Garage Heroes In Training

Nate Tennis from DirtFish Rally school joins us on this episode to discuss rally driving, racing, and training.  Nate reviews his background (since essentially his birth) and how his school approaches teaching the principles of rally driving to their students.  His extensive background in rally and off road racing for over two decades and counting helps tremendously in teaching their students sinc...

Jen, Vicki, and Bill review how the NASA Great Lakes HPDE event at PittRace went last weekend.  It is our team's most anticipated HPDE event of the year and we were not disappointed.  Jennifer had our friend Chris as her instructor for the entire weekend and it showed as she progressed dramatically through the event in her ND Miata.  Vicki was also in HPDE 1 with another friend Jim as her student...

We try to give answers to questions our listeners want to know, usually to help them progress as drivers, but sometimes we get requests to answer questions that are not going to help you drive any better, ever.  This is one of those times and one of those episodes.  Several of you have asked us these questions at the track or via the inter webs, so here they are, as requested.   Throttle steering...

Christian "Mental" Ward joins us for a very special episode where we try to break down any barriers that are keeping you from getting started and trying high performance driving or going out to a track or autocrossing etc.  As with every Mental episode, we have tons of stories and go very, very long. So strap in for a great episode where we show various ways for you, YES YOU, to start TODAY!  PS t...

Cathy joins us on the podcast again to talk about the first ever Lucky Dog endurance race on the east coast that will take place in 4 weeks at Charlotte Motor Speedway on their Roval and we will be under the lights!  There is no way we would miss this race and it will likely be our teams only wheel to wheel race this season.  Cathy discussed how the Lucky Dog season has gone this year and what upd...

On this flashback episode, we cover our team's second ever race at Thompson with the 24 Hours of Lemons series in 2018.  How did the race go?  Well, it was our first ever two car race.  It was the first ever race for half of our team (Alan, Jennifer, Casey, and Pete).  It was our first time on track with the SpiderStang and our friends at Prompt Critical showed Liam and Cassian how to "adjust" the...

Bill Griffin has worked his way up to through the HPDE ranks to where he is a racing driver as well as an instructor, actually Jennifer's instructor from GingerMan a few weeks back.  We talk with him about his history and progression from having zero experience in performance driving to where he competes regularly with NASA and Grid Life as well as instructing when he can.  Bill grew up liking rac...

Jennifer, Vicki, and Bill check in to review how the recent HPDE at GingerMan went with NASA Great Lakes.  We are not in our usual location and are recording under a roof in a KOA near Traverse City Michigan so there may be a bit more background noise than normal but we wanted to record while everything was still very fresh, even though we were all pretty exhausted. On this week's Dominating with...

Jennifer, Vicki, and Bill are going to be attending the NASA Great Lakes HPDE at GingerMan, a new track for our team.  This is a short episode where we cover our preparation for the HPDE and our goals and areas of focus going into the HPDE event.  In addition, we cover coasting on a race track (Hint:  Don't) and how to avoid it in this episode's Dominating with Dawson segment.    We hope you enjoy...

Christina Lam is a racing driver for several series, is an instructor for Skip Barber and NASA, as well as a frequent contributor to Grass Roots Motorsports magazine.  We first started following her as her "After A Crash" 9-part series started a few months back and became instant fans of her approach and her dedication to racing, education, and giving back to the racing community.  On this episode...

Just in time for the upcoming NASA Great Lakes event at GingerMan, Chief Instructor Eric Meyer was kind enough to join us and discuss his past and current association with racing and instructing, as well as the genealogy and philosophy that has led to the current NASA Great Lakes HPDE program curriculum.  It is by far the best of the HPDE instruction we have attended across the country and we thin...

John Pagel is our guest for this episode.  John Pagel is the Tech Tyrant and is the head of tech inspection for the 24 hours of Lemons and has a shop called Evil Genius in Davis, California that serves a wide variety of metal fabrication needs for racing teams.  John also teaches how to fabricate roll cages.  When he comes east, we will be attending one of these sessions.  We thank John for all hi...

