shiftingpointspodcast

GHIT 0344:  Race Recap:  GHIT’s Ladies Team Raced In our 1993 Honda Civic

Our first ever race was at NJMP’s Thunderbolt track with 24 Hours of Lemons and seems to be a lifetime ago.  We started out knowing nothing and that was probably being kind.  At this year’s event, we entered our 1993 Honda Civic with its full theme to thank the Everyone Racers podcast for all their help getting us started and helping us ever since.  Vicki and Jennifer raced with two of the hosts from the Shifting Points podcast at this event.  Audra had raced once with us last year and this was Jess’s first ever wheel to wheel racing event.  How did the event go?  Did the ladies Dominate?  Was the theme a bit overdone? 

This year we did it all for the Cookie.  Until it was stolen.  More details to follow soon.

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/AllForTheCookies

If you would like to help grow our sport and this podcast:

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, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that we would appreciate that very much.  Even better, a podcast review, would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would appreciate it.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  If you are looking to stream or save your integrated telemetry/racing data with you video, Candelaria Racing Products Sentinel System may be the perfect solution for you.  We are amid installing the system in two of our cars.  If this sounds like something that may help you and your team, please use our discount code "GHIT" for a 10% discount during the checkout process at https://candelaria-racing.com/

PS2  Please do not forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, do not forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order from https://apextrackcoach.com/

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, Jeremy, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

GHIT 0338:  Jess From the Shifting Points podcast’s First Track Day

We have an upcoming race at NJMP’s Thunderbolt track next weekend, so we took advantage of the NASA Northeast’s HPDE event this weekend to get a bit of track time for our friends from the Shifting Points podcast who will be racing with us.  This will be Jess’s first ever race and today was her first ever track day and great preparation for the race.  Vicki was going to explode if we made her wait any longer for a review of the day, so here is an unedited episode with Vicki and Jeremy asking Jess about her first time on track.  Oh, Bill was there too.

Audra and Lisa will be arriving tonight for Sunday’s events.  We will obviously be talking more about this weekend in upcoming episodes of our podcast and perhaps even on the Shifting Points podcast.

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/JessFirstTrackDay

If you would like to help grow our sport and this podcast:

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, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that we would appreciate that very much.  Even better, a podcast review, would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would appreciate it.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  If you are looking to stream or save your integrated telemetry/racing data with you video, Candelaria Racing Products Sentinel System may be the perfect solution for you.  We are amid installing the system in two of our cars.  If this sounds like something that may help you and your team, please use our discount code "GHIT" for a 10% discount during the checkout process at https://candelaria-racing.com/

PS2  Please do not forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, do not forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order from https://apextrackcoach.com/

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, Jeremy, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

GHIT 0314:  Audra Tella on Autocross and a Pre-Intervention

It was almost spring, and we were thinking about ways to get out and start having fun with our cars again.  We thought it may be great to go autocross’ing, especially to start the season.  Since we were thinking autocross, we thought we’d invite Audra back to the podcast to talk all things autocross.  Audra is one of the hosts of the Shifting Points podcast and is also one of the leads for the local BMW autocross group near Boston.  We talk about what to expect at your first event and what to do and more importantly what not to do to go to your first autocross event.  Then we launch our intervention plan.  This is part one of the plan.  Part two will be revealed in the next episode of the Shifting Points podcast coming out this Wednesday.  We started the podcast to get people started having fun with their cars.  Audra and her fellow podcast host are already enjoying their cars but, especially after seeing Audra last year at our Thompson race, we hoped we could offer to help them start driving or maybe even tracing on track. 

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/AudraAutocrossandIntervention

If you would like to help grow our sport and this podcast:

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, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that we would appreciate that very much.  Even better, a podcast review, would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would appreciate it.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is amazingly easy.  If you go to your podcast library, look under shows.  Then click on this podcast.  Here you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  If you are looking to stream or save your integrated telemetry/racing data with you video, Candelaria Racing Products Sentinel System may be the perfect solution for you.  We are in the midst of installing the system in two of our cars.  If this sounds like something that may help you and your team, please use our discount code "GHIT" for a 10% discount code to all of our listeners during the checkout process.

PS2  Please do not forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, do not forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and invaluable to safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross, etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights for this episode include:

1)  What is autocross?  What you need to do to prep for the event and what you should NOT do to prep for the event or prevent you from going.  Bill goes full facetious for at least 15 minutes.

2)  Why are the cones there, what do they do and why does everyone seem to be angry with them.

3)  We break down the lingo a bit and show that your first event will be easy to start and learn.  Autocross drivers are very welcoming to everyone and would love to share their sport and all the fun.

4)  Audra introduces up to the internet.  It is a wonderful way to find an event close to you.

5)  How autocross is structured to even out the competition or break it down into groups of evenly matched cars.  Some even have special classes for novices.

6)  We also find out what vent is Audra’s favorite event of the season.  We may have to attend.  Time to check the season schedule.

