Guests & Interviews

GHIT 0149: Joe Marko from HMS Motorsport Discusses Safety Equipment, including Seats and Racing Harnesses

Joe Marko was our guest from HMS Motorsport joins us to discuss several of the key aspects of safety for your race car, key aspects to take into consideration, as well as installation guidance, basically a one stop shop, but it was so much content and information, we are sure this is only part one of several more. If you are going to be working on your car or especially if you are building a car this winter, this can help you significantly.

On this episodeâs Dominating with Dawson, we cover what to do and what to avoid when steering the car on track. Also a few tips that have seemed to help Vicki and Jennifer break their former shuffle steering habit. And Ben balances eggs on his hood?

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) A history of Joe and his team at HMS Motorsports, as well as how they have focused on safety for motorsports cars and drivers for the past 25 years, including all levels from amateur racing through NASCAR.

2) We finally know how to pronounce Schroth properly.

3) How HMS began working with NASCAR after the Dale Earnhardt accident at Daytona and how the relationship has grown in the intervening time to where almost every driver is using belts from HMS.

4) We cover what is a DOT or street legal seat belt or harness vs only for track use.

5) How your harness belts, shoulders, lap, and crotch belts should be installed to maximize safety and prevent submarining in an accident. And more importantly why.

6) What are the differences between SFI and FIA rated harnesses and how that came to be.

7) What is the difference between and 5-point belt and a 6-point belt and why one is usually better than the other?

8) We go into the ideal mounting geometry and the geometry of where the belts should be on the driver. Joe also gives an ingenious, yet simple solution for drivers of different sizes requiring different length belts. We know, we did tell you there would be no math, lol.

9) Why you may want to get the enduro style belts? They are a bit more expensive but offer significant advantages, especially when fitting drivers of several sizes, like in endurance racing events or shared cars at HPDE and track day events.

10) Seat mounting and harness mounting guidance that may save you when you most need it. We also go into how to properly design a seat back brace and perhaps most importantly the shape of the brace interface with the seat.

11) Halo seat designs and considerations, as well as advantages and disadvantages. Interior nets can be a close approximation of a halo seat when installed properly.

12) Webster’s dictionary has not gotten back to us for our proposed entry of âluxury mammalsâ that we first heard from prior podcast guest Randy Bish when i-racing. We will keep everyone updated with our progress.

13) Joe also helps us to explore several potential options for fitting drivers of different size into a single seat in our endurance cars. Our winter to do list is growing.

14) The importance of how you mount and align your seat as well as the interaction this has with the belt/harness system effectiveness.

15) What the new Snell 2020 helmet certifications mean and how they may affect your current helmet if it certified to 2010 or prior. Joe also explains why there is a time limit of a helmet and under what circumstances you should replace your helmet even if it has not expired.

16) We even go into how to care for and clean your helmet from track use or in case of more extreme events after one too many âthin mintsâ. This question is for you Bruce.

17) A helmet dryer is not the same as when you use a blow dryer, which can damage a helmet.

18) How to mount your radio wiring or camel back type straws and how not to. Hint: hole drilling is bad.

19) Joe also presented several options to help keep your visor and/or eyeglasses from fogging. Bill is actively looking for pin lock visors as we speak.

As a bonus, we have an extensive post credit bonus discussion of Jenniferâs recent accident at the Charlotte Roval, what happened, and several alternative safety improvements that may have reduced the damage to our driver.

Links to several of the items discussed:

Custom Seat Insert System: https://www.hmsmotorsport.com/item/bsci-foam-seat-pouring-kit

Schroth Bead seat inserts: https://www.hmsmotorsport.com/item/schroth-profi-seat-kit/seat-fitment

HMS Motorsportâs YouTube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz0etXlIQnDtbfHzCtGwduQ

GHIT 0149: Joe Marko from HMS Motorsport Discusses Safety Equipment, including Seats and Racing Harnesses

GHIT 0148: Brian Bohlander Racing and Potential Paths to Racing Education and Training

Is Racing School or HPDE/Comp School Better for you?

Brian Bohlander is a very accomplished race driver having competed for over 30 years and has won the Mint 400 Class 5500 and is a 3-time Thunder Roadster champion. In his professional life, he is the marketing director for Peak antifreeze and is responsible for all sports and racing partnerships. As if that was not enough, he is also the Comp school director for NASA Great Lakes. During the episode, we try to compare two of the primary paths for training and qualifying to compete in wheel to wheel racing: attending a formal racing school or working your way through the HPDE levels and graduating through Comp school. Please note that this was recorded prior to our skid pad event that we covered in earlier episodes.

