Dialing In

GHIT 0101: Rob Krider from the 4X National Champion Double Nickel Nine racing team

Rob Krider - Hands On Racing Driver — **Rob Krider from the Double Nickel Nine Racing Team**

Rob Krider who is a driver and managing partner of the Double Nickel Nine Motorsports racing team joins us on this episode. Rob has a problem in that he and his team won’t let anyone else win, lol. His team is the reigning 4-time national champion in NASA’s Honda Challenge series, while also having both team cars on the podium each year. Our discussion covers not only their team history but what they have learned since starting in the 24 Hours of LeMons series and progressing through other racing series and classes. Within this episode, there is useful information that can be applied to any racing series and any racing team can improve your results with little, if any, expense. To see a lot of Rob’s team in action folks can watch the documentary film “Double Down” about racing in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill where his team took an ex-24 Hours of LeMons car and beat the factory Mazda racing team. Link to the video at www.team559.com.

**Double Down – A Great Documentary on Endurance Racing**

In addition, Rob was kind enough to guide us through the latest in our series covering the Usual Suspects of racing car platforms and went into a deep dive about racing Hondas and Acuras, especially in endurance racing.

Finally, Ben covers both Understeer and Oversteer in the latest Dominating with Dawson series. We just couldn’t cover them separately, so we went for a double shot.

We hope you enjoy this episode. It will make you faster!

PS If you are interested in watching or reading more of Rob and his teams exploits, please go to:

KriderRacing on Instagram
www.RobKrider.com
www.Team559.com
www.DoubleNickelNineMotorsports.com

And don’t forget to get a copy of Rob’s book “Cadet Blues”, a humorous look at one of his most fun driving training events at www.cadetblues.com

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, Jennifer, and Alan
Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast
and team members in the GHiT
Immature Endurance Racing Team

Highlights from the episode include:

1) Some of his team’s best learnings since starting in LeMons several years ago
2) Rob and Bill commiserate about putting together team communication emails and texts that are summarily ignored
3) How Double Nickel Nine Racing team has “added” to the various series rule books through creative race car engineering
4) Jennifer asks the dirtiest of the dirty question that you can ask a race car driver
5) The value of a spare/donor parts car and Vicki tells Bill to go buy another car. He left the podcast to search CraigsList
6) Team structure and organization techniques to maximize performance across all levels of racing, even a two-car team of 60 people for the NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill
7) Their scouting trip preparation for national races
8) What is the Double Nickel Nine garage involved in
9) A comparison of large LeMons fields to some smaller or shorter or higher performance fields
10) How they communicate within their team, especially on track with their spotters
11) Storytime of Alan’s stint at Thompson last year where he would not come in for a driver change. Rob fully approves.
12) Rob gives the advantages “keys to success” in Honda and Acura racing
13) Diapers win races, well they used to anyway
14) Rob shared some endurance racing wisdom, like pit stops practice and it’s not about top lap times but it is about endurance
15) What is a Honda Taco and how it is to drive one
16) We finally find a way to compare ourselves to Roger Penske
17) We go over several tips and tricks from several of Rob’s helpful articles, many are linked below
18) Be a Racing team or Beer racing team? Correct answer is: Yes
19) You can hear an alert for every time Bill’s computer went blue screen of death if you listen closely. It happened often
20) Bleed brakes after every endurance session
21) Rob and Alan bond over tire balancing. In the end, it comes down to the preparation done before coming to the track
22) Get things done as soon as possible. Don’t start when you have just enough time left to get it done.
23) Internal competition for fastest lap is detrimental to team performance and overall team success.
24) Rob’s team has learned that for endurance races, lap timers are not allowed within the car.
25) EJ2 Track Rat has a fashion suggestion for next year’s nationals
26) How to choose an engine machine shop to work with
27) Rob’s documentary film about endurance racing, titled “Double Down” is available free on YouTube, 1 hour 15 minute run time on the Krider Racing YouTube channel.
28) Tactical Ops Brewing’s Double Nickel Nine IPA named after the race team with an image of their Honda Challenge car on the bottle. This stuff is high test at 10.9% ABV!

And here are some of our favorite articles that we discussed on this episode:

GHIT 0101: Rob Krider from the 4X National Champion Double Nickel Nine racing team

GHIT 0098: Ben Liaw from Rogue Engineering on racing BMW’s

Ben Liaw from Rogue Engineering was kind enough to come on this week’s podcast. Ben races and also supports his racing clients at Rogue Engineering in Upper Saddle River, NJ, where they not only assist with race car prep and on track support but design and manufacture many parts improvements for many BMW models.

