You, sir, just cost me USD$550
Dave...
Good for you. There's a whole world of difference in shooting with an SLR. The D70 was my first and I've completely taught myself since. With a large enough card in most modern bodies, you can easily get several thousand shots (I have an 8GB card in mine currently - which gives me 4500 "normal" quality .JPGs), and at 3-5 frames per second, you really can go on and on snapping (like I did at Silverstone.) If you take enough pictures, simple statistics will dictate that you'll get some good ones. Being able to do that gives you a lot of freedom to mess with camera settings and experiment with what works rather than worrying that each and every shot is critical.
I guess I need to get that $1500 80-400mm VR lens
Yes, the lens in question definitely helps, although the 80-400mm specifically isn't optimized for the applications I use it for. The autofocus is way too slow (non AF-S), and not being able to stop down further limits you in low light (although the VR makes up for that a little). The 80-400 is really the ticket for wildlife and things that aren't moving too fast, and trying to capture an aircraft moving at you at a hundred knots isn't its forté. However, it's the only telezoom that goes out all the way to 400mm and is still a reasonable price. Nikkor does offer the 200-400mm f/4, but I consider that an "exotic".
I don't know for sure what this one is below (probably a 400mm f/2.8), but one of the official F1 photographers was using it (notable because most "sports" shooters use Canon)
Wow.
