Garage Heroes In Training

GHIT 0449:  Race Recap: PittRace 2023 with the 24 Hours of Lemons This is our first race of the year.   This is our first race with the new rebuilt engine and transmission.   It's a race at a track we know and love.   How did it go?   Did it go?   Who stole our Cookie?   Its all in this episode, and more A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/PittRace2023 If you would like to help grow our...

DwD 0448:   How Best to Deal with Mistakes On Track On this Dominating with Dawson, Ben speculates on what to do if he were to ever make a mistake on track.   Bill and Vicki speak from more direct personal experience.   We discuss things from as small as momentary losses of time or traction on track, all the way up to and including a big incident with damage to the car or drivers. We also talk abo...

GHiT 0447:  Tiffany and Justin Kelly Return for a Second Lap We catch up with Justin and Tiffany Kelly and learn all about what they have been up to since we last spoke.   Their current focus is on shifter karts and instruction.   We had never covered shifter karts to this point on the podcast and the performance of a shifter kart almost demands that you grow as a driver quickly.   So if you are l...

DwD 0446:   Is Perfection Keeping You From Starting On this episode we talk about what we see as the second most frequent issue that we see that keeps people from going on track or from autocrossing etc.   That is the pursuit of perfection in preparation.   We go over the base level of driving and car preparation to get started and several of the most frequent "reasons" that the person can't start...

GHiT 0445:  Nik Romano from Fast Sideway – Suspension 101 – Part 2 We started our introduction to suspensions on episode 430 with Nik Romano.   Nik rejoins for part 2 and we move on from suspension geometry and start to deal with the most important aspect of a suspension by shifting our focus to the interaction of the tire with the track.   We go into a simple way to test how/if your suspension ge...

DwD 0444:   Dealing with a Bad Handling Car Despite all of our efforts to prepare the ideal car, some of us have had to deal with a car that is ill mannered or at least not ideal to what we as the driver would like.   During this episode, we talk about a few of the times that we have been on track and the car was less than ideal.   We then also go into some of the ways to deal with this or drive a...

GHIT 0443:  Jim Tramontano from No Money Motorsports As everyone knows, you cannot even think about racing unless you are an independently wealthy multimillionaire.   Nope.   Jim Tramontano from No Money Motorsports runs full seasons of racing in one of the most competitive racing series of racing while working full time as a teacher.   Jim not only competes in Spec Miata but wins races.   His blo...

DwD 0442:   Track Markers – Their Use and Options On this episode of Dominating with Dawson, we go into how to determine what markers to use when on track and some of our personal preferences for selecting markers.   Initially, Ben goes into the way that he prepares for an upcoming track and how he uses this preparation to get his markers ahead of even arriving at the track.   The importance of ma...

GHIT 0441:  Skye Romanoff - On Rally Cross and Beyond Skye Romanoff has raced in a variety of disciplines and has promoted Rally Cross in California and nationwide.  She has recently been invited by the Fern GP team for some test days in England (at Silverstone, how cool is that), with the potential of  of driving driving in their Formula 3 cars in the future.  If you aren't familiar with Rally Cr...

DwD 0440:   Antilock Braking Systems (ABS) On Track On this episode of Dominating with Dawson, Blake fills in for Ben and we discuss the proper use of ABS systems on a race track.   There are several advantages to using ABS on track, especially when a track is wet, but there are also a few things to be aware of and even potentially better ways to drive than using the ABS system.   Ben does make a...

GHiT 0439:  Mario Korf from the Occam's Racers Mario Korf comes on the podcast, and we talk all things aero and beyond.   Mario has a blog that is on our can't miss list.   The blog is called Occam's Racer and in it he tries to understand and explain aero for racing through tons of experiments to support or disprove theories.   In addition, Mario was on the team that Ben raced with for his first L...

For anyone over 18 and who has any interest or especially if you love music, here is our first episode with an Explicit tag and not for the kiddies, but it just flowed naturally that we are releasing it as is (We are running it live).  If there are kids in the car with you, you may want to listen to this episode later.   In a long overdue Way Off Our Topic (WOOT) episode, we are joined by a specia...

DwD 0438:   Fuel Conservation Methods When endurance racing, the race can often be won or lost by the pit stop strategy and sometimes the race breaks down in such a way that your team can be a few laps short from what is needed to avoid another pit stop and that can make or break the victory.   Ben and Bill discuss some of their favorite ways to save a little gas and extend the number of laps and...