We discuss the different methods of determining your braking point markers and their relative importance in our Dominating with Dawson segment. We start with a discussion of the relative importance of the point where you begin braking and the point where you come off the brake. Then we digress into a wide variety of discussion points, some related, some very much not. We each learned a bit of what we each do when on track. Who knew?

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 with a bit about off road racing and quickly go into several strategies for organizing and prepping for a track event. It is not only a skill challenge, but a large and complicated logistical challenge.

2) Brian has probably the shortest and most direct racing philosophy that we have heard to this point.

3) What is Comp school and how it compares to attending a racing school and where HPDEâs fit into the landscape, including a brief history of where we started driving instruction and how we arrived to where we are now.

4) We learn that the NASA CCR (~ rule book) actually has a definition of what a âpassâ is on track and how to and how not to pass, but also addresses what each drivers responsibility is during a pass.

5) What is Comp school? What do you do and learn while in Comp school? What are you qualified to do after passing Comp School? Hint: Safe, Predictable, and FAST are three key points that allow you to advance.

6) How the NASA program works to prepare you a driver for better, fast, and safer driving on a track, wheel to wheel racing, time trials, or even to eventually work towards being a competent and certified performance driving instructor.

7) What is the best path to learn depending on your personal goals.

8) Several tips that we tried to apply at our skid pad event a few weeks ago at Lime Rock Park.

9) Brian gives some opinions on the use of data and how it can help you while you are learning and progressing as a driver.

10) Track Attack Software comes up again. Please let us know if you have used it what you think of it. Also, if you would like us to try to get them on a guest, please let us know.

11) Brian does a very good and clear description of trail braking and how to use it bet on a track. So, if you havenât ever been 100% clear on what trail braking is or why you would want to use it, this may be a great episode for you. Even if you already use trail braking, this may increase your understanding and use of the technique.

12)Â We also have a chance to go into the auxiliary benefits of learning to drive in this manner and how it helps you when driving every day on regular street roads.

GHIT 0148: Brian Bohlander Racing and Potential Paths to Racing Education and Training

GHIT 0144: B Squad Hotrod Podcast Hosts Train and Woodchuck

Our latest podcast is number 144 with the B Squad Hotrod Podcast Hosts Train and Woodchuck

Colton (aka Train) and Steve (aka Woodchuck) are two of the four host of the âB Squad Hotrodâ Podcast on to discuss how they have learned and continue to learn to work on their hotrod projects, cars and other related projects, like building a huge garage from scratch. We also get into some of the current and upcoming projects and goals for the coming few months. A great podcast hosted by two sets of brothers, in 4 states, and three time zones, they work together towards finishing the project and learning a ton along the way. Since they are B Squad, they came on our podcast, because A Squad would be a guest on a big time TV show.

Ben joins us on our Dominating With Dawson segment to talk about how to buy a car for a project or to become a race car. It is the first of a many part discussion and we will be having at least one returning guest to go over this area more fully in the future. Usually, it I said that you make your money when you buy a stock, or a house, or a car, but in our case it is more like you are only starting to lose your money once you buy the car, lol.

As you would expect, we try to bring them over to the dark side and build a car for a race. We will see how successful we are. We offered to help and race with them. That may not have increased the likelihood of their racing, lol.

Please send in your projects so we can share with the B Squad to help show them what we are doing and drag them into racing.

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 are the projects of B Squad and some of their background and learnings along the way. With their guidance, we may work our way up to the B squad at some point.

2) The logistics of being located in 4 states and 3 different time zones between the four hosts and their individual projects.

3) Everyone is jealous of Woodchuckâs projects: huge garage with a lift, a Humvee, 1967 fastback Mustang for the family CFO. Progress continues despite working full time in the public health arena of Wyoming.

4) Trainâs projects are equally distracted by his (over) full time firefighting/paramedic and when time allows him to work on his 1941-46 Chevy Pickup with an S10 frame swap and full engine swap resto mod.

5) The way that B Squad works out the mechanics of working together with each other remotely. It involves a lot of calls, photos, video calls, and infrequent in person trips when possible.

6) It seems that all of their interests can be traced back to one of their fatherâs Corvette.

7) Train being in south Texas battles the heat most of the year and Woodchuck in Wyoming battles the cold winters.

