Mazda Miata ND Archives - Garage Heroes (In Training)

GHIT 0222: Ryan Power – Life as a New Racing Driver

Ryan Power recently graduated from comp school with his racing license. He primarily competes in wheel to wheel sprint races in his 2019 ND2 Miata. Bill had met Ryan and been driving at HPDE’s with Ryan for the past few seasons. While still relatively new at racing, Ryan’s results are very good for his rookie season with several podium finishes and race wins. Unfortunately, Ryan has also experienced a significant incident on track and seen the inherent risk in racing wheel to wheel. We wanted to cover Ryan’s recent transition from HPDE to Comp School to racing wheel to wheel, as well as what it is like to get back on track after a significant accident.

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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) Getting his car and supplies organized for racing his car as his one person team and some of the challenges of racing solo.

2) Tips on how to get started and what to focus on when learning to drive on track

3) Ryan also goes into some examples of how his learning progression was non linear and where he gained some of his most valuable experience and skill gains.

4) Plusses and minuses of racing/HPDE’ing in a single car versus multiple cars

5) What it was like getting back into the race car after the accident, both for prepping the car and Ryan.

Porsche 911 — Some great cars, and some of ours attended this event.

Vicki's NB Miata — Some great cars, and some of ours attended this event.

The latest HPDE with NASA Northeast last weekend completes our season of track driving and instruction for 2020. We try to summarize it as well as how the COVID 19 impacted racing season went. And Bill canât wait to start planning 2021. It was a great weekend on track with fantastic weather, especially for mid-November in NJ. We came with three cars good to go. We left with zero. Seems to be a familiar refrain. The winter to do list gets longer.

On Dominating with Dawson, we cover driver communication going into and out of the car at the track.

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 cover our goals going into the event.

2) How was Billâs new HPDE car on track for the first time. If at first you donât succeed, try, try, try again or the fourth time is the charm.

3) We also cover how Vicki and Jennifer applied the things they learned at the Lime Rock skid pad on the track.

4) Bill gets to see the Lightning track for the first time, even though he/we drove this track for several hours last year. Hood-Gate.

5) Jennifer got to drive with and review the data from the Garmin Catalyst for the first time.

6) Vicki also started reviewing and using the data from the Apex Pro for the first time ever.

7) Both Jennifer and Vicki got a lot faster throughout the weekend and seemed to have some of their best driving stints ever.

8) Bill went on track for the first time ever in the ND Miata.

9) What were the areas of greatest improvement for Jennifer and Vicki. Both made significant gains in both their lines and their car inputs. Also, now they were both able to take input from the data and video and apply it on their next stint.

10) Bill apparently can’t count turns past 5 and gets confused with turn 7. We will blame this on our post-race weekend hangover.

11) Bill really wants to put racing brake pads onto the M3 for the next track event. The all-season tires were not as big a deal as anticipated but will also need to be improved for our first event next season.

12) Vickiâs last stint led to an off on turn 5 that has caused some issue with her suspension. Exact point of failure is still TBD at this point.

13) We were able to get a lot of good video and hopefully good data. We cannot wait to analyze further and learn what we can work on and how we are improving.

14) Jennifer breaks the news that Ross Bentley is coming back as a guest for our 150^th episode that is coming very soon!

15) Vicki went into her off track event late Sunday at turn 5.

16) Brief review of some of our off season work and planning for next season.

GHIT 0147: HPDE at NJMP Lightning Wrap Up for 2020