Garage Heroes (In Training)

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

Autocross

Heyward Wagner from the SCCA

heyward wagner on tv

GHiT 0466:  Heyward Wagner from the SCCA

We are joined on this episode by Heyward Wagner from the SCCA to talk (almost) all things SCCA in what we hope to be a first of many episodes.  Heyward is a life long SCCA member, race driver, and now leads a variety of the aspects of the SCCA related to Rally Solo, and Experiential Programs associated with the having Fun With Cars, including autocross, rally, rallycross, Track Night In America. 

Fun With Cars as a mission.  We couldn’t agree more.

big wheeling it

If you would like to help grow our podcast and high-performance driving and racing:

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

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

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Are you looking to stream or integrate your telemetry/racing data with video?  Candelaria Racing Products Sentinel System may be the perfect solution for you.  We are 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“. This gives you a 10% discount code to all our listeners 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 for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order from https://apextrackcoach.com/

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, Alan, Jeremy, and Bill

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

For More Info:  www.scca.com/fun may be the link to a new life

Audra Tella on Autocross and a Pre-Intervention

– on Autocross and a Pre-Intervention

Audra in a Classic Mini
Autocross ready
Shifting points podcast
all girls

GHIT 0314:  Audra Tella on Autocross and a Pre-Intervention

It was almost spring, and we were thinking about ways to get out and start having fun with our cars again.  We thought it may be great to go autocross’ing, especially to start the season.  Since we were thinking autocross, we thought we’d invite Audra back to the podcast to talk all things autocross.  Audra Tella is one of the hosts of the Shifting Points podcast and is also one of the leads for the local BMW autocross group near Boston.  We talk about what to expect at your first event and what to do and more importantly what not to do to go to your first autocross event.  Then we launch our intervention plan.  This is part one of the plan.  Part two will be revealed in the next episode of the Shifting Points podcast coming out this Wednesday.  We started the podcast to get people started having fun with their cars.  Audra and her fellow podcast host are already enjoying their cars but, especially after seeing Audra last year at our Thompson race, we hoped we could offer to help them start driving or maybe even tracing on track. 

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 we would appreciate that very much.  Even better, a podcast review, would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would appreciate it.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is amazingly 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  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 in the midst of 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 code to all of our listeners during the checkout process.

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 for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and invaluable to safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross, etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system.

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 is autocross?  What you need to do to prep for the event and what you should NOT do to prep for the event or prevent you from going.  Bill goes full facetious for at least 15 minutes.

2)  Why are the cones there, what do they do and why does everyone seem to be angry with them.

3)  We break down the lingo a bit and show that your first event will be easy to start and learn.  Autocross drivers are very welcoming to everyone and would love to share their sport and all the fun.

4)  Audra introduces up to the internet.  It is a wonderful way to find an event close to you.

5)  How autocross is structured to even out the competition or break it down into groups of evenly matched cars.  Some even have special classes for novices.

6)  We also find out what vent is Audra Tella’s favorite event of the season.  We may have to attend.  Time to check the season schedule.

7)  What is Audra’s schedule for the season?  Can we add to the festivities?  Or are we just bad influences?  Still TBD on that one.

8)  Why we all started podcasts?

9)  The devious plan is devised and launched?  Our planning for the Mini Intervention.

10)  Audra makes a prediction of the potential livery theme.  Is she correct?  Tune into the second part of this episode on Audra’s Shifting Point podcast, coming soon, hopefully this Wednesday if life doesn’t get in the way of editing.

To hear how part two goes, subscribe to the Shifting Points podcast and the episode will be coming shortly.

GHIT 0314:  Audra Tella on Autocross and a Pre-Intervention

Part 2 over on the Shifting points podcast is HERE

Elizabeth Jolly – Racing Driver

  • Elizabeth Jolly Race Control
  • Elizabeth Jolly
  • Elizabeth Jolly Mechanic

GHIT Podcast Episode #195 with our guest  Elizabeth Jolly

We initially met Elizabeth Jolly at our second ever race at the 2018 24 Hours of Lemons race in Thompson CT.  We then listened to her on the first few Shifting Points podcast.  Then we met her at our recent skid pad and autocross event at Lime Rock Park with the SCDA group.  It was at this point, we realized that these three ladies were all the same person.  We could say we were overwhelmed at our second race; we could also say that we didn’t recognize her since she was in her “Flo” costume, but it was great to meet her in person for the second time.  On this episode, we catch up with Elizabeth on her thoughts about the SCDA event, her new E30 race car and then we talk through how to learn to work on a car from a starting point of near zero skills, experience, and tools.  Both Elizabeth and Vicki have both progressed far in the past few years and maybe someday Bill will as well.  Lol.   

