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A good HPDE program will bring you along safely and responsibly for your first experience. It should typically include some extra classroom time in the morning before your first excursion on to the track, probably about 75-90 minutes worth while other more advanced run groups get their first sessions.
The first run should always be with an instructor in the right seat. Sometimes a portion of the first run may be the "ducks in a row" exercise to help demonstrate the proper driving line. Then after a couple of laps of that routine you may be released to run more freely.
You may be given the opportunity to do a ride along with an instructor in their car, and if so by all means do it.
Performance driving is too complex to "get it" in a single day. Or month. Or year. But it is possible to learn an amazing amount on that first day or two, and if you prepare yourself properly, the amount you learn will be greatest.
Focus on safety first. This is no joke, no lark, no balls out romp between stacks of tires on a go kart track (plenty of folks get hurt in those little rockets too, by the way!). This is putting yourself into an entirely different plane of experience for which you are not experienced, and you need to be patient and smart about it. No matter what else you do, be safe and pay attention to what the instructors are doing. As your skills improve, and they will improve greatly, so will your appreciation of what "safe" really means.
As for the skills to work on that will get you around the track....."SMOOTH" is the operative key. Try to do everything, no matter how fast or slow it is done, SMOOTH. As for elements.....First work on learning the "line" around the track, and the essential subset of that, the corner apex. Second, work on establishing your braking point. Third your corner turn in point. Fourth, your corner exit track out point. That's it. That is enough to consume you for several HPDE days on the same track.
As you begin to get the hang of what is happening with those elements, and your gradual polishing of your skills to do it "smoothly", you will be pleasantly surprised at how much faster you are going, and how with apparent ease you are flowing around the track many seconds faster than when you were wrestling your car around in earlier sessions.
And then you begin to encounter more frequently the challenge of recognizing and managing the piloting of a car at the limits of adhesion. This is where the "real" driving begins. And if at this point you have not been to driving school, I think Fooshe and I would be on the same soapbox singing "It is time to go".
But first, get out there, with a good program sponsor, meet the folks (you will be delighted at how most of the HPDE'rs are truly nice and neat people),
get the experience, and think about whether you want to them come back.
Good luck and have fun. And don't think about spending any significant money on mods until you have had a few sessions, decided to stick with it a while, and been to racing school. You will drive way faster, and your mods will be well considered and smartly made to get best results for best price.
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