Guests & Interviews

Paul Gerrard

GHIT 0259: Paul Gerrard – Author of Optimum Drive, Professional Racing Driver and Coach, and Top Gear USA’s “The Stig”

Do you REALLY want to be a great driver? If so, this is the episode for you.

Paul Gerrard is the author of “Optimum Drive – The Roadmap to Driving Greatness” and he knows what driving greatness entails as he has competed at many of the highest levels in motorsports and coaches many drivers pursuing their dreams. In addition, he was the Stig for Top Gear USA. Resume aside, he has a way of breaking down the pursuit of greatness that applies to virtually all areas of our lives, including racing. When he agreed to come on the podcast it was not an issue of what we should ask him, it was what we needed to leave out. Hopefully this is the first of many episodes with Paul.

And we learn the exciting news of Paul’s next book that he is working on to help

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, 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.

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) We discuss the natural skill vs learned debate about high performance driving and racing. This is great news for most of us.

2) A story about a bad tractor tire idea leads to a great Ayrton Senna story and then to a Jean-Claude Killy story.

3) How to develop a feel for what is fast and probably more importantly, how to improve your feel.

4) What is the key to becoming a great driver. It is a simple answer and the same answer for most aspects of your life.

5) Comparison on learning to be a racing driver at a racing school and a HPDE ladder system for a goal of professional racing

6) How vision skill issues can almost always be traced back to a lack of car control skills.

7) The importance of spending time on a skid pad as well as what to do when on the skid pad

8) Bill has read Paul’s book 6 times but still gets things absolutely backwards. Time for a seventh lap.

9) We digress into couples therapy for a few minutes, lol.

10) How the key to improving your driving is the fundamentals.

11) We also go into why a car that is understeering is so difficult to work with and why a car that is below the limit does not help you as much to improve your driving as you would expect.

12) The best brake initiation practice and how it differs from street driving.

13) Potential fallacies of the smooth is fast mantra. As always, Jackie Stewart is an example of the exception.

14) We also go into all of the listener submitted questions from our Instagram and Facebook.

To find even more from Paul, please go to:

https://www.theoptimumdrive.com/

Instagram at: @theoptimumdrive

Facebook at: The Optimum Drive

Paul’s blog articles can be found at:

https://www.theoptimumdrive.com/f1-blog-entries

Paul contributes to The Fast Lane Car YouTube channel at:

https://www.youtube.com/c/TFLcar

Or email Paul at [email protected]

GHIT 0259: Paul Gerrard – Author of Optimum Drive, Professional Racing Driver and Coach, and Top Gear USA’s “The Stig”

Joe Adams from Blackstone Laboratories

GHIT 0257: Joe Adams from Blackstone Laboratories and Host of the Slick Talk Podcast

Joe Adams joins us for an in depth discussion of all the introductory questions that we had related to oil. And what their analysis can reveal within your car’s engine. We start with what the oil is actually doing within your engine. Next we go into how indications either the oil degrading or the degradation of individual engine components. We also try to cover the individual components used within the oil formulations and what their function is. After this episode, we know that we learned a few things about oil. Also, how to save some money (for more track time). Testing can also reveal some potential issues in your car before they become very expensive or perhaps even catastrophic.

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, 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. Then 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) What does the terminology mean and what you need to make sure that your oil is going to work properly for your application.

2) How to determine when you need to change your oil due to the individual engine and your use of the vehicle. The testing can often result in cost savings by optimizing your oil change interval to your usage.

3) What other fluids besides engine oil that can be tested by Blackstone, as well as how to take the sample and send it in for testing.

4) We cover what the Blackstone Laboratories tests are and how their test team’s test report will help you to interpret the information easily and quickly.

5) How best to take the sample and what liquids Blackstone Laboratories is capable of testing.

6) What to look for in your fluids and how to best make emergency substitutions or substitutions for racing applications.

7) Synthetic vs conventional oils. Is the (former) dinosaur better or worse.

Sorry Bill sounds like he is talking into a paper towel roll for most of the episode. He borrowed it from Mental (or the microphone disconnected during the recording)

GHIT 0257: Joe Adams from Blackstone Laboratories and Host of the Slick Talk Podcast

NJMP Lightning HPDE – Nov. 2021

GHIT 0256: Our NJMP Lightning HPDE – November 2021

Part 1 of 2, maybe more, lol

On this episode, we cover our latest HPDE event at the NJMP Lightning track with NASA Northeast. The track and the weather was a bit cold but we had a great time and a large groups of drivers and cars. We even had all 4 levels of the HPDE groups covered with at least one driver in each. To make things even better, Jen and Vicki’s sister Debbie was driving in her first event and first time ever on track.

