Garage Heroes (In Training)

Learning as we go. Come along with us and Enjoy the Ride!

Driver Education

GHIT 0072: Race Bar Invasion – Part Deux

Race Bar Car-Toon

This week’s guests are once again from Race Bar, repeat offender, James Webb/The Jandy Man is now joined by Patrick McHugh/Richard Freelane, and Ben Dawson/Awesome Dawson, formerly of Winsome Racing and Race Bar pseudonym apparently still under construction, lol.  You can blame us for trying to wrangle another episode from the Race Bar team.  Instead of a visual guide of VIR, today we get a tour of a boat and the harbor by Richard Freelane. 

We did manage to get a bit more of their team history and race car history and a few hints of things to come.  If you have or know of any crab related lemons vehicles interested in helping this crazy team, they are looking for you.  The stories varied in area, as we have come to expect from Race Bar, but they are always entertaining.

We even managed to have some actual race related information that could allow you to improve.  We knew it was in there, we just had to keep digging to find it.  Lol. 

Highlights Include:

 1)  We talk through an introduction to Race Capture and a bit about Mega Squirt, what it is useful for and how to use it, especially important when you have a racing team with varied skill and experience levels.  We also look at the importance of lap times with respect to endurance racing and endurance racing teams.

2)  Special contacts to look for at VIR and Road Atlanta when your car needs a little extra TLC or repair, especially if you are looking for BMW or Miata parts.

3)  HPDE and how to get better at racing, both faster and more consistent.

4)  Somehow we had a quick review of both teams’ cars and their history. 

5)  Brief tire and brake pad selection discussions for endurance racing.

6)  A comparison of the progress that can be made at HPDE’s and iRacing. 

and finally, Bill picks Ben’s brain a bit about becoming a driving instructor in the future.

GHIT 0072: Race Bar Invasion – Part Deux

GHIT 0067: Watkins Glen HPDE Review

Watkins Glen International
Watkins Glen International

Welcome to our latest podcast episode where we review our Watkins Glen HPDE with NASA North East at the world famous racetrack.  We had a great weekend with 5 of our team showing up and two other friends from the Everyone Racers Podcast and The Three Pedal Mafia racing team, Chris and Chrissy.

Just some of the cars in attendance

We summarize the prepping of the many cars we brought and the debacle it became for almost every car we brought.

Cars we prepped for the Watkins Glen HPDE included:

  1. BMW E36 1998 race car
    1. Roll bar prep and Passenger racing seat installation
    2. Issue:  Will not start as we were prepping to leave.  Issue still TBD
    1. Roll bar padding and switch to racing seats and racing harness from OEM
    2. Issue:  4-point belts are not acceptable so hot swap at Watkins Glen to install two new 6-point harness sets
  2. 1999 Mazda MX-5 Turbo Miata with Flyin Miata Turbo
    1. Installed new roll bar
    2. Issue:  did not finish roll bar installation and did not remember to reconnect the battery before giving it to Jennifer
  3. 2019 Mazda MX-5
    1. Mostly no issue, except cleaning
  4. 2017 Toyota GT TRD
    1. Bad Lug bolts and Missing Lug bolts
    2. Waited until day before to get parts, ended up with bad hub threads and missing bolts, and doesn’t know how to click the pay button after registering for the HPDE
    3. Cue the sad trombone please
  5. 2013 Dodge Dart
    1. Did not have time to change to race seats, nor brake pads and fluid, nor tires from standard OEM
  6. 2017 BMW M240i
    1. No issues since Chris and Chrissy are always prepared, unlike us.
  7. Race Prepped Honda Civic

Brad was an excellent test passenger for three different cars on the track.  He reviews his first ever race laps in the Turbo NB MX-5 versus the race prepped Honda Civic vs a new Acura NSX. 

Team photo WGI 2019
Our team for the weekend

Vicki, Jennifer, and Bill covered our in car instructors and areas we worked on and improved over the weekend. 

