Aerodynamics

How to Test Your Race Car

at the Track with Scott Robertson

GHIT 0334: How to Test Your Car at the Track with Scott Robertson

We often hear how important it is to test your car prior to racing. While listening to Scott’s Track Walking podcast (a can’t miss podcast), Scott was discussing how he and Becky were able to conduct a full track test and tune evaluation of their vehicle during a recent HPDE. Since Scott is a respected coach and offers a service to help a driver to dial in their car at the track, we thought he would be a perfect guest to discuss how to best conduct a test and tune day most effectively and efficiently. We start the discussion with what a test day means and work our way up from there. This was recorded several weeks ago prior to the 2022 One Lap of America where Scott and Becky entered the OLoA in their Mazda 2 Sundae Cup car lovingly called Mooncake. If we could go back in time, we would have asked how that car was able to come in second overall on the skid pad event versus some very capable and sometimes expensively prep’ed vehicles.

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, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that we would appreciate that very much. Even better would be a podcast review. This helps us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would appreciate it.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS If you are looking to stream or save your integrated telemetry/racing data with you video, Candelaria Racing Products Sentinel System may be the perfect solution for you. We are amid installing the system in two of our cars. If this sounds like something that may help you and your team, please use our discount code “GHIT” for a 10% discount during the checkout process at https://candelaria-racing.com/

PS2 Please do not forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, do not forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount, a savings of $40. Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order from https://apextrackcoach.com/

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, 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) We start off with pre-event processes such as planning what you will test. This includes aspects of what tools you have, what you are capable/willing to change at the track.

2) Some examples of the testing order and priority. Things to do and things not to do.

3) One of the key aspects is to determine what you are trying to get from the process, i.e., driver experience/education or car optimization etc.

4) We also cover some of the key changes that you would like to change, as well as what tools you need to have for some of the key areas you will likely test. Hint: you will need a good tire pressure gauge and ideally a tire thermocouple or equivalent.

5) The best aspects of seeking an outside perspective or even better an experiences coach or F1 engineer, or even somewhere in between.

6) Ideas of things that you would like to test, including front sway bar (full hard to disconnected), rear sway bar (same), shock sweeps (full hard to full soft), rake adjustment, alignment, aero, tire pressure, etc.

7) Tips on how the impact of driver adaptation can affect the tests.

8) The importance of testing documentation and how it can help you going forward. A partial list of the items to summarize include the weather, track conditions, alignment, tires and condition, driver etc. This will eventually lead towards secondary goal of building you set up database for the car and the tracks

9) We go into last year’s One Lap of America and the (at that time) upcoming 2022 which since been completed.

10) Scott and Becky finished first in class and 54th out of 84 entries for the entire event and stunned the world on the skid pad with a 2nd place overall.

To follow Scott, you can go to:

@TrackWalkingPodcast on Facebook or Instagram

@RobertsonRacing on Instagram

@RobertsonRacingMiata on Facebook

Or you can email Scott about coaching etc. at: [email protected]

GHIT 0334: How to Test Your Car at the Track with Scott Robertson

James Candelaria

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

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.

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!

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

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

Aerodynamics

at the Track with Scott Robertson

GHIT 0334: How to Test Your Car at the Track with Scott Robertson

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

Highlights for this episode include:

To follow Scott, you can go to:

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

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

Highlights for this episode include:

To follow James further:

GHIT 0252: Tom Suddard from Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

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

To find even more from Tom, please go to:

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

PS

Highlights from this episode include: