so what do i need ....

My very first "sports car" was my Viper. My only experience before that was karts. Follow the great advice and just show up at ViperDays. Courtney will see you're taken care of.

As far as prepping the car, to start out:
- brake fluid
(i use motul 600)
- brake pads
(i use porterfeld R4, but many use Brakeman, Hawk, etc)
- oil
(i used to do Mobil 1 15/50, but I've been using Amsoil
for quite a while now - basically, you want a heavier
weight on the track because the heat thins it out)
- porsche air deflectors
(these help cool the brakes a bit. Basically I've outgrown
these and need to run ducts, but they're fine for a
start)

Thats it. You'll be amazed how well the car holds up. I've always driven to the track, beat the hell out of it, and driven home no worse for wear.

Step 1: Get a Viper

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I vote you spring for a school, the longest you can afford, and check out all the ones you can realistically consider and go with the one with the most track time.

The Panoz school was great. The first half of the day was class time and was a little slow. The second half was various exercises -- braking, heel-toe, lead-follow, etc. Days two and three alternated a half-hour in the car, then a half-hour in the classroom while the other group ran. Day two started with more lead-follow exercises (now all on-track), and ended up with school-rules open track. Day three was all on-track with school-rules. So for two days you had roughly 3.5-4 hours of driving time in an 8-hour day. It was positively exhausting. You'd need a LOT of track experience to be able to withstand or even WANT more track-time than that, in my opinion.

Everyone in the beginner's group who had no previous on-track experience agreed, the difference between what you knew when you walked in and what you knew when you walked out was enormous. Well worth the $2700 or so that those three days cost. The fact that you were driving a shitty Panoz GTR-A (basically a tube framed Rustang 302, for all intents and purposes a 4-speed stick with OD) didn't matter -- you learned the line, you learned braking, you learned how to pay attention while doing all those other things, etc etc.

The net result was that when I climbed into my Viper for the first time on the track (I don't count the VOI -- fun, but highly frustrating thanks to the instructor fiasco), I was able to concentrate on learning the car, rather than worrying about how to drive under the markedly different conditions on the track.

I'm told the other schools don't have nearly as much track time as Panoz, and quite a few people voiced the opinion that the other schools simply aren't as good. Our instructors were the actual drivers for Panoz -- the guys who drive the LMP cars at Le Mans and the Petit Le Mans and so on. Hard to argue with having that level of expertise at your disposal for three and a half days straight...

Plus, it sounds funny, but if you take a multi-day school, keep your fingers crossed that it rains one day. You'll learn a thousand times more driving in the rain than you will in the dry... several students, myself included, actually enjoyed rain-driving more than dry-weather driving.