These areas included:

  1. Track vision
  2. Racing lines in general
  3. Braking points and braking pressure and the proper application and removal of the braking pressure
  4. Turn in Points
  5. Input sequencing
  6. Several drills, including vision and non-shifting the entire lap or session
  7. Car control
  8. Learning and feeling what is correct and what isn’t with immediate feedback
  9. Late apexing vs early apexing and turn in
  10. Prep is key to racing

In addition, we also reviewed our thoughts of the track and the NASA North East HPDE event in general. 

We also reviewed the relative performance of the Turbo 1999 NB MX-5 to the newly updated 2019 MX-5 ND.

GHIT 0067: Watkins Glen HPDE Review

GHIT: Physical Fitness for Faster and Safer Racing

Trey Shannon

Special Guest Trey Shannon of Podium Performance Fitness

Racing is both physically and mentally challenging, even at the beginner and intermediate levels.  For this week’s episode, we were very proud to have Trey Shannon of Podium Performance Fitness as a guest.  Trey is located near Charlotte NC and is helping many high level drivers and teams with their off track preparation both physically and mentally.  The discussion will go over many areas that you can focus on and improve not only your best lap time, but also improve your consistency over many laps.  The degradation due to fatigue can lead to not only slower laps, but also the demands can lead to loss of focus and increase the likelihood of driver errors and potential damage to the car and driver(s).  

During this episode we discuss:

  1. Physical preparation
    1. Anaerobic and Aerobics
  2. Mental Preparation and acuity
  3. Cardiovascular fitness
    1. Diaphragm vs chest/shoulder breathing
  4. Breathing exercises and breathe control
  5. On track relaxation strategies and techniques
  6. Neck, Shoulders, Hands and Core Stability
  7. Eye exercises and hand eye coordination
  8. Sleep
  9. Diet and Nutrition, especially on race day and race weekend
  10. Hydration
  11. Off season preparation, Pre-race, at the race, during the race, and post-race options
  12. Training periodization and improving well rounded fitness for all aspects of life
  13. Cramping and cramp prevention
  14. Heat and Cold management strategies
  15. Outdoor training ideas and options
  16. Improving proprioception and other driver feel capabilities during the race
  17. Pre-race warmup techniques to get you in the zone in the first few seconds behind the wheel
  18. Cognitive ability degradation with fatigue is easily quantifiable and very significant

This is critical when you are looking to compete in an endurance type of racing where the ability to be at or near your fastest consistently could dramatically improve your overall performance by many TEN’s (10’s) of seconds, not just the usual TENTHs (0.1’s) everyone pursues.  It not only affects your overall speed, but the quality of the decisions and skills on the track, especially over time. 

If you are interested in improving in this area of your driving, please feel free to contact Trey at: 

Podium Performance Fitness

Podium Performance Fitness in Cornelius North Carolina (near Charlotte) or on the website at PodiumPerformanceFitness.com and follow them on Instagram and Twitter.

GHIT: Physical Fitness for Faster and Safer Racing

Chris Egan from Futility Motorsport

Chris Egan
It’s always the minor things! Chris is less impressed.

GHIT 0061: Chris Egan Special Guest Driver from Futility Motorsport

Chris Egan is our special guest driver from the Futility Motorsports endurance racing team.  We last saw Chris at the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Thompson.  We review his lemons racing history as well as the team’s recent over-temp issues at their last race.  Chris started racing with a Shelby Daytona and somehow he is still going (with the Futility Motorsport Saab).  He has also raced in several HPDEs and tried his hand at autocross.  Chris races with his family (father, brother, and sister) and is shooting for a top 20 overall.  He also covers why the Daytona is no longer the team vehicle and how the 250k mile Saab came to be a race car.

We also talk about the pressures and responsibilities of being a square on the E1R bingo card and the history of the Young Chris Egan moniker. 

Chris is a mechanical engineer who has a penchant for following in the steps of Rube Goldberg, so he fits right into the lemons paddock.  A natural born tinkerer in all areas, we also go over the recent intercom system that Chris has been working on and developing.  As expected, Bill had no shame and requested a test model for our upcoming HPDE at Watkins Glenn. 

