Dominating with Dawson

GHIT 0152: Craig Watkins Joins us for Car Setup 101 Focusing on the Tires

Craig Watkins Car Engineer for Flying Lizards Motorsports

Carig Watkins with Flying Lizard Motorsports

Craig Watkins joins us for this episode to discuss his driving history, as well as his time spent as an engineer for Flying Lizard Motorsports, among others. Craig concentrates now being an amateur racing driver and fells the pain of being a single person team. We also go into his business that started as a tool he needed to help him as a race car engineer and grew into what we know as Smart Racing Products that offers several solutions that are easy to use to set your car alignment up, even if your car is a truck or a bus. We hope to have Craig on again to go into the area more deeply in the future. We had recording issues so the episode is a mix of two parts, and you may be able to tell a difference in recording almost halfway through. We cannot express how happy we were when Craig said he would come on again to cover the first section that we could not edit well enough to use.

Craig Watkins at the Baja 500 and on Pismo Beach

Craig Watkins on Pismo Beach — Craig Watkins at the Baja 500 and on Pismo Beach

Our Dominating with Dawson segment goes over how to get more out of an HPDE event or a track day by setting goals. It has helped our team to maximize the benefit of each event and get the most bang for the buck/minute of track time. This process will help you to improve as well.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

You can get your Smart Strings, Smart Camber etc. from Smart Racing products at: https://www.smartracingproducts.com/

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) Billâs longest intro to date. Vicki had very little patience for it.

2) Craig covers most of his racing history, off road and on track driving, to becoming a race car engineer, to how he arrived at the present day as an amateur racing driver.

3) How professional racing is different but fundamentally the same as amateur racing.

4) What are some of the functions of a chief race car engineer and how he used several key pieces of data and the driver feedback to get the car as fast as possible.

5) Bad physics/chemistry flashbacks abound. Ideal gas law is fundamentally a relationship that says the Pressure X Volume is proportional to the Temperature. PV = nRT for those playing at home.

6) How the tires are really the critical control point to focus on to get your car to be fast and drive most easily.

7) What is the #1 most critical measurement tool to have in your racing tool belt, how to use it, and how to make sure you minimize variability by using a one individual gauge for all your measurements.

8) And then we also look to what the next few items and measurements are to further refine and improve your carâs performance and âdialing it inâ.

9) A great summary of what the 24 Hours of Lemans â Lemans Classic event is and why you may want to add it as a bucket list item for you and your team.

10) Tire pressure at target. Then tire temperature uniformity across the tire surface and across the four tires +/- 30 degrees F or C?. If you aren’t sure of your exact tire temperature range, around 150 degrees is a good first level estimate to where you enter your tireâs performance window.

11) What are the three primary aspects of your tire alignment, Camber, Caster, and Toe, what they represent, what order to adjust them in, which ones are more critical to performance, and rough starting points for you to begin to optimize from further. As expected, we also get into some of the ways to set up the car to measure and adjust these parameters. We also discuss the other terms that are sometimes referred to including thrust angle.

12) The two ways that tire grip is generated. And there really are only two.

13) While each of the settings are car dependent, we attempt to give some broad based approximate starting ranges that will aid you in establishing a baseline point to begin from to set up your race car. We also try to explain how each parameter, and direction of change, affects the carâs performance.

14) As with several of our prior episodes, Craig explains how the best teams are better by simply being better at the several fundamental aspects of car prep and team operation during a race. And if you sprinkle in a bit of luck, they will compete well and have a better than average chance to win.

15) Craig teases us with his excel list of adjustments and effects that came from his experience as a race engineer. Next time we see him, we are going to get a copy. We have a chance at getting at least the format of the list, without the exact content. tbd.

16) Craig also brings up the very valuable point to remember that you are the one to define how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go and that should be the primary determinant in how deeply you get into the car and its set up.

17) Bill finally gets to make a String Theory joke, but it wasn’t very funny. Situation normal. But it was way better than his tuna joke.