Also, on this week’s Dominating with Dawson, we went over driving a new to you race car and what you should do prior to driving and how best to acclimate to the new vehicle.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

1) Stories of how his business grew from designing and manufacturing to mechanical and racing assistance
2) Some thoughts on car prep for racing
3) A great discussion of various BMW models that are used in racing, including strengths and areas where you may want to augment the stock parts and systems. Most 3 series models were discussed including the E30, E36, E46, E92 as well as the more modern F series models, as well as a few 1 and 2 series models and Mini’s, including relative strengths and weaknesses between them.
4) Our first real discussion about the AER endurance racing series
5) Potential upgrades for racing our M240i
6) Spec E46 race cars and priority the addition of upgrades, including the subframe issue
7) Bill gets into a discussion while Vicki has computer issues
8) Alan picks Ben’s brain throughout while he also goes shopping while we are recording “for Vicki” lol
9) Bill put Ben in an unfair spot to compare BMW’s to other typical cars, like Boxsters/Caymans and Miata/MX-5’s etc. Ben, you have our apologies.
10) Vicki wanted to appeal to Ben for any assistance with her latest E36 rear wheel hub and bearing replacement project/debacle. Ben offered his typical preventive maintenance program for hubs and bearings for his AER endurance racing.
11) We even go into critical spares and critical spare philosophy and the potential tradeoff vs pre-race prep
12) Several Dante references and a new level called “Wheel Bearing Hell”. Vicki views this as the hidden 8th level.
13) Rogue Engineering’s incredibly smart wheel studs with a hex end on both ends in case of a sheared stud
14) Bill finds a brand of power tools where he is fully qualified, and even Alan agrees

To contact Ben and his team or follow along with their various exploits, you can go to their website at https://www.rogueengineering.com/ or follow them on Instagram at Rogue Engineering.

Thank you for listening to our podcast. Please subscribe to our podcast your favorite podcast source. If you have any questions or topics you would like for us to cover, please feel free to let us know at:

www.GarageHeroesInTraining.com
or via email at: [email protected]

and you can follow us on Instagram at Garage Heroes In Training
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We hope to see you out there racing with us.

Bill, Vicki, Jennifer, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast and team members in the GHiT Immature Endurance Racing Team

GHIT 0098: Ben Liaw from Rogue Engineering on racing BMW’s

GHIT 0092: Dion von Moltke from Racers360 and Professional Racing Driver is our Special Guest

Winner of the Rolex at Daytona 24 and multiple Sebring 12 Hours

Dion von Moltke is our special guest for this week’s podcast. He is a professional racing driver who has won several major races including the Rolex at Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hour among many others. Dion is currently focused on an excellent online coaching website with several other professional drivers/coaches at Racers360. Racers360 provides many types of coaching to improve any level driver including track guides, technique improvement, webinars, as well as personalized driving reviews of your individual video or data. The costs are very reasonable at $100 per year for a Drivers Lounge membership that has access to all the universal videos and webinars and the individual data and video reviews are $99 per lap. If our results are typical, the improvements can be quite substantial and the value cannot be beaten.

For this episode, we cover a variety of topics including:
1) Dion’s racing history
2) An overview of Racers360 and its various offerings
3) Coaching is available in many areas of racing including wheel to wheel, autocross, karting, and motorcycle racing
4) How the coaches are curated and how they tailor their coaching to each individual driver
5) The tiers of the Racers360 personalized coaching: One Lap analysis for an +/- 15 minute review of your lap for $99 thru the full race analysis to review your skills and race craft
6) Many, many race craft tips and techniques to improve your driving and several common areas where you can improve
7) Comparison of professional vs amateur racing strategy and techniques
8) The best modifications to improve your lap times: HINT IT IS NOT ON YOUR CAR
9) What is BOP
10) When is the best time to start looking for assistance from the Racers360 coaches
11) Potential car set up opportunities available at Racers360
12) Dion recommends we get more cars. Bill agrees very quickly.
13) What lap video should you submit
14) The importance of hitting the apex, as well as car angle at the apex
15) We bond over our shared GTI history
16) What is his favorite shape steering wheel
17) Alan refers to El Jeffe as a trophy truck

Winning — **You too may eventually be able to waste good champagne!!!**

In addition, we begin our weekly series with Ben Dawson where we go into various topics related to racing and help you to understand and improve your driving skill and knowledge. This week’s topic is “Smooth is Fast” Part 1. If you have any questions or topics for us to discuss, please let us know at [email protected].