8) Suggested first projects to begin learning to work on your own car or project and what to grow into eventually and then where you may want to bring in some professional help.

9) Why you may not want to let Train work on your electrical issue, especially if it is perhaps a 200 dollar 1974 Impala. Take home: shot gun shells are not functional fuse replacements.

10) Vicki somehow make an analogy between learning to work on a car and learning a new video game that actually works pretty well even though it initially sounded a bit weird. If only there was a cheat code with the joystick.

11) The El Jeffe tire story comes back to life to help Train feel a bit better about his Impala.

12) Ever wonder how Woodchuck got his nick name, its covered here. And we finally get to ask the question that has pondered the world forever.

13) Some discussion on how to deal with your tool storage when you need portability and mobility to work outside the home garage. Also, a discussion of several alternatives for how to layout a home garage.

14) Train is not a big fan on body work. He would probably be very open to help if you happen to enjoy it.

15) Train is introduced to cars-parts.com. We are sure it will help, especially with some of the later model car projects. B Squad was the source where we learned of the project Farm YouTube channel which has been helpful.

16) Woodchuck makes a great suggestion of trying to find a mentor to learn from/with.

17)Â If you notice, there seems to be a truck them with most of Trainâs answers and interests.Â Perhaps we could get him into our race truck one day.

GHIT 0144: B Squad Hotrod Podcast Hosts Train and Woodchuck

GHIT 0143: Using Video Coaching with Dion von Moltke from Racers360

Bill in the 2017 Toyota 86 — **Dion reviews Bill’s driving at the Autobahn Country Club in the 2017 Toyota 86**

Our latest Podcast, episode GHIT 0143: Using Video Coaching with Dion von Moltke from Racers360 is out on all podcast services

After a recent HPDE event with NASA Great Lakes at the Autobahn Country Club near Chicago, Bill sent in some video of a representative lap to Racers360 to try their video coaching and see what he could work on to improve. Dion von Moltke, from Racers360 and a podcast guest from episode #92, evaluated one of Billâs laps and who knew, it wasn’t all that bad. We thought it would be a great discussion of the use of video and the added benefit of having a professional driver and coach review the video for you. Bill learned a great deal and every driver will. This is especially valuable to the two ends of the learning curve. The newer drivers will start off breaking any bad habits and the higher level drivers will finally have someone qualified, capable, and available who could help them refine the last few items to help shave the final few tenths to get closer to their potential. The cost (~$100) makes this an exceptional value to all drivers looking to improve. Ben and friends discuss the concept of weight transfer during the Dominating with Dawson segment. Whether conscious or subconscious, it is an underlying fundamental to high performance driving and managing this is key to getting the most you can out of a car and reducing lap times.

You can email Dion directly at [email protected]

And follow him on Instagram at or twitter @Dionvmr

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:

The raw lap video a bit after 11:30 in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Am-epQIjT4&t=758s

A 5-minute snippet of Dionâs review of Billâs lap can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT2-NzD3o4Y

Eric Meyer from NASA Great Lakes also discussed this lap from a data analysis perspective here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMtlsfwbSso

1) We review some of Dionâs racing accomplishments including his time as an IMSA driver, winning the 24 hours of Daytona and the 24 hours of Sebring twice and his current work with Racers360 that is aimed at all levels of amateur racing of cars, motorcycles, go karts, etc.

2) A discussion of NJMPâs Lightning track and its (obvious) nickname. Just look at the track map.

3) The advantages of personalized coaching and the feedback opportunities it opens up the coach and the driver.

4) Dion asks Bill to self-asses his driving strengths and weaknesses. This discussion was very short and very long, respectively.

5) The coaching consisted of not only the âwhatâ, but the âwhyâ as well as an estimate of the potential impact on lap times and safety that area involved.

6) A big discussion of Turn 9 and Turn 10 at Autobahn that applies to several other turn complexes that lead onto long straights where sometimes you sacrifice a turn and sometimes it is not the best choice. It appears that as in life, nothing is 100% all the time.

7) Turn 1 at Autobahn is a high speed right hand turn that Dion went into in general and also used as an example of how best to break down a turn (backwards) to determine what to do for a specific turn, especially if you are unfamiliar with the track or turn.

8) To the surprise of absolutely no one, we also discussed vision and the need to relax and look very âlongâ and âwideâ with good scanning practices.

9) Dion is a fan of trying to work on one or two things at a time and not overwhelming the driver while learning.

