even the closed track can be quite dangerous to the driver trying to push the limits of many of these "sporty cars"
Yeah, but a lot safer than on the street. No oncoming traffic. If you go off-track, there are no trees, telephone poles, big rock walls or dropoffs into oblivion... All of which are quite common and prominent on twisty mountain roads here in SoCal...
I highsided my motorcycle at ~75 mph at the
Streets of Willow. It sucked. But even that is not a particularly "dangerous" crash on a racetrack, and it'd be high likelihood of major injury or death on the road.
I am NOT a fast driver even on a track though, relatively.
I've always been relatively quick, whether it's go karts, motorcycles, or cars.
But as I said earlier, it's lot more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow. When you're driving a vehicle with limits FAR in excess of your own skill, you run into the problem that you NEVER ask the car to do something it's not capable of... Until you do, at which time you're not capable of saving it.
The way to learn to drive at the limit is to actually drive at the limit, which you can do in less capable cars. If you manage that, you can then start moving up to cars where the limits are higher.
Some of the fastest riders I used to hang with were the old dudes who grew up riding in the 70's, on bikes with crap suspension, crap tires, so they knew where the limits were. Or those who had grown up riding dirtbikes, for whom playing at the edge of traction was second nature. They knew what it felt like to be approaching the line, and not to cross it.