7)  What is Audra’s schedule for the season?  Can we add to the festivities?  Or are we just bad influences?  Still TBD on that one.

8)  Why we all started podcasts?

9)  The devious plan is devised and launched?  Our planning for the Mini Intervention.

10)  Audra makes a prediction of the potential livery theme.  Is she correct?  Tune into the second part of this episode on Audra’s Shifting Point podcast, coming soon, hopefully this Wednesday if life doesn't get in the way of editing.

 

To hear how part two goes, subscribe to the Shifting Points podcast and the episode will be coming shortly.

Part 1 of 2

On this episode, we cover our latest HPDE event at NJMP's Lightning track with NASA Northeast.  The track and the weather was a bit cold but we had a great time and a large groups of drivers and cars.  We even had all 4 levels of the HPDE groups covered with at least one driver in each.  To make things even better, Jen and Vicki's sister Debbie was driving in her first event and first time ever on track.

A quick rundown of who and in what is:

HPDE 1 Drivers:

Debbie in our 2019 ND Miata

Audra in her 2017 M2 BMW

Adam in our 2004 M3 BMW (E46 for you cool kids)

HPDE 2 Drivers:

Elizabeth in her new to her Spec E30 for the first time on track

Jennifer in our 2019 ND Miata

Vicki in her freshly street tuned 1999 turbo NB Miata

HPDE 4 and Instructing:

Bill shared the 2004 M3 with Adam

Hyperdrive:

Lisa went out in Audra's M2

The event was fantastic and everyone improved greatly after the two days.  Notably, we had several drivers advance in the NASA HPDE ladder:

Adam was advanced into HPDE 2 after the first session

Audra advanced into HPDE 2

and Vicki advanced into HPDE 3 for the first time.

For all the details, and the Good, Bad, and the Ugly, why not listen?

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/NJMPLightningHPDEPart1  

If you would like to help grow our sport and this podcast:

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, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating or even better, a podcast review, we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system greatly.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

 

Highlights Include:

1)  Both Lisa and Debbie were first time track drivers this weekend and it can be eye opening to remind everyone of what it was like the first time on track.

2)  We cover our personal goals for every driver going into the event and we see how everyone did after both days.  (short summary is awesome)

3)  Car prep stories were relatively mild this time until they weren't on our first stint Saturday morning.

4)  What it was like for Debbie at her first track event and first time ever at a track. 

5)  Did we hook any new drivers?  Well we did start planning a trip in July to another HPDE event, lol.

6)  Lisa was able to review what the Hyperdrive event is for everyone and how it went for her on Sunday.  She also compared driving on a track to her autocross event experience.

7)  Did Jennifer (and Vicki) conquer their habit of lifting off the throttle midway on the long straights?  

8)  How did the drills Ross Bentley presented to them help?

9)  We find a new issue for Vicki to work on in coming events and it may apply to your driving as well.

10)  Our traditional Good, Bad, and the Ugly.

11)  We may have found a solution to passengers who get motion sickness.  It worked once so far.  More testing to follow.  Vicki really needs to conquer this if her long term goal is to be an instructor.

12)  What happened that led to Bill going off track in turn 5 in the M3.  Luckily we were able to fix the tire issue and get the car back on the track.

13)  We end with a review of our winter challenge with 4 other racing podcast hosts and several listeners.  We are looking to drop at least 25 pounds and also grow as drivers through reading at least one book per month and also practicing our driving by karting or iRacing.  Open to everyone so come on in and if you complete the challenge, you will be eligible for bunch of swag from the 5 podcasts.

The scorecard is located at https://garageheroesintraining.com/survive-the-25/ and you can keep track of our progress, once we have some.  

It's all in here. 

And more.

It all started with a great idea, let’s go to an HPDE event with the hosts of the Shifting Points podcast. Audra had raced with us at the Thompson race in August and Jess & Kathy had visited for moral support and wanted to try track driving.  There was a ladies event with MassTuning set for mid September.  Sounds like a blast.  Until it wasn’t.

In what was supposed to be a two episode celebration of this event, we go into the prep and excitement of going into a track event and how things ended up.  We hope Jess and Kathy can look beyond this event and potentially come with us to another event, maybe even this season.

Strap in, this one gets a bit wild towards the end.

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, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating or even better, a podcast review, we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/CanaanHPDE2021 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system greatly.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

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 prior events, we are viewing this as a great win for the team.  Hear all the details, even some of the super secret ones.  All in all, each of them grew as drivers and learned a ton this weekend!  

Still waiting for Alan’s SpiderStang update but there was something shiny near his house so, …….

PS  If you can't tell, Vicki was very excited to have the team back together to discuss the race.

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, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating or even better, a podcast review, we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/Thompson2021PartDeux

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.  The recently released second generation systems and app increases the capability of the system greatly.

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)  Some of the shocking differences that Audra experienced in her first wheel to wheel race.

2)  Elizabeth and the team discuss some of the unforeseen benefits of having the seat adjusted for their size and not making due.

