On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we go over why most of our racing series require the steering wheel lock to be removed from the vehicle and why airbags are not used in race cars. Apparently, the police were in the area during our discussion, apologies for the sirens. Neither of these will help you on track in a race car and both can actually hurt you if left in place.
We finally have the whole El Jeffe team together to discuss our all ladies piloted team. Elizabeth and Audra joined Jennifer and Vicki to talk about the race, how things went over the weekend and if/when the ladies will be returning to the track together. The results of the race were exceptional. The only issues we had that were racing related were due to the initial issue we fixed on Saturday. Considering that this was Audra’s first ever wheel to wheel race and Elizabeth had only entered two pr...
On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we discuss the mutual ideas of adapting a car to a driver and adapting your driving to the car. Both of these are keys to improving your performance at and especially during a race. We even have a great time with Vicki and Ben bulldozing each other several times in a row. Lol. We lost the last few seconds so this one ends a bit more abruptly than we had hoped.
Samir Abid has been a vehicle dynamics engineer for road and racing car suspensions for over ten years. He then created a sports engineering business to help pro and Olympic teams and athletes to optimize their performance through analytical techniques. In addition, Samir is also competing himself in club level racing and understands the needs and dynamics of racing at all levels. In an effort to help fellow amateur drivers, Samir created his podcast “Your Data Driven” and website to help share ...
Our ladies team came to Thompson and even though the entire prep week blew up in our face, the weekend as a whole went fantastically. Vicki and Jen go over some of the highs and lows of the race on this episode. We are hopeful for a part 2 with Audra and Elizabeth, and perhaps even Alan, to go over their thoughts on the weekend. The El Jeffe race truck stumbled a bit at the beginning of the weekend, but we were able to work through the problem eventually with a bit of help from our friends in th...
On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we cover the new to Jennifer term of tossing a car into a turn. While it seems to be losing popularity, we have heard it a few times at the track in the paddock, so in our pursuit of not looking like we don't know anything, we thought we would cover it here. We then move into a discussion of driving styles and choices that may help you as well. A link to the episode: https://tinyurl.com/DwD223
Ryan Power recently graduated from comp school with his racing license and competes in wheel to wheel sprint races in his 2019 ND2 Miata. Bill had met Ryan and been driving at HPDE’s with Ryan for the past few seasons. While still relatively new at racing, Ryan’s results are very good for his rookie season with several podium finishes and race wins. Unfortunately, Ryan has also experienced a significant incident on track and seen the inherent risk in racing wheel to wheel. We wanted to cover Rya...
We are planning for our first ever All Ladies 24 Hours of Lemons racing entry at the upcoming Thompson event. Vicki and Jennifer will be racing in the 2003 Chevy S-10/Isuzu Hombre race truck. They will be joined by past podcast guests Elizabeth and Audra, for her first wheel to wheel racing event. Alan will be racing in the 1984 Mustang GT Turbo with his sons Bennett and Quinn, who is joining us for his first race, and Elazar with Bill as a backup. We go through our prepping of the drivers and c...
On this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we go into what is meant by log booking or having a race car that is log booked. It is really not terribly complicated but it is something that you may eventually need to do and it is always better to not sound uninformed. Let us do that for you, lol. (PS It turns out we do have a log book from Lucky Dog, we just didn't know that was what it was.) You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Goo...
GHIT 0 218 : Scott Robertson from the Track Walking podcast (Part 2 of Our GLTC Series) For this episode, Scott Robertson reviews a variety of topics including his racing in the Grid Life GLTC series, his multiple One Lap of America entries, being a driving instructor, and his Track Walking podcast. Scott had an ill timed racing incident earlier this year just prior to the 2021 One Lap of America, not that any racing accident is ever well timed. He was somehow able to get the car back in running...
Our season highlight is the NASA Great Lakes HPDE event at PittRace and this year was no exception. Our team attendees consisted of Jennifer, Vicki, and Liam in the HPDE 2 sessions, and Bill was in the HPDE 4 group, as well as auditing several of the HPDE 1 and 2 classrooms and track sessions. As always, we were joined by our Three Pedal Mafia/Everyone racers podcast friend Chris, Chrissy, Jeff, and Jim. In total, we had 8 drivers in our paddock area in the HPDE classes and 6 cars for this event...
In this issue of Dominating with Dawson, we go into what is meant by “bedding of brakes” and several ways that it can be done. Thank you to our listener A. Powers for writing in with this question. For even more details related to Brake Pads and many other braking components, please go to our episode with Wendy from Porterfields on episode 59. Quick link: https://tinyurl.com/WendyFromPorterfields You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast...
As a bonus, here is Alan’s original introduction from all the way back on Episode Number 2. We hope you enjoy getting to know us better and learning where we are (or maybe where we think we are) and where we wish to go in the coming years. If we missed something that you wanted to know, please let us know on our website or Instagram or Facebook. You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, and YouTube etc. Also, i...
It has been several years since we did our host/driver introductions and we thought we’d update our newer listeners with a bit of background from each of our hosts. Alan joined our team about 2 minutes after Vicki posted something about our first race. He has been a car guy since birth and is a trained mechanic and worked on real cars for several years prior to joining our team. Alan has succeeded in getting all four of his immediate family to race with us, as well as his brother. He has adopted...
It has been several years since we did our host/driver introductions and we thought we would update our newer listeners with a bit of background from each of our hosts. You can probably blame Bill for most of our team and our podcast, but he does have noble goals, lol. Bill was essentially a newbie to racing, driving, and pretty much remains so as far as car mechanical skills. As always, our motto of “if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing” applies to our team, our cars, and his driving educa...
We have been following the Grid Life series, especially their GLTC series for the last few years and since our schedules don't align this year, we thought we would interview several of the drivers, teams, and hosts for the next few episodes. Tiffany Kelly and Justin Kelly are both top drivers in the GLTC series and have competed as Team Kelly Racing. In addition, they have a racing school to teach other drivers and also race shifter karts to further hone their skills. During this episode, we go ...
It has been several months since we did a WOOT episode where we go Way Off Our Topic of racing and go into another are of our lives, our fandom of virtually all things superheroes. In this episode , we go over our thoughts about the three recent Disney+ MCU related shows: WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki, as well as the most recent Black Widow movie. This recording was prior to the season finale of Loki, so our predictions may prove accurate, insightful, or down right stupid,...
It has been several years since we did our host/driver introductions and we thought we’d update our newer listeners with a bit of background from each of our hosts. Jennifer was a self proclaimed driver that started racing at less than zero. She attended our first race and joined the team as a driver at our second race. She has probably improved the most of any of our drivers to this point and is now a solid race driver and continuing to improve quickly. On this episode, we go over where Jennife...
It has been several years since we did our host/driver introductions and we thought we’d update our newer listeners with a bit of background from each of our hosts. Vicki started from ground zero as a newbie to racing, driving, and car mechanics and has progressed to become one of our top mechanics and an excellent racing driver. We go over where Vicki is currently in her driving career and what her goals are for the next few years. As a bonus, we included the original introduction we had way ba...
Will aerodynamics help your racing car? We begin to explore the field of aerodynamics with Johnny Cichowski from Nine Lives Racing on this episode. As an introductory episode, we start with the fundamentals and work our way towards laying out a plan for adding aero to a race car that will result in actually having a faster race car. We started with the very basics of defining most of the basic individual components and then looked at the factors that affect the performance of the car and then mo...
“Tony Stark” was the obvious lead in to this episode with PGR Racing and their EV racing car that recently competed in the 2021 One Lap of America. On this episode, Andrew DeKoning and Chad Martin go into the pluses and minuses of racing an electric vehicle in the One Lap of America and racing an EV in general. We really had no reference to racing an EV, except for those unfounded rumors on several golf courses. Bill was stuck late at work so he sounds a bit “tinny” for most of this episode. We ...
We are all suffering from a serious sleep deprived, post-race weekend hangover, and we are all calling in from across the US with varying internet speed and connections. It starts with the somewhat normal Race Bar takeover and then we go into the race. For this event, our drivers consisted of Vicki, Alan, and Jennifer and our two adopted teammates Aaron Diamond from the Saabs of Anarchy racing team and Elazar Mann from Race Bar. It was a great weekend with many, many highs, and a few notable low...
Budget endurance auto racing is a worldwide passion and Motor Events Racing is leading the way across Australia and looking to grow the sport and share high performance driving with everyone interested or soon to be interested. The group sponsors two different series for those with different driving skill levels, budgets, and interests. For those not familiar with the details of the tracks available in Australia, we go into the different venues, types of racing, and future plans to open up endur...
We went back to Mid Ohio for a second lap in 2021 with Vicki, Jennifer, and Bill attending the May NASA Great Lakes event. It started out as a wet track and at Mid Ohio and that is always especially entertaining. We raced a turbo 1999 Mazda Miata (NB), a 2019 Mazda Miata, and a 2004 BMW M3 (E46) all were on street tires and racing brake pads and fluid. We go over the event where Vicki and Jen were in the HPDE 2 run group and Bill was in the HPDE 3 group. It all started out innocently enough and ...
Our second ever non-PG podcast, but it was so worth it. Peter Hopelain joins us to discuss Bill’s bucket list goal of racing in the Thunderhill 25 endurance race. Peter has raced in the Thunderhill 25 nearly every year and also been on the podium several times and recently won his team’s class. We had a great discussion of the background of the race and how to prepare and compete. Peter was also kind enough to stay on with us to discuss racing in general, his non-profit racing team, as well as s...
We review our latest high performance driving education (HPDE) event at New Jersey Motorsports Park (NJMP) in Millville, New Jersey. We had four drivers at the event from our team. Jennifer, Vicki, and Liam were in the HPDE 2 run group for this weekend and Bill was in the HPDE 3-4 group. We each learned quite a bit a this event and we are all better drivers after. On this episode’s Dominating with Dawson, Ben goes into the acronym OSB, which is sometimes used to describe someone in a learning en...
Andrew Rains returned to discuss the new second generation Apex Pro and the new release of the App. This episode was recorded a few weeks ago, but we go into the latest changes to the Apex Pro hardware and the Apex Pro software/app and some of Andrew’s recent racing with Grid Life in the GLTC series at National Corvette Museum Motorsports track (NCM) a very challenging track with lots of turns and a wide variety of turns and use it as a basis for showing some of the information that can be gaine...
Shawn Sampson of Sampson Racing Communications essentially started the use of in-car radio system use for amateur racing about 30 years ago. Since then, he has been working with all types of racing and racing organizations including NASCAR, NASA, and SCCA, as well as the US Coast Guard. During the episode, we go into the different types of radios, their use and capabilities, as well as various installation tips of what to do, and in our case a several things we should not have done. Our team has...
Ross Bentley was kind enough to return for a third time that turned out to be his fourth appearance thanks to the mysteries of podcast recording and his recent episode on the One Lap of America event. Jennifer, Ben, and Bill were able to go through a ton of great questions that were sent in by several of our listeners, as well as a few we had hoped to cover with Ross. As most of you know, Ross has literally written the book, actually a series, on high performance driving and racing and continues...
We had been planning to have Eric on the podcast for several months but couldn't wait any more after he went to his first wheel to wheel event a few weeks ago at PittRace. We first heard of Eric as a result of his two Facebook groups related to high performance driving and high performance driving fitness. He was joined on this episode by his teammate Fred. They are forming a new racing team to help satisfy their recently acquired wheel to wheel racing itch. On this episode’s Dominating with Daw...
