval. On two occasions during the school, I was forced to drive off track to avoid being hit by other students, one who didn’t see me making an obvious pass, and another who overcooked a corner and spun with me right on his bumper. On neither occasion was the incident even mentioned in the post-session wrap-up. In another run, after I made a pass attempt on an instructor in turn three, left him a generous amount of space on the outside to complete his turn, and got smoked on the exit as a result, I was berated by my instructor for the weak attempt. Needless to say, I loved everything about it. This was motorsport in its pure form. Taking calculated risks is the name of the game, and your aggressiveness should only be tempered by your desire to finish the race without balling up your car or getting penalized. All else is fair game, and everybody on track agrees. Perfect.

After two days of open track, qualifying and practice starts (which were usually gridded by the fiendish instructors, putting the fast cars in the back and the slow cars up front just to make for added first-lap drama), we were all pretty tired, but the last event of the school was a full-length race. With a grin, the group leader gridded me second to last with an ITE M3, the clear overdog of the group, in tow. Given the length of the race and the large speed differential of the cars, Bruce the M3 driver and I knew that we could bide our time and still make it to the front. The trick would be to make it through the pack without incident. So off we went on the parade lap, dragging the brakes and darting from side to side to get some heat in the rotors and tires, forming up as we rounded NASCAR turns three and four. The green flag flew. I mashed the gas. My brain switched off long-term memory to save a few cycles, and I woke up 30 minutes later as I passed the checker, not quite sure what position I was in. I vaguely remember negotiating turn 11 with somebody’s dropped rear exhaust on-line and getting around a spinning BMW in Turn three, but I can’t really guarantee that those didn’t happen in other sessions. The intense focus of wheel-to-wheel racing was something I’d never experienced before, and something I knew I’d have to experience again: soon, and often.

At the party that followed, we exhausted students were recognized for our progress. And, along with many in my race group, I was signed off for regional competition. I was ready, yet again, to be a full-blown novice.