Bill Fischer

GHIT 0149: Joe Marko from HMS Motorsport Discusses Safety Equipment, including Seats and Racing Harnesses

Joe Marko was our guest from HMS Motorsport joins us to discuss several of the key aspects of safety for your race car, key aspects to take into consideration, as well as installation guidance, basically a one stop shop, but it was so much content and information, we are sure this is only part one of several more. If you are going to be working on your car or especially if you are building a car this winter, this can help you significantly.

On this episodeâs Dominating with Dawson, we cover what to do and what to avoid when steering the car on track. Also a few tips that have seemed to help Vicki and Jennifer break their former shuffle steering habit. And Ben balances eggs on his hood?

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) A history of Joe and his team at HMS Motorsports, as well as how they have focused on safety for motorsports cars and drivers for the past 25 years, including all levels from amateur racing through NASCAR.

2) We finally know how to pronounce Schroth properly.

3) How HMS began working with NASCAR after the Dale Earnhardt accident at Daytona and how the relationship has grown in the intervening time to where almost every driver is using belts from HMS.

4) We cover what is a DOT or street legal seat belt or harness vs only for track use.

5) How your harness belts, shoulders, lap, and crotch belts should be installed to maximize safety and prevent submarining in an accident. And more importantly why.

6) What are the differences between SFI and FIA rated harnesses and how that came to be.

7) What is the difference between and 5-point belt and a 6-point belt and why one is usually better than the other?

8) We go into the ideal mounting geometry and the geometry of where the belts should be on the driver. Joe also gives an ingenious, yet simple solution for drivers of different sizes requiring different length belts. We know, we did tell you there would be no math, lol.

9) Why you may want to get the enduro style belts? They are a bit more expensive but offer significant advantages, especially when fitting drivers of several sizes, like in endurance racing events or shared cars at HPDE and track day events.

10) Seat mounting and harness mounting guidance that may save you when you most need it. We also go into how to properly design a seat back brace and perhaps most importantly the shape of the brace interface with the seat.

11) Halo seat designs and considerations, as well as advantages and disadvantages. Interior nets can be a close approximation of a halo seat when installed properly.

12) Webster’s dictionary has not gotten back to us for our proposed entry of âluxury mammalsâ that we first heard from prior podcast guest Randy Bish when i-racing. We will keep everyone updated with our progress.

13) Joe also helps us to explore several potential options for fitting drivers of different size into a single seat in our endurance cars. Our winter to do list is growing.

14) The importance of how you mount and align your seat as well as the interaction this has with the belt/harness system effectiveness.

15) What the new Snell 2020 helmet certifications mean and how they may affect your current helmet if it certified to 2010 or prior. Joe also explains why there is a time limit of a helmet and under what circumstances you should replace your helmet even if it has not expired.

16) We even go into how to care for and clean your helmet from track use or in case of more extreme events after one too many âthin mintsâ. This question is for you Bruce.

17) A helmet dryer is not the same as when you use a blow dryer, which can damage a helmet.

18) How to mount your radio wiring or camel back type straws and how not to. Hint: hole drilling is bad.

19) Joe also presented several options to help keep your visor and/or eyeglasses from fogging. Bill is actively looking for pin lock visors as we speak.

As a bonus, we have an extensive post credit bonus discussion of Jenniferâs recent accident at the Charlotte Roval, what happened, and several alternative safety improvements that may have reduced the damage to our driver.

Links to several of the items discussed:

Custom Seat Insert System: https://www.hmsmotorsport.com/item/bsci-foam-seat-pouring-kit

Schroth Bead seat inserts: https://www.hmsmotorsport.com/item/schroth-profi-seat-kit/seat-fitment

HMS Motorsportâs YouTube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz0etXlIQnDtbfHzCtGwduQ

GHIT 0149: Joe Marko from HMS Motorsport Discusses Safety Equipment, including Seats and Racing Harnesses

GHIT 0148: Brian Bohlander Racing and Potential Paths to Racing Education and Training

Is Racing School or HPDE/Comp School Better for you?

Brian Bohlander is a very accomplished race driver having competed for over 30 years and has won the Mint 400 Class 5500 and is a 3-time Thunder Roadster champion. In his professional life, he is the marketing director for Peak antifreeze and is responsible for all sports and racing partnerships. As if that was not enough, he is also the Comp school director for NASA Great Lakes. During the episode, we try to compare two of the primary paths for training and qualifying to compete in wheel to wheel racing: attending a formal racing school or working your way through the HPDE levels and graduating through Comp school. Please note that this was recorded prior to our skid pad event that we covered in earlier episodes.

