No longer a DSLR virgin....

I’ve found for panning shots at drift events I do have better luck on aperture priority than full manual. I understand what you meant too lol, no worries.

What I posted above is purely basic info, you could read for days about background blur and focal lengths, full frame DOF vs. crop, dynamic range at certain ISO’s, filters, why not to use the in camera B&W setting, bulb mode and remotes, dead pixels in your sensor, and so on…

Learn your camera and how it works then focus on composition, camera raw, rule of thirds, diagonal method, and so on.