Jim "Daddy Earth" Webb, Pat "Richard Freelane" McHugh take over another episode of the podcast (lol), but it was for a great cause and contribution to our society during this COVID 19 pandemic.  Jim and Pat have been working with James Ballenger from Ballenger Motorsports to raise funds and to fabricate and distribute face masks, face shields, and all kinds of assorted PPE for the Richmond region...

Vicki, Jennifer, and Bill tried to talk through the recent work weekend at the garage and then we reviewed the NASA Great Lakes HPDE Bill attended at Mid-Ohio.  Everyone was quite tired from the weekend, but we wanted to get this out while it is still fresh in our minds and to fulfill the "fix" of a few listeners who wanted more detail from the HPDE after Bill's "too short" episode from Saturday....

A quick episode to cover the highlights of today's HPDE event at Mid Ohio with NASA Great Lakes.  We also summarize the changes within the event to account for social distancing and how it impacts the event.  We will have another episode later this week to go into greater detail, as well as review Sunday.  

We used our time machine to before we had a podcast and have a post-race review of the first every Garage Heroes In Training team racing event at NJMP.  We had a blast!  It was so easy that we doubled our team size and started racing two cars at each race.  All you need to do is prep the car, race the car, and then drive home.  Why was everyone saying this was hard?  We didn't understand.  Yet.  ...

Erik Torgeson and Chris Wilhelm joined us to talk about their racing history and the Lucky Dog racing series.  Erik is the Director of Operations and runs the Dog Pound penalty area during the races.  Chris is the head of vehicle safety and technical inspection as well as usually covering radio control and timing and scoring during the Lucky Dog races.  Erik is also known as Bulldog while Chris is...

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...

After months of badgering, we finally weakened Amanda Tully enough to where she agreed to come onto our podcast.  After a disappointing 2019 where she finished 2nd, 1st, 1st, and 1st, we couldn't wait to hear what she was going to do to improve this year, LOL.  Actually, it was a great pleasure to catch up with her and learn about her racing history and how she and her team came to dominate the ea...

Blake Field and Ben Dawson have raced many times with each other and now are on our podcast together.  While it started off as if another Race Bar takeover, we actually did provide several useful pieces of information and tips that will help you and your team at and on the track.  That is not to say the episode is without our usual banter and attempts at humor, but there may be a nugget or two in...

Brent Picasso from Autosports Lab and fellow racing driver joined us to discuss a very exciting addition to their system called TireX.  TireX allows the driver and the paddock to real time monitor the tire temperature across the tread continuously while the car is on track.  This can help in a multitude of ways including monitoring tire performance, set up effects, and driver induced effects.  In...

Randy Bish is a relatively new lemons racer for the League of Legitimate Nigerian Businessmen racing team that is off to a spectacularly good start by making all the best bad decisions possible, including racing their 1972 Ford Pinto.  On this episode, we go over his racing experiences so far and cover the topic that no one ever thought they wanted to know:  what is the best way to race a Pinto in...

Phil Wurz, fellow racing driver and the short straw drawing team member at BimmerWorld was kind enough to join us for a discussion on his racing history and add to our Usual Suspects discussion related to racing BMW, especially E36's and E46's, including a good amount about Spec E46.   Phil has been with BimmerWorld since 2007 and conducted this interview from in front of his E30 race car, one of...

Cathy McCause Fuss of the Lucky Dog racing series returns for the 8th or 9th time.  Unfortunately, only one episode has ever been published due to connection errors and other computer issues.  Why she puts up with us, we don't know, perhaps it's because she is one of the best people we have met since we started racing.   During this episode, we go over a lot of the Cathy's history and her perspect...

Julian Cordle is our guest for this episode and celebrate Blursday!  Julian races with the Snow Speeder Pilots Association racing team that races on the west coast, one of the original Lemons teams from the inaugural Altamont race.  The episode starts off with all of our usual professionalism and then, well really, who are we kidding.  The alphabet is apparently still a challenge for us.  Julian s...