We discuss the different methods of determining your braking point markers and their relative importance in our Dominating with Dawson segment. We start with a discussion of the relative importance of the point where you begin braking and the point where you come off the brake. Then we digress into a wide variety of discussion points, some related, some very much not. We each learned a bit of what we each do when on track. Who knew?

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) We start with a bit about off road racing and quickly go into several strategies for organizing and prepping for a track event. It is not only a skill challenge, but a large and complicated logistical challenge.

2) Brian has probably the shortest and most direct racing philosophy that we have heard to this point.

3) What is Comp school and how it compares to attending a racing school and where HPDEâs fit into the landscape, including a brief history of where we started driving instruction and how we arrived to where we are now.

4) We learn that the NASA CCR (~ rule book) actually has a definition of what a âpassâ is on track and how to and how not to pass, but also addresses what each drivers responsibility is during a pass.

5) What is Comp school? What do you do and learn while in Comp school? What are you qualified to do after passing Comp School? Hint: Safe, Predictable, and FAST are three key points that allow you to advance.

6) How the NASA program works to prepare you a driver for better, fast, and safer driving on a track, wheel to wheel racing, time trials, or even to eventually work towards being a competent and certified performance driving instructor.

7) What is the best path to learn depending on your personal goals.

8) Several tips that we tried to apply at our skid pad event a few weeks ago at Lime Rock Park.

9) Brian gives some opinions on the use of data and how it can help you while you are learning and progressing as a driver.

10) Track Attack Software comes up again. Please let us know if you have used it what you think of it. Also, if you would like us to try to get them on a guest, please let us know.

11) Brian does a very good and clear description of trail braking and how to use it bet on a track. So, if you havenât ever been 100% clear on what trail braking is or why you would want to use it, this may be a great episode for you. Even if you already use trail braking, this may increase your understanding and use of the technique.

12)Â We also have a chance to go into the auxiliary benefits of learning to drive in this manner and how it helps you when driving every day on regular street roads.

GHIT 0148: Brian Bohlander Racing and Potential Paths to Racing Education and Training

GHIT 0147: HPDE at NJMP Lightning Wrap Up for 2020

Porsche 911 — Some great cars, and some of ours attended this event.

Vicki's NB Miata — Some great cars, and some of ours attended this event.

The latest HPDE with NASA Northeast last weekend completes our season of track driving and instruction for 2020. We try to summarize it as well as how the COVID 19 impacted racing season went. And Bill canât wait to start planning 2021. It was a great weekend on track with fantastic weather, especially for mid-November in NJ. We came with three cars good to go. We left with zero. Seems to be a familiar refrain. The winter to do list gets longer.

On Dominating with Dawson, we cover driver communication going into and out of the car at the track.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) We cover our goals going into the event.

2) How was Billâs new HPDE car on track for the first time. If at first you donât succeed, try, try, try again or the fourth time is the charm.

3) We also cover how Vicki and Jennifer applied the things they learned at the Lime Rock skid pad on the track.

4) Bill gets to see the Lightning track for the first time, even though he/we drove this track for several hours last year. Hood-Gate.

5) Jennifer got to drive with and review the data from the Garmin Catalyst for the first time.

6) Vicki also started reviewing and using the data from the Apex Pro for the first time ever.

7) Both Jennifer and Vicki got a lot faster throughout the weekend and seemed to have some of their best driving stints ever.

8) Bill went on track for the first time ever in the ND Miata.

9) What were the areas of greatest improvement for Jennifer and Vicki. Both made significant gains in both their lines and their car inputs. Also, now they were both able to take input from the data and video and apply it on their next stint.

10) Bill apparently can’t count turns past 5 and gets confused with turn 7. We will blame this on our post-race weekend hangover.

11) Bill really wants to put racing brake pads onto the M3 for the next track event. The all-season tires were not as big a deal as anticipated but will also need to be improved for our first event next season.

12) Vickiâs last stint led to an off on turn 5 that has caused some issue with her suspension. Exact point of failure is still TBD at this point.

13) We were able to get a lot of good video and hopefully good data. We cannot wait to analyze further and learn what we can work on and how we are improving.

14) Jennifer breaks the news that Ross Bentley is coming back as a guest for our 150^th episode that is coming very soon!

