Yea. I had a couple hard lessons. When I was working on the Barracuda, maybe it was even before I got the current one, I knew I needed safe place to play with it. Didn't want mine to be another one of the many wrapped around a telephone pole. And I absolutely don't want to risk anyone else's well being. That's just not right in my book.
Autocross is great because you can go 10/10ths - in fact you have to try to. That means finding the limits by occassionally exceeding them. Its the only safe venue to do that for sports driving.