Vintage? IT? PT? Depends on what polopharm's goals are.
Polo - why race? Because it's cool to have a great lookin' car on the track? Want to be a competent road racer? Want to be a competitive road racer?
Have you spent a race weekend at the track? That pretty much means Friday morning to last race of the day on Sunday. On Friday you'll get some good track time IF it's an open (non-SCCA sponsored) track day. If it's sponsored by SCCA things will be very rigidly managed by class. All (ok, most of) the rules will be in effect. Assuming a double race weekend, Saturday will have a morning 25 minute practice session, a morning 25 minute qualifying session followed up by your race in the afternoon - Groups 1 thru 5 each being about 40 minutes in length. Sunday, do it all over again. A lot of down time. Might be good for putting pieces back together.
So, if you haven't already go out and do a race weekend as a spectator or better yet, a volunteer. If you don't like doin' the time then there's no use spending the bucks to participate.
Going fast on the fast line is fun and fairly easy to do. But that doesn't mean you can go fast in a crowd - that takes "race craft" which is developed over a long period of time - experience or schools - your choice. I've seen a ton of racers go out and set a good lap. Look at their cumulative laps and they are all over the map (10 seconds between best and worst). A competent racer will go out and nail 10 laps within 1/2 second - 5 seconds slower than the pole sitter in your class. Now you're ready to update your driving skills and/or equipment to move the lap times up to a competitive time. That's the difference between competent and competitive.
If the race weekend is a double regional event you'll be hanging out with the guys you're competing against. If it is a double national / regional event you will be on track with all the national classes that have been assigned to your Group. The guys racing national (typically) are looking to qualify for the Runoffs in September. Much higher quality of driver. They don't really care if you are a regional car - you're just taking up track space while they are looking & finding the best places to pass. Typically, there is not much respect shown for the regional guys when on track. It is what it is - varsity / reserve kinda thing. If you didn't know already, drivers have egos, some pretty damn big.
I've worked with new racers that were competitive but they really didn't like the whole race weekend gig. Not enough track time. Too much of a time commitment (06:00 - 20:00) for a day. Bunches of broken bits that put you on the trailer Saturday morning.
Vintage racing? It's all about hanging with guys-n-gals that believe that it's more about the car and less about the driver. Competition rules in many cases eliminate aggressive door-to-door racing. A lot of fun for those that like to hang around cars from back in the day - all period specific - way more social than the typical SCCA event.
It's all good - just depends on what polo wants to get out of it.
Oh yea, generally speaking, SCCA national events have better drivers than NASA but the rules & race management of SCCA club racing can be a REAL PITA.