Dialing In

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!

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 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.

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 werenât simply because we didnât know or hadnât 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 donât 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 teamâs 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, âThankYouNessâ, well you know what we mean.

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

3) Then we go into a âWeekend At Bernieâsâ worthy moment. For those under 40, itâs a movie.

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

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

6) A discussion of their teamâs 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 teamâs 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. Donât 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 Deanâs.

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) Billâs 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 carâs performance and âdialing it inâ.

9) A great summary of what the 24 Hours of Lemans â 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 tireâs 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 carâs 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

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