On this episode’s Dominating with Dawson, we

go into Ben’s extensive karting experience and discuss the various types of karts and kart racing available.  Karting can definitely help your driving and racing, most things translate, and it is a great way to practice for relatively low cost.  We do try to go into the parts of karting that translate and what doesn’t translate directly due to the difference in car geometry and suspension.  While Ben is pulled away for his daddy duties, we take a slight detour into cake baking and decorating from our resident cake decorating expert, Miss Jen.  Our first ever partial WOOT DwD episode.  Even Ben came to the table with a Coca Cola cake, recipe tbd, lol.

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/ElizabethJolly

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.  We have two systems for our team and Bill is looking to add a third for this season, pending CFO approval from Vicki.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

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

  • Elizabeth Jolly Racer
  • Elizabeth Jolly Ready

Highlights from this episode include:

1)  Bill herds/hosts this episode.  Vicki and Jen, as always, are so excited to have a fellow lady racing driver.  

2)  Elizabeth Jolly races autocross and endurance racing and almost all other forms of driving she can try.  She started with a quick purchase of a 944 that then several other soon to be race cars.  Her latest purchase is her new BMW E30 prepped race car.  It even has a bit of history and we are sure Elizabeth will add to it as well.

3)  Elizabeth and Jen commiserate about the wonderful weather at their first Lemons event.  It was a downpour and the humidity hit a point where nearly all glass surfaces fogged making visibility even worse.  We then go into the importance of seating position and the effect it can have on the driver’s ability to see as well.

4)  Bill starts a plan.  Nothing good can come of this.  It’s looking like a girls race weekend is upcoming.  Bill is bringing palm fronds and a butler outfit for the ladies.

5)  The discussion on beginning to learn about working on cars from scratch begins around 28:30 or so.  Some great information that should help others go from garage zero to Garage Hero.  See what we did there, lol.  It was too easy to resist.

6)  To the surprise of no one, Vicki relates the car to her past arts and crafts projects.  The analogy does hold some merit from a material perspective.  Elizabeth has even gone into the area of the electrical system and wiring of her 944’s.

7)  The ladies provide a ton of tips and tricks that they have learned along the way.  Some are very basic, but each one has been found to help us out.

8)  Two words:  parts car.  (Does this mean Bill can buy another car?  Sounds like it to him.)

9)  Jen and Bill are next in line on learning to work on the race cars.  

10)  Vicki almost blows the super secret theme that we were working on and debuted at the Lemons race last weekend at PittRace.  Photos

11)  We then go into the favorite tools and tool highlights that Elizabeth and Vicki have at this point.

GHIT 0195:  Elizabeth Jolly

GHIT 0192: Our Recent Autocross and Skid Pad Event at Lime Rock Park with the SCDA

Lime Rock Park
Lime Rock Park

GHIT 0192: Our Recent Autocross and Skid Pad Event at Lime Rock Park with the SCDA

Our 2021 season started off with another skid pad and autocross event at Lime Rock Park.  This time the event was held by the SCDA.  We go into our goals for the event, how we did, and hopefully a long list of what we learned.  The weather was great and more than we could have asked for this early in the season.  In addition to a great event with tons of track time, we also met Elizabeth Jolly and her new to her E30 BMW 3 series race car.  Actually, it was for the second time, as we had met at our teams second ever race in 2018 at the 24 Hours of Lemons race in Thompson Connecticut.  Both Vicki and Jennifer were finally able to feel the pause in the CPR “Correct, Pause, and Recover” process of catching a car. 

Vicki in her turbo NB Miata

On this episode’s Dominating with Dawson, we

go into the speed at which you will use your hands.  Typically, karters and autocross drivers are trained to move their hands much more quickly than a track driver, but there are times where fast hands are preferred.  There is a good discussion of the times where you need to move your hands more quickly and times when a more slow and predictable hand movement is optimal.  We also digress into a gumball machine discussion for a bit.  It was a late night of recording, lol.

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/SCDASkidPad

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Elizabeth in her new E30 race car

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.  We have two systems for our team and Bill is looking to add a third for this season, pending CFO approval from Vicki.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Jennifer is her ND Miata

Highlights from this episode include:

1)  We start with a summary of the team’s goals going into the event and a summary of what the event would entail.

2)  The cars that we brought with us were a 1999 NB Miata with a Flyin’ Miata turbo for Vicki.  Jennifer was driving in a stock 2019 ND Miata with DOT 4 brake fluid, but otherwise stock.  Bill drove a similarly prepped 2017 Toyota 86.  Both Vicki and Bill were on our endurance racing tires of choice the Hankook RS4’s.

3)  It was too early in the season for Lime Rock to open the sprinkler system for the skid pad so most of the day we drove on a dry skid pad.  Jennifer and Vicki were able to get a few sessions on the skid pad with it wet.

4)  We go into how we met Elizabeth and then proceeded to switch her into our race group and spent most of the day talking and driving with her.  Her new to her E30 race car was awesome and she loved it from her first time behind the wheel on the skid pad, as everyone could tell on our Instagram interview with her, lol.

