Garage Heroes (In Training)

Learning as we go. Come along with us and Enjoy the Ride!

Bill Fischer

EP 0021: Chris Abbott

Special Guest Driver from Everyone Racers Podcast and member of the Three Pedal Mafia

The Everyone Racers Podcast Hosts
The Everyone Racers Podcast: From Left to Right, Chris Abbott, Chrissie Mittura, Jeff Wakeman, and Mental Ward

Chris Abbott has been a wonderful person and has helped our team tremendously and endlessly since before we were even a team. He co-hosts the Everyone Racers podcast as well as racing as often as possible, usually with the Three Pedal Mafia. Chris is one of the nicest people we have met at lemons and has probably passed us more times than any other driver in the series, sometimes even in our own car.  

Three Pedal Mafia 2017 National Champions of the 24 Hours of Lemons
Stuffy National Champions? Not our friends at the Three Pedal Mafia

On this episode, we talked about a wide variety of topics including: 

  • Our “Wish You Were Sponsoring Us”, Alpine Stars
  • Alan does a Dalek impersonation
  • New car race prep strategy
  • Boat racing. Ooops, sorry. Racing a Boat.
  • Giraffes and racing
Three Pedal Mafia in the Race Boat
The 3PM Racing Boat / Truck / Awesome!

Also as a special surprise to those of you who listen to the Everyone Racers podcast, we made special accommodations and you can actually hear Chris speaking on this episode, lol.  

We have yet to pass him and he is probably the best driver we know, as well as being a tremendous mechanic, equally skilled teacher and a great friend.

Without Chris, our team would be far behind where we currently are and likely would not have continued much past last year.

EP 0021: Chris Abbott -Special Guest Racing Driver

EP 0020: Christian “Mental” Ward

From the Three Pedal Mafia and the Everyone Racers podcast (“Mental” Hours #1, 2, & 3, lol)

Christian "Mental" Ward
Mental is a great guy, a great racer and always willing to help in any way

Mental is one of our earliest friends from racing. We originally “met’ him online when we had been on one episode of the Everyone Racers Podcast. We finally met Mental in person at our first race at NJMP in May of 2018. Our race went exceptionally well. However, his was not one of his favorite races as we discussed in this episode.

Mental is a very accomplished and experienced driver who has competed in many types of racing series and disciplines as well as being an instructor. He is very skilled but self deprecating and extremely approachable. If you ever bump into him on the track, please say hello. But only if you have a few minutes to talk, lol.

Alan, Vicki and Bill talked with Mental for over three hours for this episode. Unfortunately, some of Alan’s audio was lost so his “English brother Alan” stepped in for him a few times. But, still we ended up with our longest episode by far at just under 3 hours. So if you want a podcast to listen to on the way to work, we may have covered your whole week’s commute with this one.

We covered a wide variety of topics and many, many stories, some of which even applied to racing. We hope you feel like you know him a little better after this episode and we are very happy to call him a friend.

EP 0020: Christian “Mental” Ward – Special Guest Racing Driver

EP 0019: Annika Carter

Our Special Guest Racing Driver

Annika with her MX-5 Mia
Annika with her Spec Miata MX-5 “Mia”

We first noticed Annika Carter on Instagram where her moniker is Not.My.Boyfriends.Car (The best Instagram name ever!)  We then noticed she was going to be racing with us at Road Atlanta for our last Lemons race of our 2018 calendar season.  She has quickly worked her way up and races as much as she possibly can.  She has already earned her racing license through NASA and we know she can drive as she passed us many, many times during our weekend together.  Alan, Vicki, and Bill discuss how things have been going as well as upcoming plans and goals.  Please welcome Annika to our podcast as this week’s special guest.   

  • We wish we drove half as well
    Annika Drives Hard with 4 or Three Wheels!

We also added in a brief discussion on the upgrades to our Capri/Camaro transplant oil system, going over oil cooling and the differences between a wet and dry sump system. 

Sterling
Annika’s Mustang “Sterling”

Finally, we also discussed whether or not to start a third project race car where we get a low dollar daily driver and convert it into a race car for use on multiple racing series that we are interested in. 

We’d love to hear from you if you would be interested in us starting this project and giving updates and progress summaries along the way on our website and of course the podcast. 

Mid-pack but not for long
Annika Mid-Pack, but not for very long

Thanks again for listening and please leave a rating and review on whatever your podcast application of choice is along with any questions or requests for guests, questions, or topics you may have.  

EP 0019: Annika Carter -Our Special Guest Racing Driver

Episode 0018: The Mom Rocket

The Garden State Goons Racing Team

This week Alan, Vicki and Bill were able to interview the Garden State Goons lemons racing team. We had met them at our race in Thompson Connecticut last August. That was their first race, but definitely not their last. Any team racing a Windstar with “Mom Rocket” proudly written across the side obviously gets it.

As with any rookie team at their first race, there was some growing pains and lessons learned. We covered many of those as well as a host of other topics during our episode.

While they are new to this style of racing, they are young and hungry to learn and we expect them to improve greatly in the coming season. We know they left a lot of room after Thompson, lol.

The weather at the race started off as very hot for Friday practice but made up for it with a ton of rain both Saturday and Sunday.

After fixing the Mom Rocket all weekend, they were able to get out racing on Sunday. We hope they and you enjoy this week’s episode. As always, we met on the track and found some new friends.

Thanks again for coming. 

Podcast Episode 0018:  The Garden State Goons and Their Mom Rocket Racing Minivan

Episode 0017: Jennifer Interview + The Munchkins

  • Not Just For Guys!!!
  • Jennifer Preparing for NHMS

Jennifer is our latest driver to be interviewed on our podcast. She started out at our first race while we learned at our first race, a real trial by fire. She came with no interest except to cheer us on or laugh at us as we learned. However, much to her surprise and ours, she was hooked and wanted to not just help out but to drive at our net race.

Jennifer was a large part of why we ended up racing more than one car at our next two races. The only complicating issue was that she had never learned to drive a manual transmission. Bill came up with a plan that proved to be insufficient, but its what we went with.

Jennifer is one of the few people to have not only watched a lemons race with our team but also driven with us. This perspective is expolored a bit during our show.

We also added a short interview with our youngest team members in training. Jacob is Jennifer’s son and Mia is Vicki and my youngest. It may not have been a great plan being Christmas weekend and a high level of sugar intake, but no one ever said good judgement was part of lemons racing. Besides, it kept us from interrupting Alan and his family’s Christmas break.

Jennifer is a rookie driver, learning quickly. She also helps lead our paddock are with Vicki. And we know that keeping the team’s CFO happy at a race is the number one key ot our teams success. Jennifer is a nurse at a local private school and has three children at home. Her oldest son Jimmy, her youngest son Jacob and hubby Jim.

Thanks again for coming. 

Podcast Episode 0017:  Jennifer on the Hot Seat, plus the team munchkins