Another Road Track guy here. Just doing HPDE, have to work for a living, but ran through HPDE 1,2,3 all last year and have been running at Virginia International Raceway, Road Atlanta and Nashville Superspeedway. Two cars, my friend and co-crazy has an e46 BMW, and mine is an '03 Termi Cobra. We "hot seat" them in different HPDE classes and get twice the track time out of the car plus the bonus of a pit crew to help out with tire changes etc. WAY TOO MUCH FUN to be legal! Have run 1/4 out at Beech Bend - ok fun - for 11 seconds at a time.
You'll need to plan on spending $370 or so for the weekend with the event sponsor and running through a set of tires about every other event, brakes twice a year and a clutch every other year. Oh yeah, you may blow a motor or tranny or whatever - but sh*t happens has to be factored into any sport. My Termi is down now with just such a malady and mill is at MMR for a rebuild, so we ran the e46 at Road Atlanta last month. For the curious here's the link to the pics and videos for last year's events. Did I happen to mention WAY TOO MUCH FUN? Cheers. http://inmanhome.smugmug.com/Sports/ToddRacing