Dialing In

Adapting to a Car

or Adapting the Car to the Driver

DwD 0226: Adapting a Car to the Driver or the Driver to the Car

On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we discuss the mutual ideas of adapting a car to a driver and adapting your driving to the car. Both of these are keys to improving your performance at and especially during a race. We even have a great time with Vicki and Ben bulldozing each other several times in a row. Lol. We lost the last few seconds so this one ends a bit more abruptly than we had hoped.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

If you would like to help the 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. 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. There 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

DwD 0226: Adapting a Car to the Driver or the Driver to the Car

Samir Abid from Your Data Driven

GHIT 0225: Samir Abid from Your Data Driven

Samir Abid has been a vehicle dynamics engineer for road and racing car suspensions for over ten years. He then created a sports engineering business to help pro and Olympic teams and athletes to optimize their performance. In addition, Samir is also competing himself in club level racing. So he understands the needs and dynamics of racing at all levels.

In an effort to help fellow amateur drivers, Samir created his podcast “Your Data Driven” and website. Both are aimed at sharing what he has learned on the top levels of sports. His focus is on improving your race car setup, collection, interpretation, and use of data, and your driving skills and approach. There is a ton of great information on each episode of the podcast. In addition, Samir also shares away a ton of useful tools on the Your Data Driven website, many for free. Some of our favorites are the “Complete Beginners Guide to Motorsports Data Analysis and his Ultimate Tire Guide. Samir is constantly generating new content and you can keep up with his work on his free weekly(ish) newsletter.

If you would like to help the podcast,

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

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/ThompsonPart1

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 with Samir Abid include:

1) We cover a bit of his work on the team trying to break the 2 hour barrier in the marathon and how the treadmill can be used to eject most runners when set to this pace. A great video (with over 17 million views) on trying to keep the record marathon pace is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRYtn0j5ccAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRYtn0j5ccA

2) Samir’s experiences when first going to race on track. As always his “natural driving ability” was in for a shock once he competed with other racing drivers.

3) What information is fundamental to having good quality information including video and what data to review at the track between sessions when time is usually limited.

4) Setting goals vs analyzing results in racing and defining what a win is for each event you enter.

5) We go into the differences between our local (US) resources to learn at an HPDE vs the race training resources more common in the UK.

6) Samir is surprised at the concentration of cars that can be involved with budget endurance racing in many of the series in the US. Who knows, once the pandemic is behind us, Samir may be racing with us at an event. We hope.

7) Bill has a great question about racing car setup priorities but fails to actually ask it in a way that any human would understand. (Although Samir does provide an excellent answer to a horribly worded question) We will try again when we have Samir back on. lol.

8) The complexities involved with sharing a single car in our endurance racing series.

9) Several of the highlights and great information that Samir has had within his podcast to this point and several of the other resources he has available on his website.

Handy Links:

https://www.yourdatadriven.com – For the newsletter

https://www.yourdatadriven.com/the-complete-beginners-guide-to-motorsports-data-analysis/ – For the course

https://www.yourdatadriven.com/the-motorsports-playbook/ – For the book

https://www.yourdatadriven.com/your-data-driven-podcast/ – For the podcast

GHIT 0225: Samir Abid from Your Data Driven

Bedding Brakes

DwD 0217: Bedding Brakes

In this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we go into what is meant by “bedding of brakes” and several ways that it can be done. Thank you to our listener A. Powers for writing in with this question.

For even more details related to Brake Pads and many other braking components, please go to our episode with Wendy from Porterfields back on episode 59. Quick link to the episode:

Wendy From Porterfields

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. 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/DwDBrakeBedding

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

DwD 0217: Bedding Brakes

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

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.Â 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.Â 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.Â Â

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)Â 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 wouldnât be a podcast without our doing a Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, so we did.

5)Â 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.

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