Garage Heroes (In Training)

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

Safety Third Motorsports

GHIT 0157: John and Dean from Safety Third Motorsports Discuss Race Car Preparation

John Lavin and Dean Hesser join us to discuss improvements to our car preparation processes.  This includes before leaving for the racetrack, as well as at the racetrack and after the race.  We learned a ton of things that we should have been doing but weren’t simply because we didn’t know or hadn’t thought of it yet.  We hope that this episode will save you at least one headache at the track or eliminate one breakdown or even better prevent an issue on track that causes damage to you or your car.  We don’t have a lot of can’t miss episodes, but this is one of them for sure.

In addition, Dominating with Dawson we discuss some of the goal options for endurance racing.  It is not simply a situation where you are either first or last, but really it is a race where you and your team are trying to work together and perform at the highest level internally and the final position is a relative measure of the team’s performance versus the current bar that weekend.  While winning overall, or even your class, is a great accomplishment, it is not the only measurement available each weekend, especially early in your racing career.

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)  Bill makes up a new word, “ThankYouNess”, well you know what we mean.

2)  How Dean has “capitalized” on being target fixated during a race.  Your results may vary.

3)  Then we go into a “Weekend At Bernie’s” worthy moment.  For those under 40, it’s a movie.

4)  A brief summary of why many of the Safety Third Motorsports team members have ended up using BMW’s as their weapon of choice on track.

5)  Bill cannot help but to make fun of the test drive at John’s shop where the GHIT M3 HPDE hit a deer.  Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.

6)  A discussion of their team’s racing plans for 2021 and how both teams generally decide where to race.

7)  How their team has progressed and grown over the years.  It appears that our team is actually following their progression, both in how our team is organized and how our drivers are individually progressing.  Perhaps there is hope for us.  Who knew?  Lol.

8)  How Dean and Jen both ended up learning and growing as racing drivers as a result of their track incidents.

9)  What is prepping a car?  What is involved?  What do you do before the race, during/at the race, and after the race to prepare and preserve your car and make sure that it has a higher likelihood of performing well.

10)  Basic assumption:  Assume everything is broken after a race and then verify before you take it to your next event.

11)  Develop a wear rate of consumables and moving parts and then develop a preventative maintenance plan to replace before they fail at the track.

12)  Overview:  Repair things as they break or replace them ahead of time at a certain interval.  Determine your team’s philosophy and plan appropriately. 

13)  A standard rule of thumb is to use a margin for wear, it can range from 75% to 80% to 90% of the experienced failure rate before replacing a still good part.  This does not address issues due to abuse or an accident etc.  As an example, if your front wheel bearing fails after 100 hours or racing, you may want to replace them all before they break at 75 or 80 or 90 hours.  The balance of costs and/or effort vs your acceptable safety/failure factor is a personal/team decision.

14)  Several available options range from paint marking nuts and bolts to adding safety wires.

15)  What should you do when at the track and prepping for the race in the morning.

16)  What to do the night after are race while racing the next day.

17)  What to do post-race weekend while packing up to leave the track.

18)  Why checklists are so very important and how your team will need to develop it from your own experiences and particular car.

19)  It was good to hear that we aren’t the only team to have had radio communication issues at the track.  They have come to the same solution as we have.  Painfully.

20)  The key is really to minimize the number and potential for errors.

21)  We finish up this segment with the post-race recovery process for your race car.  Don’t just put it away to wait for the next track event.

22)  We wrap up with a post episode discussion of the skid pad and the value that it has had to our driving, as well as Dean’s.

GHIT 0157: John and Dean from Safety Third Motorsports Discuss Race Car Preparation

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!  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.  Our team has improved in the almost year since Ross came on episode 100, but have our questions?  You will have to be the judge of that. 

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.  If you want an episode that will help you drive faster, Ross is the perfect guest.  We have already started our new list of questions in case we can talk him into episode 200.  If you have any, please let us know. 

