GHIT 0145: Our Skid Pad and Autocross Event at Lime Rock Park
We have finally gotten to our long postponed skid pad event.\xa0 Our original event in March was cancelled due to COVID 19 and when John from Safety Third Motorsports was kind enough to offer an invitation to an event at Lime Rock Park using the skid pad and autocross track, we gladly said thank you!\xa0 Was it everything we had hoped for?\xa0 Should you go to a skid pad?\xa0 Did it help us?\xa0 Would it help you?\xa0 Why do our cars always break the night before we leave?\xa0 All this and more will be answered in this episode.\xa0
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A seemingly simple subject for our Dominating with Dawson segment, but very important.\xa0 How to position your mirrors and the importance of a good seating position on performance driving.\xa0
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We hope you enjoy this episode!
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Best regards,
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Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill
Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and
Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers
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Highlights from this episode include:
1)\xa0 Goals for the event going in
2)\xa0 How the event was organized.\xa0 It included a brief 1-hour classroom meeting, followed by several sessions and drills on the skid pad and ending with several sessions on an autocross course.
3)\xa0 Jennifer drove in the stock 2019 Mazda Miata MX-5 ND2.\xa0 Bill drove in the mostly stock 2017 Toyota 86 and Vicki drove her 1999 turbo NB Miata MX-5.
4)\xa0 Keeping with tradition, we had an issue with one of our cars and this time it was Vicki\u2019s NB Miata that had two blown struts in the rear.\xa0 Parts were unavailable, but Alex Levinson came to the rescue with some struts that he had.
5)\xa0 How to change the suspension of your NB Miata twice in the parking lot of a hotel the night before, and morning of the event.\xa0
6)\xa0 A brief review of the classroom session, with a few quiz questions to Jennifer and Vicki.\xa0 We may need another session.\xa0 Lol.
7)\xa0 Skid pad drills and what we learned.\xa0 There were three drills we tried:\xa0 speed testing, inducing understeer, and inducing oversteer.\xa0
8)\xa0 Vicki had some struggles (again) with in car instruction and we try to get to the bottom of it and how we can look to improve that issue going forward.\xa0
9)\xa0 A comparison of how our three drivers and our three cars compared during the skid pad event.
10)\xa0 How the autocross course was laid out and what drills we used.
11)\xa0 How Alex \u201cThe Unintended Gigolo\u201d faired in his attempt to use all three cars on the skid pad and the autocross course.
12)\xa0 Jennifer and Vicki learned heel toe downshifting and did quite well.\xa0 Bill, not so much.\xa0
13)\xa0 Bill goes into the autocross part of the event and had some issues with the traction of the course or his over driving, or even more likely, lack of skill.
14)\xa0 Jennifer improved so much that she actually got motion sickness for the first time while driving at the event.\xa0 And she\u2019d do it again!
15)\xa0 How both Vicki and Jennifer learned to get comfortable with the car getting loose and even looking forward to it.\xa0 Still so much more to learn and get comfortable with, but a great first step.
16)\xa0 We cover the final part of the autocross event where we were timed.\xa0 On the GHIT team, Alex was fastest, Vicki was second, Jennifer (on an empty stomach) came in third but was by far our most consistent driver at the event.\xa0 Bill prefers to remain unquantifiable by hitting a cone and posting a DNF.
17)\xa0 We try to cover the event with our traditional \u201cGood, Bad, and the Ugly\u201d but Vicki and Jennifer had so much fun that there really wasn't an ugly.\xa0
18)\xa0 Vicki is planning on some additional skid pad practice in an upcoming snowy parking lot.
19)\xa0 Bill is committed to incorporating heel toe down shifting into his track driving.
20)\xa0 Ben will be very happy with the latest version of couples therapy, lol.
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Special thanks to John Lavin and John Murphy for hosting and leading the event.\xa0 Hopefully, we did well enough to get another invite in the future.
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