10) Bill gives a brief description of the Garmin Catalyst and how it worked for him at Autobahn during his first weekend with the unit.

11) Dion gets (unfairly) put on the spot with looking at Jenniferâs crash at the Charlotte Roval. He agreed that is looks like a catch done well and a recovery not quite quick enough. Dion also recalls a time where he was able to catch a similar incident and save the car (with a bit of luck). It can be found at about 40-45 seconds into the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPq5K1giAC8

12) Racers in training weight loss challenge is entered. Please let us know if you want to participate. Dion may even help despite not needing to lose any weight personally.

13) Bill looks to scoop up a few brownie points when the opportunity arises.

14) Some of the takeaways and how they apply to all laps and all tracks. Many are going to be incorporated into his practice session at the track and on the sim.

15) Bill vents his standard color matching issues. Still no traction received.

16) Track Addict may be worth some investigation and if your budget allows perhaps an AIM SmartyCam.

17) Bill drags Dion into his current level of overthinking the geometry of a turn.

18) Another vote for the Senna documentary. Maybe Vicki will finally watch it. It is really fantastic, even if you arenât a race driver.

19) Post credits discussion of Mid-Ohio, with and without the chicane before the keyhole, and some volleyball discussion.

GHIT 0143: Using Video Coaching with Dion von Moltke from Racers360

We never had control to lose, but we somehow lost it anyway.Â You have been warned

It all started innocently enough, Alex Levinson was coming onto the podcast and we had a plan to talk about racing and go karting.Â Little did we know there was a devious plot afoot.Â It began to dawn on us as he was signing in and the Zoom window label came through as Amanda.Â All was good, he was pretending to be Amanda, we would love to be half the driver and have half the mechanical knowledge and skills she has.Â Then the video came through and there was Amanda and Alex, but there was more.Â Off to the side, there was Donnie Petrunak, another well-known racer and a man who adds vowels to the pronunciation of his name without actually taking the time to write them into his name.Â Inauspicious start, but no worries, yet.Â Then we asked one question and Iâm not sure we spoke again, lol.Â Strap in for this one, itâs quite a ride.

On our Dominating with Dawson, we cover one of Benâs favorite racing games, playing with the flags and how the simple act of paying attention can help you during a race.

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) Comparison of the NASCAR approach to our Lucky Dog approach at the Charlotte Roval

2) An update on Alexâs 2000 NB Miata daily driver that was crashed into at Charlotte while parked in the lot. It doesnât even make a good story.

3) A tremendous story about Alexâs encounter with Paul Blart Jr.

4) Donnie âthe Fist of Godâ Petrunak gives an update of his latest car battles and it sounds just like a normal day in the life of the Fail Inc Motorsports racing team and Florida Man Racing. Remember, no âiâ in Petrunak, but being high maintenance, he wants one pronounced anyway, lol.

5) Apparently running cheaty BMWâs runs in Amandaâs family, so its really not her fault since its hereditary.

6) Stories and introductions to their three racing teams and cars. Alex takes 10 minutes, Donnie about 3, and Amanda about a minute, just like their lap times. Lol.

7) Donnie has his doctorate but apparently cannot count past 6, since that is the number of cars he âclaimsâ to have.

8) Hospital, hospitable, same, same. Words are hard, maybe as hard as numbers.

9) Alex impersonates one of those old toys where you pull a string and it just keeps talking and talking.

10) Amanda answers the question as to what happened to her E36 BMW at Thompson. That car is usually an anvil and a monster.

11) Donnie has an issue with a certain wall at Daytona. But the walls always seem to win.

12) Alex offers Donnieâs services to all the front running cars at NHMS and we warn others about allowing Mental nearby.

13) Several opinions about running a true 24 race from our guests. Still sounds like work to us though.

14) Alex gets a new nickname. Say hi to his new nickname âGrandpaâ.

15) Jen gets to ask a question. Bet you forgot she was there. I’m pretty sure she did too.

16) We received an update that we are the #4 automotive podcast in all of Indonesia. Thank you to the fans there and please ignore our guests. They were like an alcohol fueled dragster, just without the dragster. They even laughed at a one or two of Billâs jokes.

17) How Donnie learned to drive. This explains a lot.

18) Alex realizes that he is actually a race winning Porsche driver (as is Amanda), but he still canât pronounce Porsche.

19) Donnie has one of the best âcar that got awayâ stories we may ever hear.

20) Alex has an amazing car ultimate road trip path.

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