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If you can afford it, paying a coach will really help your driving! There's nothing like personalized attention, and they will push you to improve all the time. Those turns you are losing so much time in? Once you go as fast as the coach does a few times, it'll become the new normal.
I remember when I was still taking driving schools before I started racing, one of my instructors kept telling me that I could go quicker in the turns. He clearly didn't know what he was talking about, because I was a nineteen year-old hot shoe that had dominated my autocross class. I told him that the car simply wouldn't go any faster through the turns, and he very politely asked if he could drive the car to check that out. I let him drive, and was shocked at how much quicker he was than me! I was stunned; it just hadn't seemed possible that the car could do that. It was very humbling, but once I drove again, I was just about able to match him, and it probably knocked 2 or 3 seconds off my lap time.
One of my best friends is a pro driving coach. His main client is a rich guy that competes in the Ferrari Challenge. His client started racing last year (crazy to start out in the Ferrari Challenge - those are serious, very fast cars), so it has been quite a progression. I was at last year's 24 Hours of Daytona, and one of the support races was the FC, so I got to watch Ed's client in his first race. It was not impressive; he got lapped about a third of the way through the race and finished either in last or next-to-last place. By the end of the season, he finished fourth in the championship race, an unimaginable result given how out-to-lunch he was in his first race. That just shows what personalized, one-on-one attention can get you.
Of course, the Ferrari Challenge guy is paying my buddy many thousands of dollars to get that kind of support, but if you rented a coach twice a year, it would really pay off.
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