The driving part is easy - getting the car ready to go out on the track is another story.  It's 5PM the night before the race, the car has just come off of the track after a heated battle on the track and there's a grinding noise in the transmission.   The crewchief proclaims "3rd gear is garbage".  You've got a race tomorrow, what are you going to do?  Rebuild the transmission, of course, right there at the track.  This is where highly skilled, knowledgeble crew are an absolute must.   Meet my crewchief, Jay Jarvis.  Jay's been working with me for the last couple of years.  He's been indespensible.  At first, I did everything at the track myself.  Tires, brakes, suspension setup, engine, transmission, etc.  Then Jay came along and made my life easy.  For my birthday in April 2001, we both went to the Motec Race Car Dynamics class together in Charlotte NC and learned enough to digest for a lifetime.  Now we both collaborate on the car setup (and actually know mostly what we are talking about), tire pressures, etc.  Racing is as much an art as it is a science.  If you take a methodical approach to working on problems and setup, you simply go faster.