racingschool

Brian Bohlander is a very accomplished race driver having competed for over 30 years and has won the Mint 400 Class 5500 and is a 3-time Thunder Roadster champion.  In his professional life, he is the marketing director for Peak antifreeze and is responsible for all sports and racing partnerships.  As if that was not enough, he is also the Comp school director for NASA Great Lakes.  During the episode, we try to compare two of the primary paths for training and qualifying to compete in wheel to wheel racing:  attending a formal racing school or working your way through the HPDE levels and graduating through Comp school.   Please note that this was recorded prior to our skid pad event that we covered in earlier episodes.

 

We discuss the different methods of determining your braking point markers and their relative importance in our Dominating with Dawson segment.  We start with a discussion of the relative importance of the point where you begin braking and the point where you come off the brake.  Then we digress into a wide variety of discussion points, some related, some very much not.  We each learned a bit of what we each do when on track.  Who knew?

 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

 

Best regards,

 

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

 

Highlights from this episode include:

1)  We start with a bit about off road racing and quickly go into several strategies for organizing and prepping for a track event.  It is not only a skill challenge, but a large and complicated logistical challenge.

2)  Brian has probably the shortest and most direct racing philosophy that we have heard to this point.

3)  What is Comp school and how it compares to attending a racing school and where HPDE’s fit into the landscape, including a brief history of where we started driving instruction and how we arrived to where we are now. 

4)  We learn that the NASA CCR (~ rule book) actually has a definition of what a “pass” is on track and how to and how not to pass, but also addresses what each drivers responsibility is during a pass.

5)  What is Comp school?  What do you do and learn while in Comp school?  What are you qualified to do after passing Comp School?  Hint:  Safe, Predictable, and FAST are three key points that allow you to advance.

6)  How the NASA program works to prepare you a driver for better, fast, and safer driving on a track, wheel to wheel racing, time trials, or even to eventually work towards being a competent and certified performance driving instructor.

7)  What is the best path to learn depending on your personal goals.

8)  Several tips that we tried to apply at our skid pad event a few weeks ago at Lime Rock Park.

9)  Brian gives some opinions on the use of data and how it can help you while you are learning and progressing as a driver.

10)  Track Attack Software comes up again.  Please let us know if you have used it what you think of it.  Also, if you would like us to try to get them on a guest, please let us know.

11)  Brian does a very good and clear description of trail braking and how to use it bet on a track.  So, if you haven’t ever been 100% clear on what trail braking is or why you would want to use it, this may be a great episode for you.  Even if you already use trail braking, this may increase your understanding and use of the technique.

12)  We also have a chance to go into the auxiliary benefits of learning to drive in this manner and how it helps you when driving every day on regular street roads.

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 Call Saul and ended up in ChampCar and started with the usual issues and tremendous stories as his team grew.  The team is currently running in several ChampCar events each year, as well as several other organizations in multiple divisions. 

We are hoping to talk John into letting us attend one of their upcoming races to learn more, if they will have us.  Please follow them on Instagram at Safety3rdMotorsports. 

In our Dominating with Dawson segment, we go into racing in the rain and while some complain, it’s really actually better in many ways for learning and definitely should not be skipped or avoided.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, Jennifer, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast
and team members in the GHiT
Immature Endurance Racing Team

Highlights from the episode include:

1)  Sharing the pain of herding cats as the team manager’s primary role.
2)  It appears John's path is similar to Bill’s, just executed much better.
3)  VIR gets another big endorsement, and it wasn’t from Ben this time.
4)  First race stories for the team, a true 24-hour race at VIR.
5)  Why they eventually switched from a Supra to a BMW to the annoyance of all the Fast and Furious fans.
6)  Racing is really a situation of management by crisis, we agree and couldn’t have said it any better.
7)  Several discussions on the differences and benefits of a racing school, as compared to HPDE’s and track days.
8)  A comparison of ChampCar and the Lemons series, with a bit about AER as well.
9)  How the teams racing philosophy has changed as they have become faster and a bit more competitive.
10)  A very good discussion on transitioning a team from having run racing a car to racing to compete.  A challenge our team is likely approaching.
11)  We offer our excellent BBQ rub and BBQ sauce for some of their secret sauce, so far to no avail, lol.
12)  Practicing at track days vs learning from an instructor and several other benefits of instruction.
13)  A discussion on the various aspects of car control, what it is and several techniques that can be used to improve it.
14)  The everlasting rumor of Lime Rock closing has reached Vicki for the first time.
15)  John even sneaks in a discussion of the modern style racing line for Lime Rock.
16)  Since John’s team races an E36, we can't help but discuss some of his thoughts on the E36 setups and even more importantly how to evaluate and develop them for yourself or when using a shop to assist.
17)  We even went into more depth around tire temperature and tire pressure and tire selection.
18)  A dual team meetup is preliminarily in the works and sounds like it will be great fun!  Still working on the Baja road trip invitation though.  Lol.
19)  Bill tries to talk John into lowering his standards and joining us for a race or for weekend racing fun.  Still TBD to see if John is capable of making a decision that bad.
20)   John was even gracious in acknowledging our difficulty with the rear hub bearing a few weeks back.  We may even be able to replace the control arm Bill broke after our quarantine ends.
21)  Towards the end, we even went into team HPDE and team bonding ideology that are helpful to all levels of teams.