Garage Heroes (In Training)

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

Aerodynamics

James Candelaria

James Candeleria
James and Corvette
Winning racer
WRL Nola 2022

GHiT 0299: James Candelaria from Candelaria Racing Products (makers of the Sentinel System) and Hagerty’s The Drive Within with Round 3 Racing

We continue our introduction to Round 3 Racing (R3R) and Hagerty’s  “The Drive Within” with another team member James Candelaria.  James races with the R3R team in the WRL endurance racing series.  Last season James was racing in the #601 Porsche Boxster and this season he will be in their new #609 M4 GT4 BMW.  If you watch the series, James was present but his on screen role was slightly diminished a bit as a result of a racing incident which we also discuss during this episode.   

In addition, James races in a variety of cars and series, and in his “spare” time he started up Candelaria Racing Products.  The lead offering is the Sentinel Streaming System that solves one of our teams issues and allows us to combine the race car data with our in car video and race standings in one simple package.  In addition, all of this information is available live through streaming.  We are in the midst of installing the system in two of our cars and will cover the installation and use of the Sentinel system in future episodes.  If this sounds like something that may help you and your team, James was kind enough to offer a 10% discount code to all of our listeners.  Please enter “GHIT” during the checkout process.

If you would like to help grow our sport and this podcast:

You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, and YouTube etc. Also, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that would be greatly appreciated.  Even better, a podcast review, would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would greatly appreciate it.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, look under shows.  Then click on this podcast.  Here you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system greatly.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights for this episode include:

1)  What do you do when you find our you are about to have your first child?  Well, James goes out and buys a Corvette.  We knew we would get along immediately.

2)  The story that illustrates what to do on track with a bad “feeling” brake pedal. And also the importance of pre-planning your reactions as a driver ahead of time for as many potential situations as possible.

3)  If you want to hear the sound of Vicki’s brain bending, Its here. When James goes into a description of driving a car with aero.  

4)  A bit more behind the scenes stories of R3R and the Drive Within show.

5)  We go into some depth on the Sentinel System. The Sentinel integrates your car’s telemetry data with the current racing results. It also combines this with any in car video and can be streamed live and recorded.  

6)   Bill and James bond over being robots.  And it dawns on Vicki that the data and video she wants may not be exactly what she wants, lol.

7)  James has been into Vette’s for a long time, even the super rare 1983 model he had at a young age.

To follow James further: 

Candelaria Racing:  https://candelaria-racing.com/ 

Instagram: @CandelariaRacingProducts

The Drive Within:  https://www.hagerty.com/media/series/drive-within/ 

Round Three Racing:  https://www.round3racing.com/ 

GHiT 0299: James Candelaria from Candelaria Racing Products (makers of the Sentinel System) and Hagerty’s The Drive Within with Round 3 Racing

Tom Suddard from GRM

Tom at home
GRM endurance Racing Team

GHIT 0252:  Tom Suddard from Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

Tom Suddard is the Director of Marketing and Digital Assets at GRM.  Tom’s first visit to our podcast was with zero notice and was at the invitation of Nine Live Racing’s Johnny C on episode #209 when we had our first episode on Aero. 

In spite of this, Tom decided to put up with us again in what we hope will be a long list of bad decisions in the future.  What do you ask of a prolific supplier of articles and videos aimed at helping grass roots racers and drivers improve?  Well, we choose to go into a great article that Tom wrote about “10 Ways to Keep Your Racing Effort Disciplined” which is a great article and will help almost everyone to improve a bit easier and more cheaply.  We also covered a few other areas and will provide a bunch of links at the end of these notes for even more information.  We have a ton more questions for Tom and hope to have him on again, as many times as he will tolerate us.  Tom gave so many great tips during this episode, Bill is still taking notes.

Please subscribe to GRM to learn a ton and support the grassroots racing community.  It is the best money we have spent in racing.

