Dialing In

2021 Goals and Our 2020 Goal Review

As the year wraps up, we review how our 2020 racing season went and what goals we would like to do and accomplish in 2021. Obviously, the year did not go as we had hoped or planned with the COVID pandemic impacting normal life routine. But we did make some significant growth and made the best out of a horrible situation. Goal making is one thing that is very easy to do, but also very easy to skip. However, we have found it to be very beneficial to our growth as racers as well as is our personal and professional lives.

On our Dominating with Dawson segment, we go over what it means to be driving at the limit, what is the limit, and how to get closer and closer to the limit safely and effectively.

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 of looking at what our goals were for 2020 and how we did

2) The next segment covers what we want to accomplish going into 2021. (including items that we would like to improve about our driving and our team.)

3) We then begin to look at things that went well this year and things we could have done better.

4) It probably wouldn’t be a podcast without our doing a Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, so we did.

5) The final step was we tried to grade our year and then determine a few things that would define a successful year for ourselves and the team.

6) We did forget to go into The Mirror that we added to aid us in getting in better shape for racing, so we added it as a bonus section after the credits.

GHIT 0158: Our 2020 Year in Review and Our 2021 Goals

Out 2020 Goals episode can be found here.

GHIT 0157: John and Dean from Safety Third Motorsports Discuss Race Car Preparation

John Lavin and Dean Hesser join us to discuss improvements to our car preparation processes. This includes before leaving for the racetrack, as well as at the racetrack and after the race. We learned a ton of things that we should have been doing but weren’t simply because we didn’t know or hadn’t thought of it yet. We hope that this episode will save you at least one headache at the track or eliminate one breakdown or even better prevent an issue on track that causes damage to you or your car. We don’t have a lot of can’t miss episodes, but this is one of them for sure.

In addition, Dominating with Dawson we discuss some of the goal options for endurance racing. It is not simply a situation where you are either first or last, but really it is a race where you and your team are trying to work together and perform at the highest level internally and the final position is a relative measure of the team’s performance versus the current bar that weekend. While winning overall, or even your class, is a great accomplishment, it is not the only measurement available each weekend, especially early in your racing career.

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) Bill makes up a new word, “ThankYouNess”, well you know what we mean.

2) How Dean has “capitalized” on being target fixated during a race. Your results may vary.

3) Then we go into a “Weekend At Bernie’s” worthy moment. For those under 40, it’s a movie.

4) A brief summary of why many of the Safety Third Motorsports team members have ended up using BMW’s as their weapon of choice on track.

5) Bill cannot help but to make fun of the test drive at John’s shop where the GHIT M3 HPDE hit a deer. Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.

6) A discussion of their team’s racing plans for 2021 and how both teams generally decide where to race.

7) How their team has progressed and grown over the years. It appears that our team is actually following their progression, both in how our team is organized and how our drivers are individually progressing. Perhaps there is hope for us. Who knew? Lol.

8) How Dean and Jen both ended up learning and growing as racing drivers as a result of their track incidents.

9) What is prepping a car? What is involved? What do you do before the race, during/at the race, and after the race to prepare and preserve your car and make sure that it has a higher likelihood of performing well.

10) Basic assumption: Assume everything is broken after a race and then verify before you take it to your next event.

11) Develop a wear rate of consumables and moving parts and then develop a preventative maintenance plan to replace before they fail at the track.

12) Overview: Repair things as they break or replace them ahead of time at a certain interval. Determine your team’s philosophy and plan appropriately.

13) A standard rule of thumb is to use a margin for wear, it can range from 75% to 80% to 90% of the experienced failure rate before replacing a still good part. This does not address issues due to abuse or an accident etc. As an example, if your front wheel bearing fails after 100 hours or racing, you may want to replace them all before they break at 75 or 80 or 90 hours. The balance of costs and/or effort vs your acceptable safety/failure factor is a personal/team decision.

14) Several available options range from paint marking nuts and bolts to adding safety wires.

15) What should you do when at the track and prepping for the race in the morning.

16) What to do the night after are race while racing the next day.

17) What to do post-race weekend while packing up to leave the track.

18) Why checklists are so very important and how your team will need to develop it from your own experiences and particular car.

19) It was good to hear that we aren’t the only team to have had radio communication issues at the track. They have come to the same solution as we have. Painfully.