A quick rundown of who and in what is:

HPDE 1 Drivers:

Debbie in our 2019 ND Miata

Audra in her 2017 M2 BMW

Adam in our 2004 M3 BMW (E46 for you cool kids)

HPDE 2 Drivers:

Elizabeth in her new to her Spec E30 for the first time on track

Jennifer in our 2019 ND Miata

Vicki in her freshly street tuned 1999 turbo NB Miata

HPDE 4 and Instructing:

Bill shared the 2004 M3 with Adam

Hyperdrive:

Lisa went out in Audra’s M2

The event was fantastic and everyone improved greatly after the two days. Notably, we had several drivers advance in the NASA HPDE ladder:

Adam was advanced into HPDE 2 after the first session

Audra advanced into HPDE 2

and Vicki advanced into HPDE 3 for the first time.

For all the details, and the Good, Bad, and the Ugly, why not listen?

If you would like to help grow our sport and this 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 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 Include:

1) Both Lisa and Debbie were first time track drivers this weekend and it can be eye opening to remind everyone of what it was like the first time on track.

2) We cover our personal goals for every driver going into the event and we see how everyone did after both days. (short summary is awesome)

3) Car prep stories were relatively mild this time until they weren’t on our first stint Saturday morning.

4) What it was like for Debbie at her first track event and first time ever at a track.

Paul to the rescue — Paul (and Jim) to the Rescue

Tire Pressure Low — Paul (and Jim) to the Rescue

5) Did we hook any new drivers? Well we did start planning a trip in July to another HPDE event, lol.

6) Lisa was able to review what the Hyperdrive event is for everyone and how it went for her on Sunday. She also compared driving on a track to her autocross event experience.

7) Did Jennifer (and Vicki) conquer their habit of lifting off the throttle midway on the long straights?

8) How did the drills Ross Bentley presented to them help?

9) We find a new issue for Vicki to work on in coming events and it may apply to your driving as well.

10) Our traditional Good, Bad, and the Ugly.

11) We may have found a solution to passengers who get motion sickness. It worked once so far. More testing to follow. Vicki really needs to conquer this if her long term goal is to be an instructor.

12) What happened that led to Bill going off track in turn 5 in the M3. Luckily we were able to fix the tire issue and get the car back on the NJMP Lightning track.

13) We end with a review of our winter challenge with 4 other racing podcast hosts and several listeners. We are looking to drop at least 25 pounds and also grow as drivers through reading at least one book per month and also practicing our driving by karting or iRacing. Open to everyone so come on in and if you complete the challenge, you will be eligible for bunch of swag from the 5 podcasts.

The scorecard is located at https://garageheroesintraining.com/survive-the-25/ and you can keep track of our progress, once we have some.

It’s all in here.

And more.

GHIT 0256: Our NJMP Lightning HPDE – November 2021

GHIT 0254: New High Performance Driver Kim Coffey

GHIT 0254: New High Performance Driver Kim Coffey

A Command Performance for the Everyone Racers Podcast

Kim Coffey has been a car girl from a very young age and has recently discovered her passion for driving her car at the limit. It all started with a Supra Sunday with NASA and once the hook was set, she was off. She loves and drives her 2020 Toyota Supra for HPDE events, autocrosses and has even started Sim racing. If that wasn’t enough, she often takes her lunch at a local go kart track. We thought we would go over where she is this early in her driving journey and we are looking forward to seeing where she goes and what she decides to pursue in her high performance driving future.

There were some storm induced connection issues during the middle few minutes but most were easily editable and it resolved pretty quickly.

If you would like to help grow our sport and 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 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 wanted to make sure to satisfy our listener requests, so just for Jeff, Chris, Chrissy, and Mental from the Everyone Racers podcast we introduce Kim Coffey to the high performance driving community.

2) How did she approach entering the new to her sport and how things have progressed to this point.

3) Kim eventually found our recent guest Dave Peters’ HPDE Junkie website to locate her future track days.

4) A lot of people question the use of a classroom for HPDE. Kim provides some insightful comment on what she was able to learn from the classroom downloads at ACC.

5) Kim gives some great tips for someone going to their first HPDE to maximize their learning and improving their driving as quickly as possible.

GHIT 0254: New High Performance Driver Kim Coffey

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!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers