I'd recommend a loose autox day. Basically a car handling clinic on a course with no real rules except to run the course as many times as you like for the day at various speeds and such. Great way to learn how much grip your tires have, when you'll start to spin out, and how to recover.
Some orgs do this, like SpeedSF in the Bay Area.
I'd recommend an HPDE after that if it's something someone would like to try (basically a track day with a coach who rides along with you every session to give advice and instruction).
Wish I had brought my turbo Miata when I moved to SF. Even though I’m sure that it would’ve passed an emissions test (great tune, GESI cat converter, exhaust fumes give me migraines so it’s as clean as I could get it), it would fail the smog rules by not being stock. Big sad. Also would get stolen… probably.
I've never been to an autox where you could run as many times as you like. Most people getting into autox should expect to be there all day, run about 5 times, and work the track for a bit.
That said, autox is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to any driving enthusiast
Yeah the one I mentioned as an example is "loose" in that it's an autox style cone course but there's no timers or rules or anything other than like not ruining the course.
You pay $80 or whatever and get to do as many runs as you like throughout the day. Sometimes they change up the course layout halfway through.
SpeedSF's organizer for that event will go out periodically and adjust the cones and stuff. Although in my experience they get lazy halfway through the day.
But the idea is it's nothing fancy like a standard autox event. It's just a cone course to mess around on to work on handling and inputs.
This way there's absolutely no pressure. You're just there to learn your car in a small relatively controlled environment.
With the caveat that I haven't done any sessions run by SpeedSF, the description for their AutoX events at Sonoma usually says something like "Show up and drive, we have dedicated course workers, you can expect to have 20-30 runs in a day".
For something run by a group like TrackMasters or GGLC or PCA, then you're definitely correct, you'll have somewhere between five and ten runs depending on how smoothly it goes, you'll work the course for a while, and you should view it as a fun day of hanging out with people who like cars and you'll get to drive a bit.
You're also definitely correct that autocross is a lot of fun and anybody who is interested in driving their car for the joy of it should try it out.
Some orgs do this, like SpeedSF in the Bay Area.
I'd recommend an HPDE after that if it's something someone would like to try (basically a track day with a coach who rides along with you every session to give advice and instruction).