15) Vicki went into her off track event late Sunday at turn 5.

16) Brief review of some of our off season work and planning for next season.

GHIT 0147: HPDE at NJMP Lightning Wrap Up for 2020

GHIT 0146: Live from NJMP Lightning with NASA NE

We thought we would get a short podcast out to update how the day has gone and what we have been doing today. Jennifer is in the Soul Red 2019 Mazda MX5 (Miata) ND2 and is in HPDE 1 this weekend. Vicki is in her first HPDE 2 and, as always is driving her 1999 Mazda Miata with the Flyin’ Miata turbo. Bill finally found an HPDE car that he can fit into that wasn’t stolen (yet) by the girls, a 2004 BMW E46 M3. The day went very well and we all learned from the time on track. We cover highs and lows and end with a short story time from Bill about the last stint of the day. This will cover Saturday and we will likely have a longer episode covering the whole event in the future.

If you are here, please say hi. Jennifer actually ran into a listener in her HPDE class.

Also, if you happen to have some race pads for an E46 M3, Bill has cash money.

GHIT 0146: Live from NJMP Lightning with NASA NE

GHIT 0145: Our Skid Pad and Autocross Event at Lime Rock Park

Jennifer in the 2019 Mazda MX5 — **Just a bit of splashing around**

We have finally gotten to our long postponed skid pad event. Our original event in March was cancelled due to COVID 19 and when John from Safety Third Motorsports was kind enough to offer an invitation to an event at Lime Rock Park using the skid pad and autocross track, we gladly said thank you! Was it everything we had hoped for? Should you go to a skid pad? Did it help us? Would it help you? Why do our cars always break the night before we leave? All this and more will be answered in this episode.

A seemingly simple subject for our Dominating with Dawson segment, but very important. How to position your mirrors and the importance of a good seating position on performance driving.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1) Goals for the event going in

2) How the event was organized. It included a brief 1-hour classroom meeting, followed by several sessions and drills on the skid pad and ending with several sessions on an autocross course.

3) Jennifer drove in the stock 2019 Mazda Miata MX-5 ND2. Bill drove in the mostly stock 2017 Toyota 86 and Vicki drove her 1999 turbo NB Miata MX-5.

4) Keeping with tradition, we had an issue with one of our cars and this time it was Vickiâs NB Miata that had two blown struts in the rear. Parts were unavailable, but Alex Levinson came to the rescue with some struts that he had.

5) How to change the suspension of your NB Miata twice in the parking lot of a hotel the night before, and morning of the event.

6) A brief review of the classroom session, with a few quiz questions to Jennifer and Vicki. We may need another session. Lol.

7) Skid pad drills and what we learned. There were three drills we tried: speed testing, inducing understeer, and inducing oversteer.

8) Vicki had some struggles (again) with in car instruction and we try to get to the bottom of it and how we can look to improve that issue going forward.

9) A comparison of how our three drivers and our three cars compared during the skid pad event.

10) How the autocross course was laid out and what drills we used.

11) How Alex âThe Unintended Gigoloâ faired in his attempt to use all three cars on the skid pad and the autocross course.

12) Jennifer and Vicki learned heel toe downshifting and did quite well. Bill, not so much.

13) Bill goes into the autocross part of the event and had some issues with the traction of the course or his over driving, or even more likely, lack of skill.

14) Jennifer improved so much that she actually got motion sickness for the first time while driving at the event. And sheâd do it again!

15) How both Vicki and Jennifer learned to get comfortable with the car getting loose and even looking forward to it. Still so much more to learn and get comfortable with, but a great first step.

16)Â We cover the final part of the autocross event where we were timed.Â On the GHIT team, Alex was fastest, Vicki was second, Jennifer (on an empty stomach) came in third but was by far our most consistent driver at the event.Â Bill prefers to remain unquantifiable by hitting a cone and posting a DNF.

17) We try to cover the event with our traditional âGood, Bad, and the Uglyâ but Vicki and Jennifer had so much fun that there really wasn’t an ugly.

18) Vicki is planning on some additional skid pad practice in an upcoming snowy parking lot.

19) Bill is committed to incorporating heel toe down shifting into his track driving.

20) Ben will be very happy with the latest version of couples therapy, lol.

Special thanks to John Lavin and John Murphy for hosting and leading the event. Hopefully, we did well enough to get another invite in the future.

GHIT 0145: Our Skid Pad and Autocross Event at Lime Rock Park

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