The best advice that I can give you is to find a car that needs crew help. Offer your services for free. Expect to do the most menial of tasks like scraping mud and changing tires for a while. As you learn your way around the car, start to ask questions...about everything, including costs.

After a while, you'll find that you still want to own/drive one of these beasts. So be prepared to invest $15K-20K jsut to start; then you'll need spares, a truck and trailer, and an operating budget. Figure on about another $20K for the fisrt year...but don't figure on making any of your investment back for a while, if ever.

I like to compare owning a race car to owning a boat... it's just a hole that you keep throwing money into....But you'll have a blast and meet a bunch of nice folks along the way!