18) We also go into the way to use Smart Strings and Smart Camber to measure and adjust your cars alignment before and even at the racetrack.\

PS Did anyone catch the semi-subtle Three Pedal Mafia reference in this episode? GHiT decals can be sent out to you if you let us know.

GHIT 0152: Craig Watkins Joins us for Car Setup 101 – Focusing on the Tires

Craig's Flyin Lizard Motorsports Porsche

Re: GHIT 0150: Ross Bentley Returns to Celebrate Our 150th Episode

Ross Bentley Teaching — **Ross Bentley: World Class Instructor**

Ross Bentley in BMW — **World Class Racing Driver**

Ross Bentley Karting — **World Class Coach**

Ross Bentley, world class racing coach and author, was kind enough to join us to help celebrate our 150th episode!Â Since Ross has literally written THE book on racing and high performance driving, we always look forward to talking with him any chance we get.Â Our team has improved in the almost year since Ross came on episode 100, but have our questions?Â You will have to be the judge of that.Â

As always, Ross is able to answer everything we are curious about and even provide some insight into the area that we had not even thought of to this point.Â If you want an episode that will help you drive faster, Ross is the perfect guest.Â We have already started our new list of questions in case we can talk him into episode 200.Â If you have any, please let us know.Â

Also, Ross has resumed his weekly podcast and if anything, it is better than ever.Â You can subscribe to it on any of the podcasting platform of your choice.Â Also, his book Speed Secrets is the most essential resource we know of to learn to be a better driver and race driver.Â

One great thing about Ross is he can answer every single question we can think of.Â The bad thing about Ross is he makes you think about it in another way.Â This ends up with many more questions and usually Bill goes off and overthinks it, again.Â Vicki missed a really good one this time (she was fixing her broken MX5 suspension in the hotel parking lot.

But the best thing about Ross is that he is a World Class Gentlemen!

How to get better at the turns is the (potentially) surprising subject of this Dominating with Dawson, but we attempt to discuss how to approach a fast corner and a slow corner.Â Depending in the specific track, one or two of the turns will be most critical to a fast lap time and it can often be one of these two types of corners.Â

This will be the first part of this area that we discuss as there is a lot of detail and discussion to be had in this area.Â We did use several specific turns at Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Monte Carlo, and Mid-Ohio to describe these types of turns explicitly.Â We are also sure, Ben slipped in a VIR reference at least once or twice.Â For this discussion, the term fast is usually referring to a turn with a minimum speed of over ~60 mph or ~100 kph.

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) Ross quickly gives away why he is back on the podcast with us. Lol.

2) We talk with Ross about our (then) upcoming skid pad event at Lime Rock Park and he was kind enough to go into what we could do to maximize the learning at the skid pad. It turned out that this was almost exactly what our friends at Safety Third Motorsports had already arranged for the event. Even after the event, we still have a long way to go to be able to catch up to Rossâs friend Johan Schwartz who was able to hold a drift for 232.5 miles, with live refueling while drifting.

3) Ross goes on to explain a way to have a car turn more when understeering by reducing the steering input you are asking from the car. Its counterintuitive but exceedingly helpful.

4) How does practicing on a skid pad help your street driving, as well as your driving on a track.

5) When to use slow hands and when to use quick hands.

6) Bill even asked the questions that he is over thinking, again. Things like is there a relationship between the apex and the resumption of throttle during a turn. Billâs pursuit of foundational axioms continues, lol. And why is he talking about thermodynamics on a podcast about racing?

7) A great discussion of what sometimes can fool you on track. For instance, sometimes as lap of a turn may have felt âgoodâ but ended up slower.

8) Ben comes up with a truly new question to Ross! Nicely done.

9) The importance of focusing on what to do and not solely on what not to do, especially in racing.

10) Jennifer asks a great question: what can she do to improve during the off season?

11) Ross goes in depth on mental imagery techniques and actually gives Jennifer (and everyone) an exercise program that has shown to significantly improve your driving outside of being on track. Summary: Relax body and slow breathing to slow your mind down

11a) Monday night: entering and setting up to drive the track at speed, and push pace a bit with actually mimicking the physical movements. Focus on the technique of driving Pitt race. Refresh the same for 10-15 minutes the following morning. Mantra: Pitt Race etc.