GRM

If you would like to help grow our sport and this podcast:

You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice. This includes the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, and YouTube etc. Also, could you give our podcast a (5-star?) rating or even better, a podcast review. we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/TomSuddard 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system greatly.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

To find even more from Tom, please go to:

1)  Grassroots Motorsports:  https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/ 

2) GRM Youtube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/Grassrootsmotorsports 

Articles we referred to for this episode:

1)  10 Ways to Keep Your Racing Effort Disciplined:  

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/10-lessons-to-keep-your-race-e/162737/page1/

2) How to Wrap Your Race Car:  

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/project-cars/LS-Swapped-2003-Nissan-350z/how-wrap-your-race-car-home-project-350z/

3)  Trimming down Your Racing Car’s Harness:  

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/project-cars/LS-Swapped-2003-Nissan-350z/getting-ready-trim-down-wiring-harness-project-ls-/

GHIT 0252:  Tom Suddard from Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

An Introduction to Aero Johnny Cichowski

  • Nine Lives Racing Test Mule
  • Miata with Nine Lives Racing Wing
  • Johnny can weld
  • Nine Lives Racing
  • Nine Lives Racing wing on a P car

GHIT 0209 Introduction to Aero with Nine Lives Racing’s Johnny Cichowski Part 1 of hopefully many

Will aerodynamics help your racing car?  We begin to explore the field of aerodynamics with Johnny Cichowski from Nine Lives Racing on this episode.  As an introductory episode, we start with the fundamentals and work our way towards laying out a plan for adding aero to a race car that will result in actually having a faster race car.  We started with the very basics of defining most of the basic individual components and then looked at the factors that affect the performance of the car and then moved on to covering the best approach to adding aero to your car and the best ways to test and dial in the performance and balance of the car.  We also thought it would be great to add Tom Suddard from Grass Roots Motorsports onto the episode with zero notice.  You have our apologies Tom.

In this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we start with our best intro lead in ever, but then we eventually get into our topic of ways to avoid coasting or lifting while on track.  Ben addresses not only the issue, but what leads to it starting and ways to break the habit.  Cold turkey.  Yes please, with a bit of tomato on sour bread please.

You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, and YouTube etc. 

Also, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating or even better, a podcast review, we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/NineLivesRacing1

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS 

Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system greatly.

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)  One of the things we like about Nine Lives Racing is their obsession with testing to optimize the design and make sure they design is optimized and effective.

2)  Wings, wings vs spoilers, wing mounting structures, end plates, air dams, splitters, canards/dive planes etc.  We cover what they are and what they do to make sure we are all on the same page to start before we get into the relative effectiveness and the various interactions between each.

3)  Did you ever wonder where to start adding aero to your car?  Or how to test to see if it helped?  We present several options that can be done before or at the track.  Rain may be your friend.

4)  If you don’t think aero can help, it has helped several cars with very low horsepower several seconds per lap, including some low power Miatas and one notable GRM VW Fox.  (not a typo for a Fox body Mustang)

5)  How does effective aero change the way a car behaves, wear on your tires, suspension/drive height, and how it feels to the driver.

6)  We also had a great discussion of the proper sequence to add aero to the car and how to decide what is needed and when. 

7)  Wing position vs wing mounting position vs wing mounting method and the relative effect of each.  Some things just don’t matter.

8)  Wings for a front wheel drive, up front, out back, both?

9)  Common issues, mistakes, and misconceptions related to aero additions.

10)  Pilot tubes?  Pitot tubes?  lol.

You can envy Johnny’s welds and wings on Instagram at:  @ninelivesjohnny or @ninelivesracing 

Nine Lives Racing:  https://9livesracing.com

Grassroots Motorsports:  https://grassrootsmotorsports.com

GRM’s Instagram:  https://instagram.com/grassroots_motorsports 

GHIT 0209 Introduction to Aero with Nine Lives Racing’s Johnny Cichowski Part 1 of hopefully many