Episode Details

Ross Bentley, world class racing coach and author, was kind enough to join us to help celebrate our 150th episode! Since Ross has literally written THE book on racing and high performance driving, we always look forward to talking with him any chance we get. Our team has improved in the almost year since Ross came on episode 100, but have our questions? You will have to be the judge of that. As always, Ross is able to answer everything we are curious about and even provide some insight into the area that we had not even thought of to this point. If you want an episode that will help you drive faster, Ross is the perfect guest. We have already started our new list of questions in case we can talk him into episode 200. If you have any, please let us know. Also, Ross has resumed his weekly podcast and if anything, it is better than ever. You can subscribe to it on any of the podcasting platform of your choice. Also, his book Speed Secrets is the most essential resource we know of to learn to be a better driver and race driver. The great thing about Ross is he can answer every single question we can think of. The bad thing about Ross is he makes you think about it in another way. This ends up with many more questions and usually Bill goes off and overthinks it, again. Vicki missed a really good one this time (she was fixing her broken MX5 suspension in the hotel parking lot.

How to get better at the turns is the (potentially) surprising subject of this Dominating with Dawson, but we attempt to discuss how to approach a fast corner and a slow corner. Depending in the specific track, one or two of the turns will be most critical to a fast lap time and it can often be one of these two types of corners. This will be the first part of this area that we discuss as there is a lot of detail and discussion to be had in this area. We did use several specific turns at Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Monte Carlo, and Mid-Ohio to describe these types of turns explicitly. We are also sure, Ben slipped in a VIR reference at least once or twice. For this discussion, the term fast is usually referring to a turn with a minimum speed of over ~60 mph or ~100 kph.

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) Ross quickly gives away why he is back on the podcast with us. Lol.

2) We talk with Ross about our (then) upcoming skid pad event at Lime Rock Park and he was kind enough to go into what we could do to maximize the learning at the skid pad. It turned out that this was almost exactly what our friends at Safety Third Motorsports had already arranged for the event. Even after the event, we still have a long way to go to be able to catch up to Ross's friend Johan Schwartz who was able to hold a drift for 232.5 miles, with live refueling while drifting.

3) Ross goes on to explain a way to have a car turn more when understeering by reducing the steering input you are asking from the car. Its counterintuitive but exceedingly helpful.

4) How does practicing on a skid pad help your street driving, as well as your driving on a track.

5) When to use slow hands and when to use quick hands.

6) Bill even asked the questions that he is over thinking, again. Things like is there a relationship between the apex and the resumption of throttle during a turn. Bill's pursuit of foundational axioms continues, lol. And why is he talking about thermodynamics on a podcast about racing?

7) A great discussion of what sometimes can fool you on track. For instance, sometimes as lap of a turn may have felt "good" but ended up slower.

8) Ben comes up with a truly new question to Ross! Nicely done.

9) The importance of focusing on what to do and not solely on what not to do, especially in racing.