20) The key is really to minimize the number and potential for errors.

21) We finish up this segment with the post-race recovery process for your race car. Don’t just put it away to wait for the next track event.

22) We wrap up with a post episode discussion of the skid pad and the value that it has had to our driving, as well as Dean’s.

GHIT 0157: John and Dean from Safety Third Motorsports Discuss Race Car Preparation

GHIT 0152: Craig Watkins Joins us for Car Setup 101 Focusing on the Tires

Craig Watkins Car Engineer for Flying Lizards Motorsports

Carig Watkins with Flying Lizard Motorsports

Craig Watkins joins us for this episode to discuss his driving history, as well as his time spent as an engineer for Flying Lizard Motorsports, among others. Craig concentrates now being an amateur racing driver and fells the pain of being a single person team. We also go into his business that started as a tool he needed to help him as a race car engineer and grew into what we know as Smart Racing Products that offers several solutions that are easy to use to set your car alignment up, even if your car is a truck or a bus. We hope to have Craig on again to go into the area more deeply in the future. We had recording issues so the episode is a mix of two parts, and you may be able to tell a difference in recording almost halfway through. We cannot express how happy we were when Craig said he would come on again to cover the first section that we could not edit well enough to use.

Craig Watkins at the Baja 500 and on Pismo Beach

Craig Watkins on Pismo Beach — Craig Watkins at the Baja 500 and on Pismo Beach

Our Dominating with Dawson segment goes over how to get more out of an HPDE event or a track day by setting goals. It has helped our team to maximize the benefit of each event and get the most bang for the buck/minute of track time. This process will help you to improve as well.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

You can get your Smart Strings, Smart Camber etc. from Smart Racing products at: https://www.smartracingproducts.com/

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) Bill’s longest intro to date. Vicki had very little patience for it.

2) Craig covers most of his racing history, off road and on track driving, to becoming a race car engineer, to how he arrived at the present day as an amateur racing driver.

3) How professional racing is different but fundamentally the same as amateur racing.

4) What are some of the functions of a chief race car engineer and how he used several key pieces of data and the driver feedback to get the car as fast as possible.

5) Bad physics/chemistry flashbacks abound. Ideal gas law is fundamentally a relationship that says the Pressure X Volume is proportional to the Temperature. PV = nRT for those playing at home.

6) How the tires are really the critical control point to focus on to get your car to be fast and drive most easily.

7) What is the #1 most critical measurement tool to have in your racing tool belt, how to use it, and how to make sure you minimize variability by using a one individual gauge for all your measurements.

8) And then we also look to what the next few items and measurements are to further refine and improve your car’s performance and “dialing it in”.

9) A great summary of what the 24 Hours of Lemans – Lemans Classic event is and why you may want to add it as a bucket list item for you and your team.

10) Tire pressure at target. Then tire temperature uniformity across the tire surface and across the four tires +/- 30 degrees F or C?. If you aren’t sure of your exact tire temperature range, around 150 degrees is a good first level estimate to where you enter your tire’s performance window.

11) What are the three primary aspects of your tire alignment, Camber, Caster, and Toe, what they represent, what order to adjust them in, which ones are more critical to performance, and rough starting points for you to begin to optimize from further. As expected, we also get into some of the ways to set up the car to measure and adjust these parameters. We also discuss the other terms that are sometimes referred to including thrust angle.

12) The two ways that tire grip is generated. And there really are only two.

13) While each of the settings are car dependent, we attempt to give some broad based approximate starting ranges that will aid you in establishing a baseline point to begin from to set up your race car. We also try to explain how each parameter, and direction of change, affects the car’s performance.

14) As with several of our prior episodes, Craig explains how the best teams are better by simply being better at the several fundamental aspects of car prep and team operation during a race. And if you sprinkle in a bit of luck, they will compete well and have a better than average chance to win.

15) Craig teases us with his excel list of adjustments and effects that came from his experience as a race engineer. Next time we see him, we are going to get a copy. We have a chance at getting at least the format of the list, without the exact content. tbd.

16) Craig also brings up the very valuable point to remember that you are the one to define how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go and that should be the primary determinant in how deeply you get into the car and its set up.

17) Bill finally gets to make a String Theory joke, but it wasn’t very funny. Situation normal. But it was way better than his tuna joke.

