Gotcha. I'll post up some good reading material. Some of it will be Auto-X oriented, some of it will be HPDE/Road Race oriented, and some of it will just be race oriented. It will be a lot of a material. I recommend reading as much as you can get your hands on, and re-read multiple times. To keep things simple now, before I inundate you with reading material, I highly recommend this website:
www.winhpde.com. It talks a lot about the basics, and even gets into advanced things as you become familiar. It's not Auto-X specific, but a lot of the concepts overlap between HDPE/Race/Auto-X and even every day street driving. Start with the Novice section and go from there.
I will post back later tonight with a selection of books. Some might be even be available on Kindle, not sure though.
The class will be worth it - any time or place you can get instruction and/or seat time is always well spent. If you can afford it, do it. And don't feel like you have to know anything for the class. That's the point of the class - to learn. You learn about it in class/with an instructor. You then practice it. So don't feel like you have to know things before going. In fact, it's probably better that you don't. You will be too focused on trying to remember stuff and get 50 billion different things right that you will miss out on the actual learning. Just go. 1 ) Be a sponge. Absorb as much as you can. Learn as much as you can (and maybe unlearn some stuff). 2) Be smooth. 3) Be in control. If you do those 3 things initially, the rest will come. And last of all, have fun