On this episode, we were happy to have the lead instructor of the NASA HPDE group. John is the HPDE 1 Lead Instructor for NASA Great Lakes and Bill attended an HPDE 1 event with John a few weeks ago. We tried to cover John’s background, NASA Great Lakes teaching philosophy and approach. We think this is one of our best episodes yet and hope it serves to get at least one of you to go out and try performance driving. We would love to see you at the track. Please make sure to say hello
Details of our progress, mechanically and ability: For our main topics, Alan, Vicki, and Bill go over where we are with the Capri resuscitation progress and Bill’s recent NASA HPDE event at Pitt Race. Additionally, we talk about a how Alan’s Yankee ingenuity has “helped” in mocking up the build, his “free” source of “new to us” metal, wheel spacers.
We also have a detailed explanation in how to alleviate the potential pressure involved with having a racing hobby and any potential friction that may cause with your significant other.
And, yes, we may need an intervention to get the car to Thompson. Anyone free and/or bored want to meet in CT?
We are trying new software so please let us know what you think, etc, especially nice would be to leave a podcast review from wherever you subscribed. Thanks again.
Bill reviews how his first day with NASA Great Lakes went at Pitt Race. It was hot, but the instruction in the car and in the classroom was excellent. Chris was able to be his instructor. The day ended with another few laps on the kart track. An excellent day one for the Pitt Race HPDE. Really looking forward to day 2.
GHIT 0053: The Night Before NASA Pitt Race HPDE
Bill is going solo this weekend but going to cover what he is expecting at the HPDE event with NASA Great Lakes at Pitt Race. Having raced here earlier this year, it may have helped, but we shall see. Hopefully the brakes will not catch on fire this time. Bill is driving a 2017 Toyota 86 TRD this weekend for the third time ever on a track. And hopefully home after Sunday, lol.
The NASA Great Lakes region has some of the best instruction we have been able to find and we love going to their events. While Bill attended this solo for the Garage Heroes In Training team, we did have a bunch of great friends that attended and this event has become the highlight of our season. We cannot wait for next year and we promise to have many more attendees for the next Great Lakes event at Pitt Race. (Now if we could only add a second event here, lol)
Audio issues for first few minutes are eventually fixed
Randy Pobst is a well known professional racing driver for many series, organizations, and manufacturers including the testing driver for Motor Trend on the endlessly entertaining âHead to Head seriesâ for many years. During this interview, we cover a good amount of Randyâs extensive racing history as well as many other topics including our Lucky Dog Honda race car and front wheel drive car setups in general.
Unfortunately, we missed a great discussion on the importance of tires due to a microphone failure. Tires are the first thing Randy recommends toward improving your track performance, followed by brakes, then reliability improvements. We also took this opportunity to discuss with Randy what he would recommend in terms of driver improvement, including key driving skills, weight transfer, and controlling the weight management. He offered many insights during our talk, but one we had not applied yet was to âThink power out of a corner, brake into a corner and then roll onto the power to go fastâ.
We were in the pit area with a lot of background noises, as well as one microphone failure until about 24 minutes in, when we were able to fix one of the microphones so please bear with us, some of this information is incredibly valuable. We apologize for the higher background/hiss than we would have liked. We hope you enjoy the episode. Randy is a great driver, but an even better person. We would love to have him on again at any point.