Futility Motorsports
Its a sleeper

The conversation led to many different areas of discussion, including: 

HPDE vs racing vs autocross comparisons in learning and experience on track driving and improving your ability to read and predict other drivers, both on and off the track. 

Chris recalls several of the wild and crazy things he has seen both on and off the track at a lemons race, including a burning man themed paddock

Vicki and Chris talk about making their own tracks at NHMS by not going up the hill.  Chris seems to have worse luck at NHMS than we do.

Lots of trial by fire and learning what “to do” and what “not to do”. 

Building an old Toronado in Jahn Pagels shop with Spank the night before the Sonoma race. 

We make a challenge for a twin-engine car driven by two stick shifts.  (one single clutch would be acceptable)

We also go through a quick math problem with Alan over the plusses (time) and minuses (laps) of his recent red mist collection of black flags. 

We also go round and round on what we are doing with the El Jeffe race truck brake heating issues and the Capri engine/transmission swap with input from Chris

Chris get subjected to a Good, Bad, and the Ugly review of his racing career/history.

We make a bet between Chris and Alan on who finishes their project car first (getting the engine to fire).  Who do you think will win?  Chris and his E36 or Alan with the 3.8 liter Capri swap. 

Biggest takeaway:  Finish the work on the car as soon as possible, not just in time for the race. 

How many other racing podcasts would also have a Wacky Racers reference in the flow of the conversation?

GHIT 0061 Chris Egan Special Guest Driver from Futility Motorsport

GHIT 0057 Peter Krause on Using Data to Improve Your Driving

Peter Krause
Peter Krause at the track, his happy place

How to improve your driving without increasing the risk

We were honored to have internationally renowned racing coach Peter Krause join us for an introductory discussion of data collection and analysis to improve your track driving while minimizing the addition of risk.  The conversation was exceptional and covered a wide range of areas and topics. 

Some of the highlight areas we covered include:

  • Data collection systems, options, and comparison
  • What to use, how to use, and several options for how to analyze the data
  • His virtual track walks with Ross Bentley, especially the Road Atlanta Vicki, Alan, and Bill studied prior to our race at Road Atlanta last December
  • We also discussed the use of Video to compliment the data and several ways to get to intelligent video which includes the track video with several displays of the data
  • Several stages of progression in data collection and analysis
  • Predictive lap times and the use and implications in car
  • Keys to breaking through stagnation and plateaus in driving
  • A simple and clear delineation between good and great drivers
  • Several different ways of presenting the data including tabular formats, strip charts, and colored maps which can aide in the use and interpretation of the data collected.
  • Supporting his driver
  • Coaching in action
Coaching his drivers

We also cover several of the more popular commercial systems including:

  • Race Monitor app
  • Harry’s Lap Timer
  • Aim’s Solo, Solo 2, Solo 2 DL, MXM, and MXL
  • GoPro Hero 7
  • VBox Sport
  • Race Render
  • Use of OBD blue tooth dongles
  • Race Chrono
  • Porsche Precision Track App
  • BMW M App

Peter also recommended two books that he finds useful in introducing more detail into the use and the analysis of the data.  We have already ordered our copies.

  1. Making Sense of Squiggly Lines by Chris Brown
  2. Practical Race Car Data Acquisition by Bob Knox

If you ever wondered what the top three key data collection parameters are, Peter shared his views as a driver coach who hopes everyone can use these three metrics to help with their self-learning. 

  1. Engine speed/rpm
  2. Throttle position
  3. Brake Pressure

If you have any more questions or wish to talk with Peter in more depth, he is easily contacted through his website at www.PeterKrause.net  and please pay special attention to his websites area on Track Wisdom.

Krause & Associates
One of the world’s best coaching resources

Other references we also recommend include:

  • AIM sports YouTube channel
  • Race studio Analysis

And of course, the Virtual track walks Peter made with Ross Bentley that are available on the speed secrets website. 

We can’t wait until we can go into a bit more depth with Peter after we utilize his wisdom in our coming races and HPDE’s.

GHIT 0057 Peter Krause on Using Data to Improve Your Driving