GHIT 0437:  Dion von Moltke Returns and We Talk All Things Racing Dion von Moltke has raced professionally at some of the highest levels and has started an online coaching and education coaching business that includes some of the best racing (and other) coaches across the globe.   We have been subscribers since day one and never fail to see improvements after every session and know of nothing that...

DwD 0436:   Blind Corners One of the things that a lot of beginners have trouble with is when they are approaching a corner of the track that does not allow the driver to see around the corner.   While this can be disconcerting, this should not be a big deal for you on track.   Ben offers up some great advice on dealing with blind corners and starts with the ever important topic of the safety of g...

GHiT 0435:  Host of the Blind Apex Podcast and Honda Challenge Race Driver – Kaan Canturk Once we found the Blind Apex podcast, we knew we had to have Kaan on our podcast.   Kaan competes primarily in the NASA Mid Atlantic Honda Challenge H2 series.   He started a podcast that is aimed at helping everyone get better at racing and optimizing their racing program.   During this episode we go over ho...

GHiT 0434:  GHIT Builds an Engine and a Trans??? – With a Ton of help Our engine gave up at our last race and we needed to (finally) start prepping for real for the upcoming 2023 season.   As everyone knows, we started knowing (less than) nothing about car repairs and this week we took on our biggest challenge to date, pull the entire drive train in our 1993 Honda Civic EG Hatchback, build an engi...

DwD 0433:   Turbo Charger vs a Super Charger On this week's Dominating with Dawson, Ben and Bill go into what the differences are between a turbocharger and a super charger.   We have received a few emails recently and seen some posts on the various social medias that indicate at least a few people seem to be confused about each and how they work.   We thought we would take a shot at going into so...

GHiT 0432:  Track Insurance with Ryan Staub from Lockton Motorsports We were joined by Ryan Staub from Lockton Motorsports to discuss a topic we have never covered yet, track day insurance.   This is an essential area to consider if you cannot afford to walk away from your car in case of an accident on track.   Track insurance and off track insurance can vary quite widely and is almost always NOT...

DwD 0431:   Throttle Applications Tips As Ken Hill said in his past podcast, the fastest lap is created by the driver who is on wide open throttle the longest.   So how do you get there best?   Do you roll on the throttle or feather it, or slam it down to the floor, etc., etc., etc.   Also, does it matter?   Does it vary from turn to turn?   Does it vary from car to car or turn to turn?   How many...

  GHiT 0430:  Nik Romano from Fast Sideway – Suspension 101 – Part 1 Nik Romano joins us to start to dig into the aspect of the race car that we know the least about, the suspension and suspension adjustments.   In this episode, we go into the most common different types of suspensions and suspension design and how they work and how these designs and adjustments can lead to some of the biggest gai...

DwD 0429:   How Best to Progress Your Car - Properly You find yourself with a car that you want to take to the track.   What do you do?   Where do you start?   Who can you rely on to find good information?   We didn't know when we started.   We have been doing this for a bit and offer up our suggestions on what to do, how to do it, and where to find information to assist you in getting your car pr...

GHiT 0428:  Tom O'Gorman Returns for a Second Lap Tom O returns for a second lap and we catch up on what he has been up to since his last visit.   This includes his new podcast with DJ Alessandrini called "Lizard Brains".   Did we talk about Tom's recent IMSA pro race at Daytona?   Yep.   Did we talk about the twin autocross events last year in a brand new Acura NSX?   Indeed.   What about enduran...

DwD 0427:  Top 5 Tracks that are Fun to Drive With the upcoming 2023 One lap of America coming up, Ben, Vicki, Jennifer, and Bill decided to have a lighter DwD episode and go over what are their Top 5 tracks that are fun to drive.  We also go into some of the details of the track that make them so much fun.  We then end with a review of some of our favorite turns we have driven so far. So what is...

GHiT 0426:  Tom Thalmann and His 675,000+ mile 911 We read about Tom and his daily driven Porsche 911 Turbo and Ben said "I need to know more about this guy".  So we did.  We talk about how Tom has bonded with his 996 turbo and many stories of the drives and what it has taken to keep the car on the street.  Have not fear though, Tom also takes the car on track several times each year.  So if you s...