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

One great thing about Ross is he can answer every single question we can think of.  The bad thing about Ross is he makes you think about it in another way.  This ends up with many more questions and usually Bill goes off and overthinks it, again.  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.  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. 

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.  We did use several specific turns at Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Monte Carlo, and Mid-Ohio to describe these types of turns explicitly.  We are also sure, Ben slipped in a VIR reference at least once or twice.  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 Ross’s 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.  Bill’s 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 “good” 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 I’m 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:  I’m ready or I’m going to the front

11e)  Friday night:  Focus on adaptability of dealing with a car that isn’t 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)  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.  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. 

14a) Most of us would be surprised by how it can help you break a plateau.  (We are still working to get a guest on the show to diver deeper into the Catalyst.  We have not given up.)  Ross coincidentally has helped in the development of the Catalyst and it really shows.  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 “heard” about, as well as a great story about Ross driving the most “evil” car he ever drove at Nazareth.

18)  Ross was even willing to entertain us with the fast and furious story time questions that we haven’t asked him already.  Some will surprise you, but all were very entertaining.  We were especially looking forward to Ross’s answers to his favorite corner of a track.

  • Ross Bentley Using The Garmin Catalyst
  • 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 0145: Our Skid Pad and Autocross Event at Lime Rock Park

  • Jennifer in the 2019 Mazda MX5
Just a bit of splashing around

We have finally gotten to our long postponed skid pad event.  Our original event in March was cancelled due to COVID 19 and when John from Safety Third Motorsports was kind enough to offer an invitation to an event at Lime Rock Park using the skid pad and autocross track, we gladly said thank you!  Was it everything we had hoped for?  Should you go to a skid pad?  Did it help us?  Would it help you?  Why do our cars always break the night before we leave?  All this and more will be answered in this episode. 

A seemingly simple subject for our Dominating with Dawson segment, but very important.  How to position your mirrors and the importance of a good seating position on performance driving. 

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)  Goals for the event going in

2)  How the event was organized.  It included a brief 1-hour classroom meeting, followed by several sessions and drills on the skid pad and ending with several sessions on an autocross course.

3)  Jennifer drove in the stock 2019 Mazda Miata MX-5 ND2.  Bill drove in the mostly stock 2017 Toyota 86 and Vicki drove her 1999 turbo NB Miata MX-5.

4)  Keeping with tradition, we had an issue with one of our cars and this time it was Vicki’s NB Miata that had two blown struts in the rear.  Parts were unavailable, but Alex Levinson came to the rescue with some struts that he had.

5)  How to change the suspension of your NB Miata twice in the parking lot of a hotel the night before, and morning of the event. 

6)  A brief review of the classroom session, with a few quiz questions to Jennifer and Vicki.  We may need another session.  Lol.

7)  Skid pad drills and what we learned.  There were three drills we tried:  speed testing, inducing understeer, and inducing oversteer. 

8)  Vicki had some struggles (again) with in car instruction and we try to get to the bottom of it and how we can look to improve that issue going forward. 

9)  A comparison of how our three drivers and our three cars compared during the skid pad event.

10)  How the autocross course was laid out and what drills we used.

11)  How Alex “The Unintended Gigolo” faired in his attempt to use all three cars on the skid pad and the autocross course.

12)  Jennifer and Vicki learned heel toe downshifting and did quite well.  Bill, not so much. 

13)  Bill goes into the autocross part of the event and had some issues with the traction of the course or his over driving, or even more likely, lack of skill.

14)  Jennifer improved so much that she actually got motion sickness for the first time while driving at the event.  And she’d do it again!

15)  How both Vicki and Jennifer learned to get comfortable with the car getting loose and even looking forward to it.  Still so much more to learn and get comfortable with, but a great first step.

16)  We cover the final part of the autocross event where we were timed.  On the GHIT team, Alex was fastest, Vicki was second, Jennifer (on an empty stomach) came in third but was by far our most consistent driver at the event.  Bill prefers to remain unquantifiable by hitting a cone and posting a DNF.