5)  Jennifer’s stomach has an issue with the LRP autocross course, but it was obvious she had improved from our last visit in October.

6)  We discuss our first time driving on a dry skid pad and how it went with a partially wet/partially dry surface.

7)  How we did versus our goals and what we learned.  We could tell you here, but what fun would that be.

8)  Vicki wins this weekend’s GHiT award for being the most consistent on the autocross course as her best times differed by only 0.01 seconds.

9)  To quote Vicki “I didn’t give two squats about the line”.  Bill’s response “I could tell”, lol.

10)  Bill was actually faster in the ND Miata that he was in the Toyota 86 while on the stock OEM continental tires.  Bill also set his personal best ever Apex Score for several of the laps.

11)  We ended our visit with a drive by stop at Don Pepe’s pizza.  Its “on the way” home and a great stop if you are in the area.

End of the HPDE
The end of another great HPDE track day

GHIT 0192: Our Recent Autocross and Skid Pad Event at Lime Rock Park with the SCDA

GHIT 0172: The Shifting Points Podcast Hosts

  • Shifting Points Podcast Hosts
  • Shifting Points Podcast

All About the Shifting Points Podcast and Hosts

We are enthusiastic podcast listeners and found a podcast hosted by our guests called Shifting Points.  Their podcast is also aimed at helping people get started in our sport.  Luckily, they approach it from the perspective of autocross, so we haven’t lost our entire audience to them, yet.  Since we all share the same passion, we had to invite them onto our podcast and talk all things cars and driving.  They are a great group of ladies and we will be going up to an autocross event with them this season and plan on doing our best to get them into endurance racing.  Why should it be an « or » when it can be an « and ».  “And” is so much more fun.  Please welcome Kathy, Jess, and Audra to the 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 us a 5-star rating or 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. 

On this episode’s Dominating with Dawson

We go into two types of drivers that we see, those that tend towards overdriving their car and those that tend to underdrive their car.  If you are learning or instructing a driver, it is useful to see how to best approach driving improvement by understanding the differences between these two personality approaches to high performance driving.  It is also useful to see how the other half lives and learns.  Neither is right or wrong and both approaches can learn to be really fast.  The only difference is in the path that they tend to follow and the way they increase their speed.

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.  We have two systems for our team and Bill is looking to add a third for this season, pending CFO approval from Vicki.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.

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)  It seems our two podcasts have almost the exact same taste in cars.  Seems like a future autocross battle in the making.  Hopefully, this summer.  Probably wise to place your bets on the Shifting Points podcast team for a clean sweep victory.
  • 2)  We go through the history of how our ladies started autocross driving, met each other and how this eventually ended up with them starting a podcast together.
  • 3)  Both podcasts started out knowing little about fixing and working on a car and have progressed rapidly with help from car friends and YouTube.
  • 4)  We review how to enter an autocross local to you, where to find them, and what is involved.  The barrier to entry is as close to zero as any type of driving event. Autocross is a great way to get a taste for high performance driving with almost any car and very little risk, cost, and prep required.
  • 5)  Tons of Mini stories.  Apparently, Mini’s have feelings.  Lol. 
  • 6)  Both groups go into why we started podcasting and some of the benefits and growing pains involved.
  • 7)  It took a bit of time, but we eventually did make our move to convince them to try endurance racing.  Vicki was less than subtle, but did you really expect anything else from us by now?  It may end up with an all-female driver GHiT team this year.  Bill will have to be relegated to sous chef for the weekend and let the talented drivers show their stuff.
  • 8)  We mined for a few tips and tricks from the Shifting Points podcast team to starting up and entering your first autocross event.  Autocross is truly accessible to everyone interested in having fun in a car.  Most of the prep is for the driver’s comfort with the weather and food.  Your car is probably already good to go as it is, but getting it checked over may be a good idea.  Well, you will likely have to clean out your car, but that is usually a good thing, especially for our cars.  Lol.
  • 9)  Kathy and Bill share a certain talent related to torquing lug nuts.  Stories were shared.  Hopefully, they will both grow out of it soon.  Lol.
  • 10)  Tips on how to find any autocross events within the area you live or may be visiting.  Also, if concerned, the autocross events are classed by car and many times there are classes for first time/new drivers.
  • 11)  Audra’s tap root car story broke Kathy
  • 12)  Jess just released an album with her band.  It would be great to hit the top hundred list with the latest release from The Strattones!  It might even pay for her next autocross event.
  • 13)  Jen asks her next question while on mute.  Eventually she figured it out, lol. 
  • 14)  Kathy may have discovered a way to get red wine out of cloth seats with a combination of red wine and Diet Coke.  Try at your own discretion.

GHIT 0172: The Shifting Points Podcast Hosts