Garage Heroes In Training

GHIT 304:  Southern Fried Heaps Rally 2022 - Day 2 At the conclusion of day 2 of the rally, Jeff Stobbs joins us again from the Mellow Mushroom to summarize another great day.  We are then joined by pirate Phyllis who was driving and plundering in their yellow C2 Corvette.  Next up for this episode we talk with Jake who competes in the "big block" rental car class after a last minute mechanical pr...

GHIT 303:  Southern Fried Heaps Rally 2022 - Day 1 Jeff Stobbs and Donnie Petrunak join us to review the first day of this years Southern Fried Heaps rally that started in Mobile Alabama.  Highlights include a stop at a decommissioned battleship and a team driving a Studebaker that set a record for sourcing a spare part that may never be broken.  Tune in each day for a review of the highlights, lo...

GHIT 302:  Race Weekend Recap:  Lucky Dog Racing at CMP After a series of failed intros, Bill is interrogated tonight about how the race weekend went with Skunk Oil Racing.  It was quite a weekend and some hardware was taken home from the track.  As always, Cathy and the Lucky Dog family had a superb event and we were honored to work on our car in their garage all weekend, lol.  This is our fourth...

DwD 0301:  the Importance of Knowing the Top 10'ish Cars In an Endurance Race On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we talk about why it is important to know the top ten or so cars in an endurance race.  There are plenty of reasons to know this, especially if you are one of the top ten, but it is also important if you are not.  Also, the strategic implications of being outside the overall top t...

GHIT 300:  Ross Bentley Returns to Celebrate Episode 300 Ross Bentley returns to celebrate our 300th episode with us.  Ross is a world renowned racing coach and has competed at the highest levels of racing, including Indy cars and nearly every endurance racing event of note.  During this episode, we try to cover a variety of racing related questions and topics, as well as reporting back to Ross ho...

GHiT 0299: James Candelaria from Candelaria Racing Products (makers of the Sentinel System) and Hagerty's The Drive Within with Round 3 Racing We continue our introduction to Round 3 Racing (R3R) and Hagerty's  "The Drive Within" with another team member James Candelaria.  James races with the R3R team in the WRL endurance racing series.  Last season James was racing in the #601 Porsche Boxster an...

GHiT 0298: Racing Suits, Shoes, and Gloves with AlpineStars Fabryce Kutyba is with the North American Alpinestars group and was kind enough to join us for a quick discussion on driver protection equipment, including racing suits, racing shoes, and gloves.  We cover several key aspects of each component and the overall system to protect the driver.   For instance, one piece vs two piece drivers sui...

DwD 0297:  Track Driving - With Nanny's or Without On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we go into another listener submitted question from Ron Mexico related to driving on track with the car's driver nanny's on.  First we cover from a high level what a driving nanny is and then we go into our thoughts on driving on track with the nanny's "assisting" you and when/if there is ever a good time t...

GHiT 0296: Mo Dadkhah from Hagerty's The Drive Within We first were introduced to Mo Dadkhah during our episode with Loni Unser and then we saw that he was on "The Drive Within" with the rest of the Round Three Racing  team (R3R) as they competed in the WRL endurance racing series.  The show is sponsored by Hagerty and appears on their site as well as the Motor Trend channel.  Mo is one of the dri...

DwD 0295:  Discussing and Defining Driving at "X" Tenths On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we talk about one of those concepts that is always discussed in the paddocks, especially at HPDE's and endurance races.  This week we go through a discussion of driving "intensity" that is often referred to in the arbitrary units of "tenths" as in driving at 8 tenths or 9 tenths or never drive at 10 t...

GHiT 0294:  ChrisFix - Endurance Racer Most of you will know ChrisFix from his YouTube channel or from his presence on social media.  We have been subscribers to his YouTube channel prior to even trying our hand at racing.  Then last year, we were one of the first to see his video drop on his teams upcoming endurance racing adventure with the 24 Hours of Lemons team and it even happened to be at a...

DwD 0302:  Getting Advanced in HPDE Too Quickly On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, another listener submitted question leads to a discussion of getting advanced too quickly in HPDE.  While this may initially be flattering to one's ego, it may not be the best for the HPDE student's overall progress and development as a driver and can also lead to increased risk on track that does not directly...

