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Garage Heroes (In Training)

Garage Heroes (In Training)

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

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Randy Pobst

GHIT 0178: Randy Pobst Returns for a Second Lap

  • Randy Pobst Pro Racing Driver
  • Randy Pobst in another Volvo

When we started this podcast, we had a list of guests that would compose our school of white whales that we dreamed of getting.  One of the top was Randy Pobst.  He is an excellent driver, instructor and television personality and has seemingly won every race event he has entered, sometimes multiple times.  As good as a driver as he is, he is an even better person.  He routinely attends amateur races, many times bringing his own “Flying Moose” team Volvo and walks the paddock and talks to everyone there and is always willing to help with friendly advice or to answer a question.  To this point, our biggest regret for the podcast was the microphone issues we had early in the first episode with Randy as a guest at the Lucky Dog race in Portland at PIR.  This time, we triple checked and we were able to have Randy on without any technical issues on our end.  Please welcome Randy Pobst back to our podcast to talk all about cars and racing, and even a bit about motorcycles.  We still miss his “Racing Line” series, and the “Head-To-Head” show is greatly missed.  (It was hosted by two of our original white whales guests Jason Cammisa and Jonny Lieberman.  Maybe we can trade a seat for an intro, lol.) Randy is so busy with so many projects, it is truly amazing that he takes the time to come onto our podcast. 

On this episode’s Dominating with Dawson, Bill wanted to talk about what a dead pedal is and how it is used on track.  We aren’t sure why he thought this was a good segment topic, but it really did turn out well. 

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 or 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. 

Randy Pobst and Cathy Fuss
Randy Pobst with Cathy from Lucky Dog

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)  Autocorrect strikes again on Randy’s earlier email in a most hilarious way.  Perhaps a future theme option.  And then Bill breaks out into a “Love Boat” reference.  Most of our listeners may need to use Google.  And then we break out into bad college food habits.  We do eventually return to cars at some point.  Promise.

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.  We have two systems for our team and Bill is looking to add a third for this season, pending CFO approval from Vicki.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.

2)  The endurance racing talk begins, and we are talking before the Champ Car race where Randy has already posted a video or two from the race on his YouTube channel.  Great video to watch.

3)  Randy has a teleporter.  It is the only way he can be at so many track events.  We saw him in Charlotte and the next thing we know, he is posting from Laguna Seca and then the next day he is back at Charlotte in the Flying Moose.

Randy Pobst in the Flying Moose
Randy in The Flying Moose

4)  It is story time about the time we shared a race car with Randy at Portland.  It was our first time doing an engine change.  Why is the Capri taking so long?  We did it in less than one day there.

5)  It appears that Randy has even more race car projects going than we do.  That is equally comforting and troubling at the same time, lol.

6)  Randy goes into several stories about driving, racing, and learning to work with cars, both mechanically and driving.  If you don’t get faster from this episode, you should listen to It again. Randy is a firm believer in constantly learning ad fully admits he is always “In Training”.

7)  One of our favorite quotes ever, – When you are in trouble, why would you want to crash faster.

8)  We discuss what you should be looking at and Randy’s preference for saying “Eyes In” vs that more standard “Eyes Up”, same meaning but a different reaction or perception by the student driver.

9)  How karting can help you with your driving but can also hinder your progression if you do not take into account the differences inherent in the different suspension and drivetrain variables in each.

10)  The difference Randy sees between racing for a team and leading a race team at an event.

11)  We eventually worked our way back to where we discussed tires and their importance in racing and your car’s performance.

12)  Randy is an adopter of our proposed racing series with 500 treadwear tires from Walmart as the spec tire for the series.  We wonder if Douglas would be interested in a partnering sponsorship.

13)  A story about a lemons race car with a stripper pole?  Yep, it’s in here and it wasn’t just a decoration.

14)  How to become a sponsored race driver?  Randy goes through how he did it and what may work for you.

15)  Randy shares several of his thoughts on getting a car to be faster and handle better.  This is one episode where if you apply what we discuss with Randy, you will be faster.

16)  Our questions are like apexes for Randy, he gets really close to them, sometimes touches on them, while he drives by at high speed, lol.

17)  Randy discusses modern cars and the plusses and minuses of the increasing horsepower and the maturation of the many driver aides.

18)  He even puts up with us and our Fast and Furious Storytime Questions.

19)  Vicki starts to discuss front wheel vs rear wheel drive cars with Randy.  She is still not a fan but maybe she will listen to Randy.

20)  Randy was also kind enough to share a secret approach he uses at Watkins Glen.

Randy Pobst with Vicki and Jen from Garage Heroes In Training
Randy Pobst with Jen and Vicki

Special Post Game Bonus:  Vicki and Randy talking about their ADD’s impact on their racing and about skid pad training. 

GHIT 0178: Randy Pobst Returns for a Second Lap

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

GHIT 0050: Our Lucky Dog Race and Portland International Raceway – 2019

We came, we saw, we were conquered.

Engine Swap at the PIR
Engine Swap at the PIR

Alan, Jennifer, Vicki, and Bill with a few drop ins cover our race weekend with the Lucky Dog Series at Portland International Raceway.  It starts with a review of practice Saturday morning, then our 7-hour endurance race Saturday and our work to get back out late Sunday. 

Proof we raced
Proof we raced

We compare Lucky Dog to our home series the 24 Hours of Lemons.  While similar, there are differences, pluses and minuses for each, so we compare the two in the continual pursuit of the perfect low budget amateur endurance car racing.

Lucky Dog
Lucky Dog Racing League

There were a ton of great teams there, most of which passed us on Saturday as we were towards the slower end of the field. 

Some of the Field at PIR
Some of the Field at PIR

We recorded this shortly after we completed Sunday so there is a bit of echo since we were in the pit. However, we did manage to give out our team awards for the weekend.  

Lucky Dog Awards
Lucky Dog Awards

Racing Results for those who are keeping track at home: 

Saturday:  We were in 37th place when our engine went away Saturday and ended up at 41st for the day.  We did not get to participate in the 2 Saturday enduros due to the engine issue.  Our fastest lap was 1:38.664 by our guest driver Randy Pobst, but we managed to 1:45.870 as our internal team best.  (Randy was able to get to 48th fastest lap of the day and Alan’s time would have placed us as the second slowest car in the 60 car field that ran a lap Saturday )

Sunday:  We ended up getting on track after a long day of engine swapping and rebuilding and finished 3 laps and ended up finishing around 48th out of the 64 cars this weekend and 48th fastest of the 48 cars that ran on Sunday. 

Fastest lap of the race weekend was 1:29.932 by Blue Bayou for reference to the relative performance to the field.

We came, we saw, we were conquered.
We came, we saw, we were conquered.

We came, we saw, we were conquered.

GHIT 0050: Our Lucky Dog Race and Portland International Raceway – 2019

Lucky Dog Portland – Saturday Night Review

An interesting day

Randy Pobst with Jennifer and Vicki at Lucky Dog Portland
Randy Pobst with Two New Friends

Here is how our day and night have gone at Lucky Dog Portland.  Its got a good, bad, and ugly, but what would you expect from us after all.  Its live and unedited from the paddock, so sound quality may be less than stellar.

We had a bit of work to do....
“We” pulled off our first engine swap at a race, barely.

Any questions, please let us know on our Instagram.  We will try to cover them tomorrow or tomorrow night if we finish fixing the car.  

Thanks again.

GHIT 0049: Lucky Dog Portland – Saturday Night Review

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