The good, the bad, and the ugly
The good, the bad, and the ugly

17)  We try to cover the event with our traditional “Good, Bad, and the Ugly” but Vicki and Jennifer had so much fun that there really wasn’t an ugly. 

18)  Vicki is planning on some additional skid pad practice in an upcoming snowy parking lot.

19)  Bill is committed to incorporating heel toe down shifting into his track driving.

20)  Ben will be very happy with the latest version of couples therapy, lol.

Special thanks to John Lavin and John Murphy for hosting and leading the event.  Hopefully, we did well enough to get another invite in the future.

GHIT 0145: Our Skid Pad and Autocross Event at Lime Rock Park

GHIT 0112: John Lavin from Safety 3rd Motorsports

Safety Third Motorpsorts
John Lavin points the way for the Safety 3rd Motorsports team

John Lavin joined us from the Safety 3rd Motorsports racing team for a great discussion of his racing and team history, including how his background in racing snowmobiles, motorcycles, and snowboarding has led to and helped with his racing cars.  His team started with an initial car that was intended for Lemons but ended up being a second gen Supra that was better fitting into an episode of “Better Call Saul” and ended up in ChampCar and started with the usual issues and tremendous stories as his team grew.  The team is currently running in several ChampCar events each year, as well as several other organizations in multiple divisions. 

Safety Third Motorsports

We are hoping to talk John into letting us attend one of their upcoming races to learn more, if they will have us.  Please follow them on Instagram at Safety3rdMotorsports. 

Safety Third Motorsports

In our Dominating with Dawson segment, we go into racing in the rain and while some complain, it’s really actually better in many ways for learning and definitely should not be skipped or avoided.

Safety Third Motorsports E36 Racecar
Safety 3rd Motorsports E36 Racecar

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)  Sharing the pain of herding cats as the team manager’s primary role.

2)  It appears John’s path is similar to Bill’s, just executed much better.

3)  VIR gets another big endorsement, and it wasn’t from Ben this time.

4)  First race stories for the team, a true 24-hour race at VIR.

5)  Why they eventually switched from a Supra to a BMW to the annoyance of all the Fast and Furious fans.

6)  Racing is really a situation of management by crisis, we agree and couldn’t have said it any better.

7)  Several discussions on the differences and benefits of a racing school, as compared to HPDE’s and track days.

8)  A comparison of ChampCar and the Lemons series, with a bit about AER as well.

9)  How the teams racing philosophy has changed as they have become faster and a bit more competitive.

10)  A very good discussion on transitioning a team from having run racing a car to racing to compete.  A challenge our team is likely approaching.

11)  We offer our excellent BBQ rub and BBQ sauce for some of their secret sauce, so far to no avail, lol.

12)  Practicing at track days vs learning from an instructor and several other benefits of instruction.

13)  A discussion on the various aspects of car control, what it is and several techniques that can be used to improve it.

14)  The everlasting rumor of Lime Rock closing has reached Vicki for the first time.

15)  John even sneaks in a discussion of the modern style racing line for Lime Rock.

16)  Since John’s team races an E36, we can’t help but discuss some of his thoughts on the E36 setups and even more importantly how to evaluate and develop them for yourself or when using a shop to assist.

17)  We even went into more depth around tire temperature and tire pressure and tire selection.

18)  A dual team meetup is preliminarily in the works and sounds like it will be great fun!  Still working on the Baja road trip invitation though.  Lol.

19)  Bill tries to talk John into lowering his standards and joining us for a race or for weekend racing fun.  Still TBD to see if John is capable of making a decision that bad.

20)   John was even gracious in acknowledging our difficulty with the rear hub bearing a few weeks back.  We may even be able to replace the control arm Bill broke after our quarantine ends.

21)  Towards the end, we even went into team HPDE and team bonding ideology that are helpful to all levels of teams.

GHIT 0112: John Lavin from Safety 3rd Motorsports