I subscribe to the "10,000 repetitions" maxim for mastering any skill. "I fear not the man who has practiced 10000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10000 times." - Bruce Lee

Along those lines, that's why I recommend noobs start on shit tires and stay on them as long as they can. If you slap on RE-71Rs for your 3rd event and never look back, you have to go so fast to exceed the limits of that tire that things happen very fast and you're done spinning before you even think about a correction.

Autocross is a great environment to learn low-medium speed car control. You can totally bake it and generally there's nothing to hit but cones. High speed car dynamics are a little different, but having low-medium speed skills will greatly accelerate the learning curve.

Time to go to the track! If you're completely comfortable with your car randomly rotating at 25mph in poor winter conditions... imagine having that comfort at triple digit speeds :)

I was actually considering this. I used to have MPSS, but the shoulders got destroyed after a few events (maybe not an issue now that I have -3f/-2.4r camber) and they overheated in no time in the summer. Currently, I'm on R-S3 mainly to save money. However, they have tons of grip and have almost no "feel" compared to my MPSS, a bad combination for learning. What tire would you guys recommend? Should I go back to Prius tires? Or GT Radial SX-2, for two birds one stone with 86Cup?

Winner.