Originally Posted by Loren

What he said. And then it takes even more money.

Cheapest wheel-to-wheel racing (in a car) that you'll find this side of a dirt track is "crap can" racing with LeMons or Chump. Even that is going to cost you a MINIMUM of $3k to buy and prep a car, plus $500 for your personal gear, plus actual racing expenses (transportation, tires, brakes, fuel, food, lodging, broken parts, entry fees, etc). Bottom line to the starting line of your first LeMons race should be around $5k give or take a couple hundred. Not too shabby split 4 or 5 ways, if you can find that many reliable people with money.

Cheaper than that would be to sign up with an already established LeMons team, but that's still going to cost you close to $1k per race weekend. (plus all of your driver's gear)

And just to be nitpicky, you never said you had 2 years of autocross experience, you said you had a Neon 2 years ago and liked the way it handled.

Anyway, I'm gonna stick with my original suggestion: Get some more autocross seat time, as much as possible. You learn car control skills at autocross that you can't safely learn on a track. Then find a track club (Chin, SCCA, NASA, whatever) who will give you track instruction and start learning the ropes at the track. If all you've ever done on a track is a ride along at Sebring, you're light-years away from being ready to race. (but, back to the LeMons gig... there are a LOT of people who show up at those races with NO experience whatsoever, not that I'd recommend it)