[sperry]

I would suggest autocross.

Sure you say you're not interested, but have you ever done it? It'll only cost you $35 to give it a shot for a day, and if you come to this year's autocross school in April, you can get a feeling for it and some driving pointers. Reno SCCA also has an excellent Novice program that will get you on the course w/o all the hassles of car classifications and class points, if you just want to drive.

Plus, autocross is faster than you think. 65mph may sound "weak" but I guarantee you it seems a hell of a lot faster than putting along on the freeway. If you've ever lost control of a car at >60, you know how suddenly 60 goes from "hum-drum" to "oh-no-I-just-shit-my-pants". Plus, there is no form of competitive motorsports cheaper than autocross. Like Tyson said, racing costs a lot, especially once you hit the track. Autocross had not only the lowest entry fees, it's also the cheapest in terms of tires, brakes, fuel, wear-and-tear, etc.

For example, my time trials car costs about $150 in tires, $60 in gas, $7 in oil, $40 in brakes per hour it's on the track. So, for a weekend of track competition, that's easily $1000 including the entry fee, but ignoring things like diesel fuel to tow the car to and from the track, food, and the cost of whatever it is that breaks on the car over the weekend, etc. Budget autocrossers can competitively race a whole season for $1000.

So, I guess you have to ask yourself, what's more important? Low cost? High speeds? Competition? Frankly, going fast is over-rated... if you want to go fast, buy a plane ticket to anywhere and go 400+ mph at 30,000 feet... pure speed is no fun... what's fun is G-force; accelerating, stopping, turning as fast as you can. There's *plenty* of that in autocross, far more than there is at the track. Hell, one minute of autocross requires more frequent and precise driving inputs than an hour in a Formula 1 car.

All I'm saying is, autocross is probably a *lot* more of what you're looking for, you just don't know it. If you haven't tried it, definitely give it a shot. If afterwards, you still think you need something "bigger", Reno SCCA has 4 PDX events this season scheduled at Reno-Fernley Raceway (it's about as cheap as you can get for hitting a top-notch race-track), and if you look around, there's pretty much a track day somewhere on the west-coast every weekend, but you certainly won't get out there on the cheap.