18) We also go into the way to use Smart Strings and Smart Camber to measure and adjust your cars alignment before and even at the racetrack.\

PS Did anyone catch the semi-subtle Three Pedal Mafia reference in this episode? GHiT decals can be sent out to you if you let us know.

GHIT 0152: Craig Watkins Joins us for Car Setup 101 – Focusing on the Tires

Craig's Flyin Lizard Motorsports Porsche

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 can’t 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 Bill’s new HPDE car on track for the first time. If at first you don’t 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) Vicki’s 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 0131: All about tires with Danny van Dongen of Hankook Motorsports

Danny van Dongen is an accomplished racing driver and has started several businesses in Europe and the US, including a racing school, a racing series, as well as successfully starting up Hankook Motorsports that offers tires for racing in the US to nearly all forms of both amateur and professional racing series. We would like to thank Danny and the team for their RS4’s our tire of choice for endurance racing and the official tire of both Lucky Dog and WRL endurance racing series. We try to summarize some of Danny’s racing career initially and then we move into the area of tires, their construction, and their proper use in racing. This is hoped to be a good introduction to tire technology, hopefully we can have Danny back for a 201 level discussion.

On this Dominating with Dawson episode, we talk about the monster under the bed that many do not acknowledge, fear as a factor in going fast and going faster. Fear is literally a totally natural thing and affects everyone at some point. We talk about it, where it may arise, and several ways of dealing with it. This may be a first of several parts in this area.

You can follow Danny on Instagram at @DannyvanDongen

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) How his racing experience has helped with both car testing and development as well as tire testing, also complimenting his business development in both areas.

2) How his race at the 25 Hours at Thunderhill went last year and the pleasure of a mostly night race on a very muddy track. His skid school training was really pushed to the limit.

3) How the different Hankook Motorsports tires are designed and manufactured to be longer lasting and more stable, perfect for endurance racing.

4) A discussion of the benefits and challenges in designing a tire, both slicks/racing tires as well as the 180 tread wear tires we race.

5) The basics of tire designations and understanding the letters and numbers typically on a tire such as 245/40 ZR17 vs 225/50 VR16 etc.

6) Tips on tire and rim selection and the importance of the interaction of the rim width and the tire tread width.

7) Important considerations like rim width to tire width, tire profile, tire loading, tire circumference interaction with the car gearing, etc.

8) How the mass of a tire affects the heating up of the tire and affects the endurance/stability of the tires.

9) Whether you need to break in a tire, how to break it in, and why the cars are always swerving back and forth at the beginning of a race.

10) How best to pre-heat your tires on pace laps. Also, please avoid the marbles, nothing good can come from them.

11) Heat cycling, proper tire break in, and storage of tires for racing slicks and possibly RS4’s. Sunlight is not your tire’s friend.

12) Optimum tire temperatures and hot tire pressures for the RS4’s and similar tires.

13) Whether heat cycles are an issue on RS4’s, as well as racing tires and slicks.

14) Bill reminisces about his bad Armor All experience when he was much younger.

15) The importance of tire temperature and pressure and general windows for the Hankook tires. Including how to measure and interpret the tire temperatures when testing at the track, as well as suggested car or tire changes to respond to tire temperature variation across a tire or from side to side and/or front to back.

16) Temperature ranges and pressure ranges for slicks and R comps tires and how it varies by the compound you select.

17) Autocross users may need to look at using tire warmers to alleviate the problem of thermal transients and never reaching a true steady state temperature or pressure.

18) Jason from Lucky Dog has been keeping a secret from us related to using RS4’s in the rain on a track. We will have to talk with him at Charlotte, lol.

19) A good discussion of filling the tires with air vs nitrogen vs carbon dioxide. The key is keeping the water out so that it wont boil in the tire affecting the stability of the air pressure during a race.

20) What is involved in keeping tire records and how to actually use the information. Sounds like Bill will be making another excel spreadsheet immediately.

21) We tried to get some breaking news on the new RS5’s but we did find two new size additions that are coming soon. All NDA’s stayed intact during the episode.

22) Vicki brings up the time when Bill lost a tire, again. She just can’t help it whenever an opportunity arises.

23) Vicki is jealous of the Lucky Dog RS4 tires having a Lucky Dog sticker and is trying to figure out how to do it with our logo. Still tbd but she is all over it.

GHIT 0131: All about tires with Danny van Dongen of Hankook Motorsports