One other thing, having a "coach" is a huge help to get you started, back when I was racing full scale I ran a first generation MR2 and there was a local guy who raced MR2's at a much higher level who took me under his wing and taught me a huge amount. The same can be said for EMU with my Mini-Z's. Without him my learning curve would have been significantly shallower.
Cheers,
Jim
Same can be had for me running 1/10 scale and now miniz tommy lane was a big help with telling me what is needed to look for and keep an eye out for that I've helped the new guys as much as I can with radio settings to soldering lil issues on there cars