Originally Posted by
Ethan Blank
In addition to the tech considerations which you are already looking into, I have been influenced by advice from my classroom instructor at HPDE from Track Daze: don't take anything out on the track that you would miss too much if it fell off a cliff. I have participated in 3 HPDEs, and in each one there were collisions between cars and walls (not involving me, thankfully), with no human injury but some extensive car injuries. If the car is your daily driver, that can be a problem.
In part for the risk of damage, as well as the wear and tear on the car, I decided not to track my '07 335i, because I would miss it too much. Instead I went out and bought a car mainly for track purposes (although still street legal). I'm also learning by working on it myself, to prepare it for track. And, even though it would hurt to see it "fall off a cliff", as long as I'm not physically hurt, if something bad happened to the car on track it would not be the end of the world. I decided on a Miata as a good learning car, but there are other good choices. Total investment has been around $5k, including the car itself, putting in a roll bar, racing seats and 5-point harness, new rotors/brakes, fluid flushes, etc. Miata is, as my research found, probably the cheapest way to go. There are some BMW choices, perhaps already prepared for track (Anders has one for sale!), that are a few dollars more perhaps, but also very solid choices.
Just a thought...
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