11b) Tuesday night: Close eyes and focus on personal driving confidence improvements and then drive the track again. Follow with a Wednesday morning refresh. Mantra: Confidence or Iâm here etc. (in driving)

11c) Wednesday night: focus on ultra-sensory perception and expansion of details. Follow up Thursday morning. Mantra: Sensitive

11d) Thursday night: Focus on race craft and starting scenarios and racing scenarios and try to envision ways to gain position. Repeat refresh next morning. Mantra: Iâm ready or Iâm going to the front

11e) Friday night: Focus on adaptability of dealing with a car that isnât quite correct. i.e. left turns aren’t same as right, you lost a gear, brakes are an issue, shock going away, etc. etc. Mantra: Adapt

11f) Saturday: Focus on a specific driving technique you are working on, like brake pedal release etc. Mantra: on the technique

11g) Sunday night: Focus on the thrill of driving at the limit and just driving without conscious thought. Mantra: TBD by you

12) Ross and his students have all found the value of the using mental imagery and seen large benefits, especially when expanding the practice beyond the physical driving as we described above.

13) We also went over several other off season, off track practice topics that anyone can do while in the off season.

14)Â Bill also brought up the relatively recent release of the Garmin Catalyst, how it works, and how it can help most if not all drivers at the track.Â It does not replace a coach, but can definitely help anyone to be faster and try new techniques on the track by looking at what you are doing and helping you to optimize from what you are doing to a better approach.Â

14a) Most of us would be surprised by how it can help you break a plateau.Â (We are still working to get a guest on the show to diver deeper into the Catalyst.Â We have not given up.)Â Ross coincidentally has helped in the development of the Catalyst and it really shows.Â The Catalyst even helped Ross improve his personal lap times and we are sure it will help you as well.

15) Ross covers what areas are typically key to focus on at various driving levels of proficiency. Several of the habits are similar across the driving levels, sometimes even to the highest professional ranks.

16) We go into the relative importance of driving at the limit vs driving the perfect line. It looks likes Robin for NASA Great Lakes was correct with his tip to Bill at Autobahn CC this summer.

17) A few brake light stories that Ross has âheardâ about, as well as a great story about Ross driving the most âevilâ car he ever drove at Nazareth.

18) Ross was even willing to entertain us with the fast and furious story time questions that we havenât asked him already. Some will surprise you, but all were very entertaining. We were especially looking forward to Rossâs answers to his favorite corner of a track.

Ross Bentley Using The Garmin Catalyst — **Ross Bentley Collaborated with the Development of the Garmin Catalyst and even he was able to go faster on track using it**

Ross with Garmin Catalyst — **Ross Bentley Collaborated with the Development of the Garmin Catalyst and even he was able to go faster on track using it**

GHIT 0150: Ross Bentley Returns to Celebrate Our 150th Episode

Ross also joined us on episode #100

GHIT 0140: Autobahn Country Club HPDE With NASA Great Lakes

We cover Billâs first HPDE 3 with NASA Great Lakes at the Autobahn Country Club South Course layout that is near Chicago. It was our teams first HPDE 3 and it was fantastic. NASA Great Lakes really shines with their HPDE curriculum. In addition, we had the opportunity to try the teams new Garmin Catalyst on track for the first time and we were very impressed. Several notable driving improvements were during the event and perhaps even a few Ahh Hah Moments. In addition, we discuss the âperfectâ race car in the Dominating with Dawson segment for this episode.

We hope you enjoy this episode half as much as Bill enjoyed the NASA Great Lakes event!

Special thanks again to the entire Great Lakes team for funning another top notch event, as always.

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 short track review of the South track at Autobahn. In addition, it was our first time on track with electronic flags.

2) We compare the relative costs of a track day weekend vs a divorce etc.

3) Differences between NASA Great Lakes HPDE 1, 2, and 3.

