Garage Heroes In Training

GHIT 0375:  Ken Hill – On The Line and the Fundamentals of Performance Driving Ken Hill returns to the podcast to discuss the racing line and the key, fundamental factors that contribute to consistent, fast, and safe lap times.  As with all things related to high performance driving and racing, the optimal line is really a complex solution to a series of variables including track conditions, car p...

DwD 0374:  What Line Is It Anyway? – An Why Are There So Many A long time listener wrote in and had a question about "The Line".  It appears that there are several lines.  One line is the school line or the HPDE line.  Then there is the race line or racing line.  It appears that the listener is stuck between the line the "looks" correct to them, and the school line and is trying to transition to t...

GHIT 0373:  JG Pasterjak from Grassroots Motorsports JG Pasterjak joins us for a great episode that starts off with a brief history of his driving and work with Grassroots Motorsports magazine and website.  In addition to being involved with the articles, JG is also a passionate driver and tinkerer on his car and many of the project cars that are the subject of many articles and threads within the...

DwD 0372:  Troubleshooting a Crank No Start Condition On this Dominating with Dawson, we take advantage of a problem that we are having with our 1993 Honda Civic SI (D16Z6 for the home gamers) race car and use it as a working example of how to troubleshoot an issue.  As with most parts of working on a car, we are a work in progress, some would even say "In Training", lol.  We utilize our pain to t...

GHIT 0371:  Tim Burr – Our First Member of the Sorry For Party Racing Team One of the fun things about meeting someone on the Sorry For Party team for the first time is whether they are in their race team regalia or in civilian clothes.  We have found that often we have met the same person twice without knowing it.  Tim Burr is no exception.  We finally placed the name and the face at the spring P...

DwD 0370:  Overdriving vs. Underdriving When trying to improve as a driver there are many instances where the same driver can be overdriving their car and at other points on the track can be underdriving.  In addition, the best of us also can have areas where we do one or the other and our lap times area adversely affected.  For this episode, we talk about some indications of a driver under drivin...

GHIT 0369:  Passing Series – Part 1 of Many An episode that has been in the making for well over a year, we finally start our passing series with part one.  Guest hosts are Ben Dawson and returning guest Blake Fields.  For this episode we approach the concept and jargon of passing from the perspective of the passing car and the car being passed.  The goal is always to do this as safely as possible...

GHIT 0368:  Team Status Update After having a few inquiries at the track and via social media, we begin to review what we are up to and working on as a team and some of the projects and issue we are working on.  This episode is a partial laundry list of some of the more significant near term items we are working on or pondering, as well as a few of our goals going into the approaching offseason. ...

DwD 0367:  "Expensive" Tools That Are Worth It This Dominating with Dawson is aimed at the tools that we think are worth spending the money on.  These are tools that are critical to the function of your car or where accuracy is required, as well as tools where they just make things so much easier that they are worth every penny that they cost.  We then go into places where you can save a significa...

DwD 0367:  Gridding at an HPDE This Dominating with Dawson is aimed at what came be source of pre-event angst and again deals with the unknown.  This time we go through what is meant by gridding ahead of an HPDE stint.  In addition, we discuss some of the decisions and thoughts that we have used to improve the HPDE experience.  This includes why and where to grid up for the stint as a function of...

GHIT 0366:  Brad and Eric from the Break/Fix Podcast and Gran Touring Motorsports Brad and Eric from the Break Fix Podcast and Gran Touring Motorsports which is a media group that is interested in helping grow and stoke the enthusiasm for all car related culture and grow the friendships that develop from our shared passion.  Since our podcasts share almost identical goals, we thought it would be a...

DwD 0365:  Gridding at an HPDE This Dominating with Dawson is aimed at what came be source of pre-event angst and again deals with the unknown.  This time we go through what is meant by gridding ahead of an HPDE stint.  In addition, we discuss some of the decisions and thoughts that we have used to improve the HPDE experience.  This includes why and where to grid up for the stint as a function of...

GHIT 0363  Race Review of Thompson 2022 with the 24 Hours of Lemons We entered three cars into this year's 24 Hours of lemons race with the Honda Civic/Cookie Car still limping after our GridLife event, the El Jeffe/Bad Hombre/Trophy Truck/Chevy S10/Isuzu Hombre etc. prepped and ready for battle, and the MooStang/SpiderStang/1984 Mustang GT Turbo locked and loaded, almost.  This weekend was anothe...

