Garage Heroes (In Training)

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

Guests & Interviews

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 0059 Wendy from Porterfield – Everything About Brakes and More

Porterfields

GHIT 0059 Wendy from Porterfield – Everything About Brakes and More

Wendy Charlier has been our primary contact at Porterfield since we started our team and has been with the company 20 years.  Wendy has a racing background from her family that goes back many years. 

Also, for those of you that are not familiar with them, Porterfield is a private company that services all kinds of performance applications related to the braking your car and heat management, including brake pads, rotors, calipers, fluids, full brake kits etc., as well as other aspects of performance & racing like suspension components, oil coolers, starters, heat protection items, and batteries, and many others items.  So if you need any brake pads for virtually any car or truck, they have them or will make them for you.

Highlights from this episode include:

Brake Pads Selection Factors

  • What tracks
  • The type of racing, historic, endurance autocross, dirt, etc.
  • What use
  • Car weight and horsepower etc.
  • What heat/temperature is expected

Rotors

  • Vented vs solid
  • Drilled and/or slotted (Hint not cross drilled if you are racing)
  • Slotted
  • One piece vs two piece
  • Proper sizing and selection

 Calipers/Pistons

  • The effect of the piston size, piston quantity, and the total piston surface area

 Brake fluids – types, uses, comparisons

 Wendy also recommended several brake pads to choose from depending on your driving needs, autocross, sprints, HPDE/track days, road/endurance racing etc.

  • We also cover the brake pad torque performance and its impact on braking and brake feel
  • A good bit of discussion on our racing pads of choice the Raybestos ST43’s
  • Other brands available include the Porterfield brand, Hawk, Performance Friction, Pagid, and several others from Raybestos
  • How brake calipers can affect brake pad selection, especially with respect to the available pad thickness

Brake Fluids and Selection

  • Dry boiling point vs wet boiling point
  • DOT 3 4 5 etc. (racing use DOT 4)
  • Frequencies and reasons to change, bleed, etc., like if it boils, bleed it..
  • Hydroscopic effects on brake fluid and its boiling point depression and why brake fluid is hydroscopic
  • How varying local humidity levels can affect brake fluid performance
  • Brake fluid compressibility and its effect on pedal feel

We also discussed several areas related to Braking, including:

  • Brake lines and selection and advantages of braided stainless steel lines
  • (real) Brake Ducting and cooling solutions (not using pool noodles), both neoprene and silicone, with wire reinforcement
  • Sizing of ducts and positioning tips on both the inlet and outlet sides
  • NACA Ducts and other options
  • Oil coolers
  • We also reviewed a reusable oil filter that we are absolutely dying to try.

Finally, Bill also attempted to talk Wendy off her personal cliff and start her amazing race career.  We will get Wendy out racing soon. 

So please join us for an excellent podcast reviewing all aspects of braking your race car.  And no, brakes do not just slow you down. 

GHIT 0059: Wendy from Porterfield – Everything About Brakes and More

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

John Santiago NASA Great Lakes

John Santiago
John Santiago hot off the track, and on!

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

GHIT 0056: John Santiago of NASA Great Lakes – Guest Driver and Instructor

GHIT 0051 Randy Pobst

Special Guest Racing Driver

Audio issues for first few minutes are eventually fixed

Randy Pobst with Jennifer and Vicki
Randy Pobst with Two New Friends

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 “Head to Head series” for many years.  During this interview, we cover a good amount of Randy’s 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 “Think power out of a corner, brake into a corner and then roll onto the power to go fast”.

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.

GHIT 0051 Randy Pobst – Special Guest Racing Driver