NASA Great Lakes

Tim Fokine – Pilot, Racer & Instructor

GHIT 0236: Tim Fokine – Pilot/Racer, Instructor and Racing Instructor

Tim Fokine is a commercial pilot and also involved with the training of pilots. As such it was no surprise that he is involved with training drivers and instructors with NASA Great Lakes. Bill first met Tim in HPDE 2 at Mid Ohio and Tim was further motivated to progress quickly, lol.

This past week however, like a bad penny, Bill was back and Tim was his mentor in his prep weekend sessions for next month’s MSF Level 2 instructor certification weekend. During our discussion with Tim, we go over how being a pilot and a racing driver can be sometimes complementary and at the same time directly opposite in some ways. We also go into the NASA endurance racing series (TREC). We also cover the transition from being an HPDE student to becoming a driving instructor. Having barely scratched the surface with Tim, we hope to have him on again soon.

We did have a bit of microphone echo at some points that we could not edit out. Our apologies.

If you would like to help the 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. 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. There 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) How Tim is introducing his entire family to our sport and how we are going to help coerce his beautiful bride next.

2) We received a message live during the recording from the HPDE student Tim and Bill worked with at the last Mid Ohio event together

3) How learning on a lower power/momentum car can benefit your learning, especially as a relatively new performance driver in HPDE’s

4) Some of the benefits of learning in a lower power car on the track.

5) It sounds like we can expect to see Tim and a few friends joining us at endurance races in the coming seasons.

6) Vicki and Tim have a great discussion about the importance of being present, in the moment when driving on track.

7) Our first ever Joey Pollack flight training story. Hopefully we can have Joey on a future podcast.

8) Tim discusses the use of checklists and some of the better ways that they can be used in aviation and racing. Tim describes several great examples of how to use checklists in endurance racing.

9) We discussed the relatively new NASA TREX endurance racing series and may be able to finally start racing next season. There are several differences to the series we have competed in to this point.

GHIT 0236: Tim Fokine – Pilot/Racer, Instructor and Racing Instructor

GHiT Garage, Podcast, and Team Update

GHIT 0235: GHiT Garage, Podcast, and Team Update

The Garage Heroes In Training team has had quite a summer on the track so far and with our racing season beginning to wind down, but far from done on the track, we thought we would bring everyone up to speed with where we are with the podcast, how our driving and racing is progressing, and what our car related projects are going into the fall and winter repair and build programs. This is a quick update episode, but we have so many moving balls (people and cars) it may appear random or confusing at points. However, there is a plan, and as always a spreadsheet or two.

In case you missed it, our podcast format has changed recently due to popular demand. Monday is our normal podcast release day for the week. On Tuesday our Dominating with Dawson segment for the week will be released as its own stand alone episode. Wednesday may or may not have a bonus episode as needed. This could be a Way Off Our Topic episode (WOOT), a race review from the weekend, team updates, garage updates etc. We hope you enjoy the new release format. Thanks again. Special thanks to Chris and Chrissie from the Everyone Racers podcast and Three Pedal Mafia for stopping by last weekend to advise us on the 1993 Honda build and our path forward for the next few months.

Vicki is looking into what she could/should do with her currently turbo’ed 1999 NB Miata. Any suggestions?

If you would like to help 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. There you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review.

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/ThompsonPart1

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

GHIT 0235: GHiT Garage, Podcast, and Team Update

Ryan Power – Life as a New Racing Driver

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.

If you would like to help the 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, that would be great. Even better is 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, look under shows. Then click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review.

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/RyanPowerOnGHiT

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) 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.

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

2021 PittRace HPDE with NASA GL

GHIT 0218: Our 2021 PittRace HPDE with NASA Great Lakes

Our season highlight is the NASA Great Lakes HPDE event at PittRace and this year was no exception. Our team attendees consisted of Jennifer, Vicki, and Liam in the HPDE 2 sessions, and Bill was in the HPDE 4 group, as well as auditing several of the HPDE 1 and 2 classrooms and track sessions. As always, we were joined by our Three Pedal Mafia/Everyone racers podcast friend Chris, Chrissy, Jeff, and Jim. In total, we had 8 drivers in our paddock area in the HPDE classes and 6 cars for this event.

In addition, our next gen trainees were all over the go karting track there and even raced a friend from the Penn State Formula SAE team from our Lemons races in NJMP and PittRace this year, Eric Junker. As a super special addition to the event, Ross Bentley was also an attendee and was helping out in all areas and levels of the event. We are very sure he is tired from this weekend, but it was great to finally meet him in person.

PS Sorry for Bill’s audio, apparently his microphone did not work during this episode.

PittRace Paddock — Paddock with friends makes this even better

Looking to help the 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? 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.

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/PittRaceHPDE2021

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Morning meeting with Ross — **ROSS BENTLEY in Person!!!!!**

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

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

GHIT 0218: Our 2021 PittRace HPDE with NASA Great Lakes

Bill Host/Driver Re-Introduction

GHIT 0214: GHIT Host/Driver Updated Introductions – Bill

It has been several years since we did our host/driver introductions and we thought we would update our newer listeners with a bit of background from each of our hosts. You can probably blame Bill for most of our team and our podcast, but he does have noble goals, lol. Bill was essentially a newbie to racing, driving, and pretty much remains so as far as car mechanical skills. As always, our motto of “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing” applies to our team, our cars, and driving education. In most ways, Bill is our team manager and tries to herd the cats as best we can be herded. He usually sets our team schedule and works on our systems, tools, supplies, parts, planning, and organization. Usually, by default, most of our episodes have Bill host.

As a bonus, we included the original introduction we had way back when this all began. (after we had only raced twice and had zero HPDE’s etc.). We hope you enjoy getting to know us better and learning where we are (or maybe where we think we are) and where we wish to go in the coming years.

If we missed something that you wanted to know, please let us know on our website or social media etc.

In this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we all share some of our “best” car trailer stories. Which one of our experiences do you think wins the title? Please let us know.

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. 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/BillReIntro

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS Please do not forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, do not 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) Ben and Vicki pretend to be interested in Bill for an hour plus. Time to increase their pay.

2) We go into personal and teams strengths, weaknesses and our growth since we started.

3) Bill tries to stay our of “sleeping in the tub” and manages to almost make it 27 minutes before inserting his foot into his mouth, again.

4) Finding the best HPDE group for your interests and goals, as well as using the different groups strengths to augment your learning. For instance some groups have more lap time. Some have better in class or in car instruction. Some may be closer or cheaper, or have a better schedule match to your availability etc.

5) The most shocking thing to Bill was Vicki’s selection of her podcast highlight not being episode #68. In this episode, we give a short summary but leave out many of the details and the carnage. Its worth a listen for the details. Ben was very entertained.

6) We end with a review of Vicki, Ben, and Bill’s opinions on their personal skill levels in a variety of racing skills and scenarios. Alan and Jen will cover this in the next team re-introduction episode with Alan.

7) The All Female GHiT racing team for our upcoming Thompson race is discussed for one of the first times. Prepped, raced, and repaired 100% by our female team members. Hopefully that last part is not needed, lol.

GHIT 0214: GHIT Host/Driver Updated Introductions – Bill

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