DwD 0378: Racing 101: Jargon – What is Brake Pad Walk Back or Knock Back On our racing 101 series, we often go over jargon that can confuse you at the track. In this episode, we start to talk about brake pad walk back or knock back. This can occur on many cars and be caused by several sources. We try to talk about what it would feel like on your car and what you can do to minimize its effect while on track. We also speculate on what can be the sources in your braking system that can lead to havi...
Sep 27, 2022•25 min•Season 5Ep. 378
GHIT 0377: Gary McCormick From Tweed Motorsports After racing, well almost racing with us, at our last race at Thompson, Gary is now a guest on the podcast and welcomed back at any event we attend in the future. We talk with Gary about his experience with rugby and his transition from traditional ball and stick sports into what is now his racing team - Tweed Motorsports. Having raced in many disciplines and with many series in a rapid succession, Gary provides his perspective on endurance racing...
Sep 26, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 5Ep. 377
DwD 0376: Threshold Braking – One Tool to Rule Them All ? On this Dominating with Dawson, return to the topic of threshold braking and address several aspects of the technique. In addition, we start to review several ways to practice the technique safely on track. We then discuss the proper use of the technique, where and when, as well as how to determine when to use the technique and potentially where not to utilize it. There is a bit of disagreement on the team on the utilization of threshold ...
Sep 20, 2022•40 min•Season 5Ep. 376
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 performance, and driver skill, but the "line" is really fundamental with minor changes to account for t...
Sep 19, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Season 5Ep. 375
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 the racing line. All of this is leading to a bit of indecision and almost confusion on track. Not a good s...
Sep 13, 2022•32 min•Season 5Ep. 374
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 magazine and website. We are often searching the GRM website when we are trying to solve a problem or...
Sep 12, 2022•1 hr 39 min•Season 5Ep. 373
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 try to work through the logic of a car not working and trying to diagnose the issue. If you like these t...
Sep 06, 2022•27 min•Season 5Ep. 372
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 PittRace event and then he joined us for the Thompson event while racing with Jeremy’s El Jeffe Trophy Tr...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr 38 min•Season 5Ep. 371
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 driving their car and other indications where the driver driving the car. While people grow in their driver e...
Aug 30, 2022•24 min•Season 5Ep. 370
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 and with minimal impact to the race of a fellow driver, especially if they are in a different class of ...
Aug 29, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 5Ep. 369
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. At this point, we consider these types of episodes a work in progress and expect them to come out less ...
Aug 27, 2022•26 min•Season 5Ep. 368
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 significant amount without impacting your car performance. While our list is far from exhaustive, what tools do ...
Aug 23, 2022•25 min•Season 5Ep. 367
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 the car you are driving and the experience that you may have with this organization, as well as several ...
Aug 23, 2022•25 min•Season 5Ep. 367
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 great idea to do a two-episode home and home series. During this episode, we turn the tables on Brad ...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 58 min•Season 5Ep. 366
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 the car you are driving and the experience that you may have with this organization, as well as several ...
Aug 16, 2022•25 min•Season 5Ep. 365
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 another hot and humid August race at the Thompson Motor Speedway, and we had a true Good, Bad, and the Ugly ...
Aug 10, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 5Ep. 363
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 related communication technique that we use at the track, a common team text thread to communicate to all...
Aug 10, 2022•15 min•Season 5Ep. 362
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 play. For this episode we are joined by Benny, the Jeff and Josh duo, Vicki, Bill and a quick drop in ...
Aug 03, 2022•2 hr 29 min•Season 5Ep. 361
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 front of you and behind you. On this episode, we look at several options for selecting and installing the ...
Aug 02, 2022•10 min•Season 5Ep. 360
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. Chris was looking to test and tune their latest K swapped 1993 Honda Civic. Chrissy wanted to gain overal...
Aug 02, 2022•1 hr 51 min•Season 5Ep. 359
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 YouTube. They entered the rally in their Buick Grand National. Why is a Buick Grand National on a Lemon...
Jul 26, 2022•38 min•Season 5Ep. 358
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 team with several of the roles during the weekend. This is especially true to those of us who attend the...
Jul 25, 2022•31 min•Season 5Ep. 357
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 the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/ ComeRaceWithUs If you would like to help grow our sport and this p...
Jul 19, 2022•13 min•Season 5Ep. 356
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 connectors, it is even easier to install and connect a system and any sensors that you may wish to install ...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 5Ep. 355
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 potentially the personal safety through car preparation and/or your driving. We illustrate this by our rece...
Jul 12, 2022•24 min•Season 5Ep. 354
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 this episode, we talk about a wide variety of cars that he has driven and raced, judging, Lemons tech ti...
Jul 11, 2022•2 hr 8 min•Season 5Ep. 353
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 instruct Vicki, lol. One this episode, we talk about prepping our three cars, how is this new to us track, a...
Jul 09, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Season 5Ep. 352
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 potential axes of rotation, and many/most can result in a poor or expensive outcome. Once again, this is a topi...
Jul 06, 2022•13 min•Season 5Ep. 351
GHIT 0350: Ross Bentley Returns to Help Us Celebrate Episode 350 Ross Bentley has raced in Indy cars, literally written THE book on auto racing, his Ultimate Speed Secrets and associated books, and is the preeminent racing coach for both professional and amateur racing drivers around the world. On every celebration episode since number 100, Ross has agreed to come on to celebrate the “In Training” aspect of our tea and podcast. For this episode, we had Vicki, Jennifer, Tim, Reese, and Bill askin...
Jul 03, 2022•1 hr 34 min•Season 5Ep. 350
GHIT 0349: Dave Carpenter from the Three Pedal Mafia’s Cheaties Car At long last, we have secured Dave Carpenter for the podcast. Dave drives in the orange Cheaties themed Cressida with the Three Pedal Mafia team. In addition, Bill drove in the Cressida at the last race in NJMP where it finished 6th overall in spite of Bill driving. With so much to talk about, we tried to limit it to the Lemons race at NJMP’s Thunderbolt track, all about the Cressida, and how Dave manages the team and maintains ...
Jun 30, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Season 5Ep. 349
