Money
Seat Time
Money
Seat Time
Money
The ability to sell yourself
Persistance
Money


As Chuck said, drag/circle track experience won't do you a damn bit of good. Also, if you think being a 'good driver' on the street is anything like being wheel to wheel at triple digit speeds...you're going to be seriously suprised.

Attend a Skip Barber 3day racing school, then maybe do the Formula Barber series, which will cost you around $30k for 1 season. If you do well, you can try something like Formula Ford 2000 or Star Mazda, both of which will cost you $100-$150k for the season to be done right.

OR, build yourself an SCCA IT class car and just go racing. Club racing as pure disaster, but at least you'll get some seat time. Maybe after a few years of that if you're serious and have $100k+ you can move up to something like the new MX5 Cup or US Touring Car or something.

So the moral of the story is, it takes huge amounts of money to get into racing. Teams/Sponsors don't just 'give you a chance' because you wanna give it a go, unfortunately...it's also a lot harder if you didn't start karting at an early age.

Good luck, hope you've got the bank for it.