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If you pay $5000 for a professional school, and you don't already have basic high-speed car control as natural as breathing, those high paid instructors will have to spend the whole time teaching you the things you could have learned for $300 a weekend from your local PCA or NASA. You will eventually get to the point at your local PCA or NASA schools where the instructors really can't help you that much any more. When you reach that point, THEN go to the big name schools. This varies based on your natural talent and the speed with which you pick it up. Some hotshoes are ready in less than a year, others take decades. There's no need to rush it. Enjoy the ride!
As for autocross, although car control concepts are similar, the executions are quite different. The turns in autocross come at you faster than a formula one driver, but the speeds are so slow, the car has a horrible predominance towards understeer (push in NASCAR talk). The way to defeat this understeer is to force the car to rotate by all manner of actions that essentially unsettle the car in a controlled fashion. Though a valuable skill for winning autocrosses, it is practically useless on high speed race tracks. There, your biggest concern is smooth smooth smooth. I'm not saying that autocrossing can't help you, I'm just saying it's apples and oranges. Finally, I prefer track days for newbies because there is no clock. If you go to an autocross and end up dead last out of 70 cars (which you will inevitably do your first couple times), it can be very discouraging, and I have seen plenty of people leave and never return. At the track, you are only concerned with being a better driver, increasing your knowledge, etc. There are no lap times or trophies to hurt your feelings.
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