3)  Audra goes over our race strategy for her first stint on Saturday, as well as getting to practice on Friday before the event started with a much lower car count on the track. 

4)  Elizabeth (and everyone) also found the practice helpful but really got a lot out of the (amazing) track walk with our friends at the Three Pedal Mafia.

5)  Find out if we have grabbed Audra from autocross?  We hope not.  We love both.

6)  The ladies discuss how important vision and spatial awareness is, especially as the speed increases or the traffic increases.

7)  We also address how each driver is a member of the team and how each car is really also part of the team and (usually) work together on track.

8)  The entire team began to see the benefits of having spotters on the track for each other, as well as the race craft.

9)  Audra tries to convey the chaos of a race weekend.  We have done so many events that we don't even notice anymore.

10)  The team discusses several ways of managing traffic, as well as passing and being passed on a fairly crowded track.

11)  How the ladies did in the paddock and garage prep by the team.  We were a bit out of our normal groove with all the unintended changes to our team pre-race, but everything went really well even though we had 3-4 different issues this weekend, one was for the last 5 or so races.

12)  Audra and Elizabeth also pointed out hat we missed a few opportunities to refine our tire pressures through the weekend.  Added to our list.  Along with a few other items we learned or noticed this race.

13)  Pit Stops.  We did a few, lol.  Black flags, not so much.

14)  Apparently, Audra is also part of the Connecticut tourism board and they were having a meeting in our paddock.  Who knew?

15)  It looks like Bill is going to have to find someone to drive with him (if the ladies have anything to say about it).

Don't forget that you can follow Audra and her co-hosts on the Shifting Points Podcast.

We are enthusiastic podcast listeners and found a podcast hosted by our guests called Shifting Points.  Their podcast is also aimed at helping people get started in our sport.  Luckily, they approach it from the perspective of autocross, so we haven’t lost our entire audience to them, yet.  Since we all share the same passion, we had to invite them onto our podcast and talk all things cars and driving.  They are a great group of ladies and we will be going up to an autocross event with them this season and plan on doing our best to get them into endurance racing.  Why should it be an « or » when it can be an « and ».  “And” is so much more fun.  Please welcome Kathy, Jess, and Audra to the podcast.

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, if you could give us a 5-star rating or a podcast review, we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

On this episode’s Dominating with Dawson, we go into two types of drivers that we see, those that tend towards overdriving their car and those that tend to underdrive their car.  If you are learning or instructing a driver, it is useful to see how to best approach driving improvement by understanding the differences between these two personality approaches to high performance driving.  It is also useful to see how the other half lives and learns.  Neither is right or wrong and both approaches can learn to be really fast.  The only difference is in the path that they tend to follow and the way they increase their speed.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  We have two systems for our team and Bill is looking to add a third for this season, pending CFO approval from Vicki.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.

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)  It seems our two podcasts have almost the exact same taste in cars.  Seems like a future autocross battle in the making.  Hopefully, this summer.  Probably wise to place your bets on the Shifting Points podcast team for a clean sweep victory.

2)  We go through the history of how our ladies started autocross driving, met each other and how this eventually ended up with them starting a podcast together.

3)  Both podcasts started out knowing little about fixing and working on a car and have progressed rapidly with help from car friends and YouTube.

4)  We review how to enter an autocross local to you, where to find them, and what is involved.  The barrier to entry is as close to zero as any type of driving event and is a great way to get a taste for high performance driving with almost any car and very little risk, cost, and prep required.

5)  Tons of Mini stories.  Apparently, Mini’s have feelings.  Lol. 

6)  Both groups go into why we started podcasting and some of the benefits and growing pains involved.

7)  It took a bit of time, but we eventually did make our move to convince them to try endurance racing.  Vicki was less than subtle, but did you really expect anything else from us by now?  It may end up with an all-female driver GHiT team this year.  Bill will have to be relegated to sous chef for the weekend and let the talented drivers show their stuff.

8)  We mined for a few tips and tricks to starting up and entering your first autocross event.  Autocross is truly accessible to everyone interested in having fun in a car.  Most of the prep is for the driver’s comfort with the weather and food.  Your car is probably already good to go as it is, but getting it checked over may be a good idea.  Well, you will likely have to clean out your car, but that is usually a good thing, especially for our cars.  Lol.

9)  Kathy and Bill share a certain talent related to torquing lug nuts.  Stories were shared.  Hopefully, they will both grow out of it soon.  Lol.

10)  Tips on how to find any autocross events within the area you live or may be visiting.  Also, if concerned, the autocross events are classed by car and many times there are classes for first time/new drivers.

11)  Audra’s tap root car story broke Kathy

12)  Jess just released an album with her band.  It would be great to hit the top hundred list with the latest release from The Strattones!  It might even pay for her next autocross event.

13)  Jen asks her next question while on mute.  Eventually she figured it out, lol. 

14)  Kathy may have discovered a way to get red wine out of cloth seats with a combination of red wine and Diet Coke.  Try at your own discretion.