4) We cover some of the tremendous drills that start of most of the track sessions. They are very valuable to improve your driving skills and racing experience in a controlled and safe manner.

5) How NASA GL has altered the different HPDE levels and improved as they learn to account for COVID induced changes and still improve the quality of the instruction for each of their students in a very quick reaction, demonstrating their ability to respond nimbly to their students feedback.

6) Garmin Catalyst first impressions and review after using it to review our track driving for the first time this weekend. The in-car coaching was a very good addition to the weekend while we were in the car without an instructor. We hope to have a full episode with a guest in the next few weeks. We posted a few videos on our YouTube channel that has some of the Garmin instructions included if you are curious.

7) Bill is a big fan of the opportunities options that prioritize areas for potential improvement/low hanging fruit along with the potential quantified time improvement potential.

8) Jen asks the question Bill never wants to discuss with Vicki in earshot: How much is it? Vicki, close he webpage, just close the page.

9) Just remember, these are only $500 carsâ¦â¦â¦

10) Why does Bill always confuse Buddy Rich and Buddy Guy. No idea, but the model/example still applies.

11) Mork from Ork shows up for a small guest slot, some of you will see it.

12) Bad news on two of our GoProâs. They may not be useful for our in-car video due to the dynamic range of brightness or contrast from within the car vs the outside.

13) The anniversary that never seems to end.

14) A very good discussion of focus and being fresh on track, as well as a probably wise decision to use good discretion and skip the last session at the end of Saturday.

15) Billâs prep for a new track is getting better and almost where we would like it to be. The process we use during an HPDE is really getting dialed in and allowing us to get the most out of each stint and maximize the benefit for each HPDE we attend.

16) We cover some of the most significant improvements and a few Ahh Hahâs from the event.

17) The goal of HPDE 3 to push beyond your comfort level and look for more speed was very good and appropriate after the training received in HPDE 1 and 2 with NASA GL.

18) The go kart track looked amazing, although we did not have a chance to try.

19) Bill makes a play at adding another HPDE/track day for NJMP. Schedule tbd. Details to follow. He would really love to get Jennifer and Vicki out once more with the Catalyst. It should help them both greatly. Some planning details still to be resolved.

20)Â What is left to get Brad safely out the door and what is left to start the process of GHIT Colorado.Â Look for us to come out to High Plains raceway and other tracks in the area as soon as Brad is set up and ready for us.Â Also one last chance for Bill to pick on Brad for signing up for several HPDEâs and not

GHIT 0140: Autobahn Country Club HPDE With NASA Great Lakes

GHIT 0135: Ben Dawson Dominates on This Episode

Ben Dawson is our guest for this episode where we go over some of his racing history and a lot of how he has progressed to his current level and what he is looking to get into going forward.Â It was great to catch up with him and learn a bunch more about him and his driving.Â

It is also the easiest episode ever to put in our Dominating with Dawson segment where we go over several methods for a driver to determine their speed and adjust accordingly on a track.Â This is especially important when you are learning and improving since your speeds will generally be increasing, as you wish it would, but that does impact your speed going into the subsequent turn or turns.Â

Ben is tremendous driver, but not a hard core car guy and he treats the cars well, but more as a tool to use and get the most out of, as opposed to a piece of art or something to attribute more respect and awe to than deserved.Â There are definitely a few people we know who could enjoy their cars and driving more if they shifted a bit towards Benâs more pragmatic car philosophy.

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) Everything you ever/never wanted to know about Ben and Benâs driving history. Driving really does seem to run in the family.

2) Ben is unhappy we aren’t familiar with his 1986 Taurus MT-5. We were quite happy not knowing about it, lol.

3) Ben is in the midst on balancing his family and his current Spec E46 track car build. we also go over some of the steps that Ben has progressed through and led to his current racing interest, including getting a bit sideways on the dirt roads in Alabama growing up, competitive carting, autocross, and endurance racing across the US.

4) How Benâs racing philosophy has matured into a very simple mantra, if its not fun, Iâm out.