GHIT 0292: Aaron Jongbloedt Aaron Jongbloedt from Jungle Motorsports joins us for this episode and we discuss all things racing, even ice boating.  Aaron seems to race in all series and all types of racing, we may even be able to make it to an ice racing event with him post plague.  Since he has such a wide range of experiences, we try to cover many of them as possible to show how each series and...

GHIT 0291:  Mark Petronis - Answers of F&F Story Time Questions - Part 2 Mark Petronis has set track many records and won more than his share of races but recently had a very serious on track incident and thankfully it looks like he is in the process winning his recovery battle as well.  We talk with Mark about all things racing and how he is a great example for the importance and effectiveness of...

DwD 0290:  Entering a Race with Zero Experience On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we go into a listeners question related to racing wheel to wheel on track with zero track experience.  While there are several opportunities to race with zero or little experience, we also go into several alternative paths that may be better choice for certain drivers.  As a bonus, Vicki, Jennifer, Bill, and B...

GHIT 0289:  Adam Jabaay Returns to Talk All Things GRIDLIFE GLTC, Sundae Cup, and their HPDE Program Adam Jabaay returns to talk all things GRIDLIFE.  Adam is the co-founder of the GRIDLIFE event series and the series is designed to be the track events that the GRIDLIFE team would want to attend.  We had a series on last year that covered several of the wheel to wheel GLTC (Grid Life Touring Cup)...

GHIT 0288:  Mark Petronis - On Driver and Car Safety and Recovering from an On Track Incident - Part 1 Mark Petronis has set track many records and won more than his share of races but recently had a very serious on track incident and thankfully it looks like he is in the process winning his recovery battle as well.  We talk with Mark about all things racing and how he is a great example for the i...

DwD 0287:  Increasing Grip - By the Driver - Part 1 On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we start to try to go into a topic we heard on the (tremendous) Track Walking podcast when they had Paul Gerrard on as a guest and they were discussing several factors that a driver can influence the limit of grip on track.  The information, and especially the discussion, was so valuable we try to go into...

GHIT 0286:  Caroline Yun - Driver Progression Caroline Yun is an avid high performance driving enthusiast who has recently worked her way up through the Southern California NASA HPDE ladder system and has begun her wheel to wheel and time trial (TT) racing career in Honda Challenge.  She recently completed here first ever endurance race at Sonoma with the award winning Initial Dingus team.  As Car...

GHIT 0 285 :  Thank You Three Pedal Mafia We have four members of the Three Pedal Mafia come up to help Vicki and Bill work on the two Honda project cars for this winter.  We had originally planned a full cage party work weekend but had postponed it until February or until the Covid spike recedes.  What we were able to accomplish with their skills in such a short time was amazing.  They came, they...

In this Dominating with Dawson episode, we use a recent article by podcast friend Ross Bentley for this second installment of the If-Then Game.  On this week's episode, we focus on corner entry.  Join us and play along with our two contestants from the Garage Heroes In Training Team.  We are sure this will go into global syndication soon, lol.  It ends early due to a recording issue, but is defini...

GHIT 0 283 :  Global MX-5 Cup with Todd Flis of Flis Performance Todd Flis has been involved with various levels of racing and now his company Flis Performance provides all of the cars for the series.  The Global MX-5 Cup is a great entry level series for professional racing.  The races are typically some of the most competitive races we see with margins of victory usually measured in a few thousa...

DwD 0282: Slow In Fast Out - Truth or Fiction On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we discuss the often referred to concept of "slow in, fast out" for turns especially early in your high performance driving career.  As with most aspects of driving, this is a generic truth but not a 100% principle to carry with you for every situation and every turn.  The ability to understand when and where to...

GHIT 0 280 :  Scott McMichael - Long Time Dirt and Endurance Racer Scott McMichael started out as a dirt track racer and has transitioned to endurance racing as and arrive and drive and grand poohbah of the Sir Jackie Stewart's Coin Purse Racing and founder of The Unofficial Facebook Group of the 24 Hours of Lemons(TM).  Scott was long overdue to come on the podcast.  We discuss many aspects of bo...

DwD 0274:  Pedal Application and Release On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we go into an aspect of the smooth is fast principle by going into the ways that each of us apply and release the throttle (or gas pedal) and the brake pedals.  To the surprise of no one, Ben is almost a 100% full hammer down while our ladies have a bit of a different practice at this point in their growth as drivers...