Dialing In

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!

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

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

A Garage Weekend with Alex Levinson

GHIT 0241: Our Garage Weekend with Alex Levinson

Alex Levinson has a ton or racing and wrenching experience, especially with Miatas of all vintages. So when he “volunteered” to come over for a work weekend, we quickly lined up everything we could think of to finish up several projects on each of the team’s 3 Miatas. However, our best laid plans did not come together as we had hoped. New car lift? Worked great and a game changer! Bribe/food prep was as always on point. Listen and learn about what can happen on a work weekend, especially early on in your wrenching career.

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/GaragingWithAlex

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

GHIT 0241: Our Garage Weekend with Alex Levinson

Jaime Garcia from the Race FF Pod

GHIT 0239: Jaime Garcia from the Race FF Pod

Jaime Garcia started the Race FF Podcast to share with everyone his racing and building progress and to help everyone get started in racing by showing them that it can be done. Since we have essentially the same goals, it was natural to have him on the podcast. As his podcast title indicates, Jaime races a Front engine Front wheel drive in both HPDE, time trials, and wheel to wheel. His current target is competing in Honda Challenge in southern California. Further parallels between the podcasts is that his fiancé has recently begun sharing the car and working towards her racing goals. This episode was recorded live from the road on his recent trip back from having his car caged in Washington.

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!

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 confirm that both podcasts will be racing very similar 1993 Honda Civic’s next year but Bill doesn’t know as much as he should about ours. Glad Jaime was here to help us know our own car, lol.

2) A surprise guest bird flew into his window during the episode, actually our second guest bird. It must be something to do with Honda Challenge racing that we aren’t familiar with. We will need to talk to podcast guest and friend EJ2 Track Rat or more details.

3) Jaime discusses one of the often overlooked benefits of instructing drivers in that it helps the instructor as a driver as well, often in very different ways than when they are driving.

4) Jaime also discusses his transition from HPDE student, to time trial racer and instructor, to wheel to wheel racer into his upcoming Honda Challenge debut.

5) We also discuss several ways to minimize the expenses related in getting started, even if you have no car and almost zero money.

6) Jaime helps Jennifer with potential options for her HPDE and learning to wrench and daily driver car hunting. Any guesses? Who knows, maybe Jennifer will actually listen to this episode. Lol.

GHIT 0239: Jaime Garcia from the Race FF Pod

A Man's gotta eat — **Please feel free to eat up this episode**

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,

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!

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