You can find Dion and his team at: www.racers360.com or using his email at [email protected] or [email protected]. We really love the team and the help that they have offered.

Best regards,
Bill, Vicki, and Alan
Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast
and team members in the GHiT
Immature Endurance Racing Team

GHIT 0092: Dion von Moltke from Racers360 and Professional Racing Driver is our Special Guest

GHIT 0087: SilverSleeves Racing Team Driver Greg Birch

On this episode, we had Greg Birch on from the SilverSleeves racing team from the west coast. We first met the team at Laguna Seca earlier this month but both of us had less than ideal racing weekends. It was great to catch up with Greg and we look forward to racing with them again.

Barbie Corvette and Team SilverSleeves — SilverSleeves Racing Team

Barbie Corvette — SilverSleeves Racing Team

Highlights for this episode include:

1) What is a Wolseley Hornet, its history, and how to get one onto the track, as well as future plans
2) Greg’s Mini fascination and history with both classic Mini’s and modern Mini’s
3) Canada is a great place to get low cost cars for racing due to insurance rules and where Bill and Alan are going soon, very soon
4) Where the Magic Bus nickname came from and its full history
5) Some of the driving rules for their team and perhaps how they should be our teams
6) a reasonable place to get driver training in the pacific northwest
7) The SilverSleeves car assortment, like the Austin 1800, and MG 1100 and the Barbie Corvette
8) Getting to hear the words competitive and Ford Probe engine in a sentence
9) What is a Hydrolastic Suspension and its “advantages” in racing
10) Racing in Lucky Dog and the 24 Hours of Lemons series
11) We come up with a way to expand upon their primarily British car themes
12) Bill’s idea to limit speed creep win low cost endurance racing and fortifying Class C cars
13) Discuss the mini as the predecessor to all transverse front wheel drive cars that are so prevalent today and its racing heritage
14) Team fastest lap punishment ideas and a discussion on speed creep in low budget endurance racing
15) Tire wear versus tire growth, lol
16) Waterford Hills Race track
17) Dialing in our new JCW Mini Cooper with as much cater as we can get
18) Too many cars and a way to possibly limit the issue with your significant other
19) One of the best team mantas we have heard
20) A very helpful the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
21) The inherent greatness of in race racing with a friend on the track, like when Greg raced with Todd of Everyday Driver that may be in their upcoming tv episode on Motor Trend
22) Best west coast tracks to add to our list

We had no luck getting any info on the new theming ideas that SilverSleeves is working on but look forward to the big reveal.

Hydrolastic suspensions for everyone!!

Here are a few videos where the SilverSleeves team and cars are featured.

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, and Alan
Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast
and team members in the GHiT
Immature Endurance Racing Team

GHIT 0087: SilverSleeves Racing Team Driver Greg Birch

GHIT 0083: Our 2019 Review and 2020 Goals Episode

On this episode, Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, Kate and Bill went over our 2019 season and our 2020 goals. Are we on the same page? Do we even belong in the same book? Listen in and find out. Some of it was news to us, lol.

Areas covered included:

2019 Review:

1) How did our Team’s 2019 go in your opinion, Highlight and Low-light
2) How did your personal season go? Highlight and Low-light
3) Things you want to keep the same/similar and Things we need to change or improve
4) Biggest team weakness or missing need
5) Best Race or HPDE and Worst Race or HPDE
6) Our traditional Good, Bad, and the Ugly

2020 Goals:

1) What race goals do you have For you, For the team, For cars
2) Personal, Non-driving/racing goals
3) What driving/HPDE goals do you have, Any tracks or races interested in for 2020
4) Any additions to our team in terms of People, Tools, Training, Paddock, Cars,
5) Roles/Responsibilities, and Team talents missing/needed
6) What would define a successful year? For you and for our team
7) What would you say to the other members of our team

We try to do this every year and would recommend it to you and your team.

Bill’s inner planner sometimes takes over.

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, Jen, Kate, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast
and team members in the GHiT
Immature Endurance Racing Team

GHIT 0083: Our 2019 Review and 2020 Goals Episode