DwD 0362:  Racing 101:  What is a Drivers Meeting and Why You Should  Always Attend In our continuing introduction to racing series and breaking down some of the jargon involved with getting into driving on a track, we talk through with Ben what a drivers meeting is, what is usually covered, and why you should always attend, even if you have been to literally hundreds of them.  We then go into a r...

WOOT 0361  Thor Love and Thunder and San Diego Comic Con 2022 Another Way Off Our Normal topic episode where we talk about our thoughts on Thor Love and Thunder movie, how the recent MCU movies and shows have been, as well as a review of last week's San Diego Comic Con.  We do manage to talk about cars for about 15 seconds but most of this is comic book movie related and FULL SPOILER rules are in...

DwD 0360:  Optimal Mirror Positioning Tips One of the fundamental aspects of racing that everyone agrees upon is the importance of your vision and constantly working to improve it.  Unfortunately, when you are starting out, this is even more important since it is very likely that your relative speed is lower than some of the other more experience drivers on a track and it is demanding both in fron...

GHIT 0359  GridLife's NJMP 2022 Event with E1R's Chris and Chrissy We were finally able to go to our first GridLife event this year at NJMP and to make it even better we were there with our friends from the Everyone Racers podcast Chris and Chrissy.  Since we were all together, we decided to do a podcast mashup.  We were split up among the intermediate and advanced HPDE groups for this weekend.  C...

GHIT 0358:  Rally Wrap Up:  The 2022 Rust Belt Ramble Rally Master Jeff Stobbs returns to report in live from the awards ceremony of this year's Rust Belt Ramble Rally between Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, The year there was a ceremony for dearly departed car makes of the past.  We cover highlights of the trip as well as many of the entries.  We are then joined by Finn, from The Car Farm channel on...

DwD 0357:  Roles Within a Team Defined It is often said that the key to winning an endurance race is a management problem and not primarily a speed problem.  In this Dominating with Dawson episode, we go over some of the roles that are needed to successfully accomplish a racing or HPDE event.  While each of the roles are needed, it is very often that each team member will be required to help the t...

DwD 0356:  Why Do We Want You to Come Race With Us? One of our goals for the podcast is to get everyone out to a track or autocross etc. and enjoy high performance driving or racing with us, but we are often asked why.  So we take this Dominating With Dawson episode as an opportunity to explain some of the many reasons why we hope that you will try out this great and challenging sport. A link to t...

GHIT 0355:  Cameron Conover from Conover Motorsports Cameron Conover has been working in motorsports for two decades and Conover Motorsports offers sales and service support of the entire RaceCapture portfolio, as well as mechanical support for your vehicle.  We worked with Cameron on our two RaceCapture installations and as always, if we can do it, anyone can.  With the recent upgrade in the conn...

DwD 0354:  Overdoing It and Leading to Potential Burnout As is often the case, we sometimes show you what not to do.  This time, it was after three straight race weekends in multiple states that Bill entered a zombie state.  This is not optimal for performance or enjoyment and can not only turn a fun recreational past time into a large effort/struggle, but can also impact your performance and pote...

GHIT 0353:  Chris Haase Racer, Lemons Judge, and Cookie Stealer Chris Haase has been racing with the 24 Hours of Lemons for more than a decade and began judging a few years ago.  All was going so well until he stole a Cookie.  Lol.  We had been looking to have Chris on the podcast for a while but after last Month's race at NJMP Thunderbolt, we had to bring him on and interrogate him a bit.  During...

GHIT 0352:  Our Track Day at the NY Safety Track When we were invited to a new track for an HPDE we did what we always say to do – "say yes" and thank you.  Our drivers for the event were Vicki, Alan, and Jen.  Bill was there primarily to help instruct and to start breaking in our new race car.  Even better, Kyle Lockrow said he wanted to come over and help out in any way.  Finally, someone to ins...

DwD 0351:  What is rotation – Part 4 or maybe more? We are going to take advantage of this week's Judge Jeremy covering for Ben and go into car rotation for at least the fourth time.  We try to discuss what people are talking about when they refer to a car having good or bad rotation or how they were able to get the car to rotate through a turn.  The last time we looked, there are several potentia...