5) We also discover how Ben got DQâed from a win at his pine wood derby car but did end up with a large âBodacious Big Bearâ bear (that he still has). I see a T-Shirt in the making, maybe even a Race Bar theme.

6) Tips for getting out there and trying to do some high performance driving or a track day etc.

7) A Good, Bad, and the Ugly for what to do and not do when looking to get started in high performance driving or racing.

8) A great bunch of stories and examples of how a team and a driver progresses through beginning stages and gradually moves towards a more seasoned racing driver.

9) Billâs latest HPDE with NASA Great Lakes at Mid-Ohio last weekend in the Toyota 86.

10) Billâs rather intimidating trip into the Keyhole turn with a McLaren 720S and a Shelby 350R and a race prepped Corvette in the rear view.

11) We also start discussing some of the turns at Mid-Ohio, as well as how to approach decreasing radius turns in general.

12) How much fun it was to take his driving test in the same session as one of the passing drills.

13) We get a question from Chrissy M that became an impromptu review of Mid-Ohio track itself, both the Club and Pro layouts that we ran over the weekend. AND we cannot help but take the opportunity pass on our compliments to their recent episode related to racing and burnout. It was fantastic, as always.

14) Ben says âmeccaâ and Jennifer and Vicki hear ânaked, you can guess how the rest went.

15) A hilarious story about muscle relaxers and eating a tomato before going on track. Donât try this at home.

16) Our first discussion of land speed records and record setting

17) The Cerveza race team makes another appearance. Still need to get them on the podcast. Anyone know them? We would love an intro.

Our upcoming schedule is a NASA Great Lakes HPDE at Autobahn (for the first time), a NASA Great Lakes HPDE at Autobahn NCM (for the first time), and a HPDE/Skid Pad/autocross event at Lime Rock. Potentially, we may be going to Summit Point for a skip pad event in October or November. Please let us know if you are coming or stop by anytime if you see us.

Links:

Mid-Ohio Track Map: https://speedsecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Mid-Ohio.pdf

Billâs current track rankings are as follows:

Pitt Race
Charlotte Roval
Gingerman
NJMP – Thunderbolt
Road Atlanta
Watkins Glen
Laguna Seca
Mid-Ohio
Thompson
Monticello
New Hampshire
NJMP – Lightning
Pocono

GHIT 0135: Ben Dawson Dominates on This Episode

GHIT 0120: Christina Lam is our special guest driver

Christina Lam is a racing driver for several series, is an instructor for Skip Barber and NASA, as well as a frequent contributor to GrassRoots Motorsports magazine.Â We first started following her as her âAfter A Crashâ 9-part series started a few months back and became instant fans of her approach and her dedication to racing, education, and giving back to the racing community.Â On this episode, we go over how she started to be involved from a point of little knowledge and car/racing influences to where she is not only competing at national events, podium’ing many times, and instructing others to improve their skills.Â It is a fantastic and quite rapid journey from newbie to racing veteran and her latest challenge last season will inspire you and hopefully get you to reach further towards ever higher goals.Â

On our Dominating with Dawson, Ben goes over the difference in driving approaches for endurance racing, autocross, as well as various types of sprint racing.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, Jennifer, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast

and team members in the GHiT

Immature Endurance Racing Team

Highlights from the episode include:

1) We have had a long, long work week in the garage, so long that Vicki blanked on her name for a moment and Bill canât spell SCCA, lol.

2) How she started off racing in Autocross one weekend and then had the opportunity of a lifetime drop in her lap a short time later (driving on a little place known as The âRing).

3) Christinaâs first time on track was her first time driving a stick. This may be a good rival for what we ended up doing to Jennifer at her first race at Thompson Speedway. Not our best plan, but we did learn from it.

4) We share post-race hangover stories and several great ideas for further race cross training. Rally, V8 supercars, Ice racing, so much fun to be had, so little time.

5) What is involved with being a one-person team and how she accomplishes all that is required for a race weekend. The big key is prep. Second rule, prep. If you need a third rule, be prepped early.

6)Â We go into her accident last year and how she recovered, both physically and mentally, as well as her new race car.