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00:37
From the great halls of their house, there are assembled three who hope to one day be
00:43
the world's greatest driving heroes. Created from the cosmic legends of the universe comes our
00:50
team captain, the vision, Bill Fisher, their soon-to-be wonder woman, Vicky Fisher, our captain
00:58
marvel and head flight trainee, Jennifer Scribchock, and our Batman, the master of tools, gadgets
01:04
and all things mechanical, our mild-mannered soon-to-be billionaire, Alan Danvers. Their
01:10
mission to fight injustice, share what is right and wrong, to get you out of your house
01:17
and come out racing with them and serve all mankind. They are the Garage Heroes in Training Team.
01:30
Dominating with Dawson. Let's dominate. Ben Dawson, Ben Dawson, I need me some Ben Dawson.
01:38
Lucky for me you're here. I'm right here. Let's do it. All right. Mr. Dawson, we had
01:43
somebody right in a couple times over the years, and I think we haven't covered it perhaps as well
01:50
as we should because I was in the paddock the other day, and somebody brought it up to me again,
01:54
and so I thought, hey, I think that would be a great question for Dominic with Dawson. So I
02:01
wrote into myself. Right. And I said, self. So code name, Bill. Traction control. It's on
02:10
most modern cars. Some of them are good. Some of them aren't so good. However, when you're relatively
02:17
new to the track, when do you turn it off? And when do you leave it on?
02:29
I mean, I think most people who come to the track have some sort of context to know that,
02:34
you know, that you hear people talk about, oh, you know, I still got the nannies on or,
02:38
you know, I want to turn the nanny systems all off. And I think most of these people have seen
02:43
Jeremy Clarkson complaining about it on Top Gear or something like that, to have some sort of context
02:47
to buy their own traction control. I'm fortunate I've been driving really analog vehicles for most
02:55
of my time on track, you know, in the mid 90s, Miata with no kind of traction control. And then
02:59
we, you know, race the E30 racing E36. So we're talking about cars that don't really
03:03
have any kind of action, active traction control. But I've been in plenty of participants and
03:08
students cars that have that. And, you know, I think, I mean, it's all relative. If you have all
03:17
that stuff turned off, you know, high horsepower car, it's gonna, you're gonna find the limit
03:21
faster, you know what I mean? You're gonna, you're gonna find a limit by overstepping,
03:25
you know, you're gonna kick the tail out or do all the things that the vehicle's trying to
03:28
stop you from doing. If you have it on, it might mask some of the errors that you're
03:34
making. It might kind of keep your car hunkered down, even though what you should have been,
03:39
you know, if you had also turned off, you would have been having a wreck, you know what I mean?
03:43
Right. So it's a, it's a, it's a thorny question for me because I want
03:47
people on track to be fully driving in control of their vehicle. But I also don't want anybody
03:53
to get hurt. You know, I had a student one time, like this is the mid 2000s,
03:59
uh, ZR1 Corvette that had the, you know, one of those ones that had the glass bubble in the hood
04:04
and like a million horsepower. And he's got like, yeah, you know, I've done the circle track race
04:07
and stuff like that. I said, all right, great. Let's, let's, let's go on that, let's go on
04:11
down pit lane and get on out of here at VR. And, and, uh, as we're going down pit lane,
04:15
I'm like, you can go ahead and go because he was just kind of, he was just kind of
04:17
bobbling down pit lane. I'm like, now it's go time. This guy just nails the throttle and
04:22
they car turned completely sideways on us. But I mean, luckily from his dirt track experience
04:25
or whatever, he kind of whipped it right back in and got going on track and we had a great day,
04:30
you know, but that might have been one where if he had his traction control on or something like that,
04:33
it might have caught it a little faster. Um, but, uh, you know, I'm, I'm such a, such a dumb
04:39
down on these kind of things. I don't really know what all goes into traction control and how it
04:43
works. I know that there are levels of it that you can turn some of it off. You can think
04:47
you have it all turned off, but then there might be some embedded in the code that you
04:50
can never really get all the way off. So thankfully I've only been driving like Fred Flintstone
04:54
kind of cars. I don't have it at all because I, I don't know how to go in and, you know,
04:59
deep program it or turn it off all the way or have it partially turned off. Um,
05:04
I can tell you, I was fortunate enough to drive Danielle trips, uh, Mustang at a track event one
05:09
time and, uh, we thought we had it mostly turned off or all the way off. And that thing,
05:14
you know, when I, when I did something, you know, at Ben Dawson speed, that thing,
05:18
yeah, you can like snatch, just, you know, snatch the car around it and like knock me
05:22
off line. You know what I mean? I was like, that's where I was trying to go. You know, I was
05:24
trying to do that. And this thing is that the traction control was so disruptive on there
05:29
by 2014 Mustang GT that, you know, it yanked me offline. So it's, I, I think, I think I'm kind
05:36
of coming around the idea that if you're able to, I think it's better to turn it off,
05:39
just have it off, learn to drive. What do you think? So the correct answer. All right.
05:45
All right. I've driven
05:50
a ton with first timers, brand new, relatively new, uh, because most of the, most of what I do is
06:00
like the HPD one entry groups. And then, you know, uh, a small fraction will be like HPD two and
06:07
another about the same fraction will be three. And then I even drive with fours. Um,
06:12
you know, just, you know, we tag in with each other and see what it is.
06:16
If you, if you don't need it, this, this, this conversation is not aimed at you. I'm,
06:21
I'm talking strictly for the, the new, strictly for the uncomfortable, strictly for the,
06:27
you know, maybe they're a little scared, maybe they love their car and they don't want to let
06:30
go. So if it's your first day on track, let's say you're going to an event that's a two
06:37
day event. I have zero issue with you having traction control on for your first time around
06:44
the track. Okay. And then you can start to make a decision. And a lot of people,
06:51
they just love their car and they don't want to have anything happen to it. So they just
06:54
leave it on, which is fine. You can learn. If you start to think about
07:01
turning it off, like Ben said, there's stages, right? There's, there's full on, there's kind of
07:07
usually like a half on and then there's like a mostly off and then there's off off. Any of those
07:14
can be done. And, and you got to look at the track, look at the consequences of messing up,
07:19
look at, you know, some tracks, you can just turn it off right from the beginning. You,
07:21
you basically, the only thing you've got to hit is grass or a cow. There's no,
07:26
there's no, uh, then there's other tracks where if you go off, you are
07:32
going to be paying a bill for your car and maybe for the track. So take that into consideration,
07:37
take into account how much of the car you like and how much performance the car has,
07:42
but don't ever turn it off off off to the point where your ABS doesn't work.
07:48
If you're brand. Yeah. Well, I think anybody, anybody, if you're, if your car,
07:53
if you're lucky enough to have ABS, keep it on because you can use it as a, as a, as a
07:59
competitive advantage. So I would never, I would never ditch ABS. If your car hasn't used it,
08:03
because also it's, it's your braking system is designed to have that as part of,
08:07
as part of the, the braking components. So I would never go around ABS. If you have it,
08:12
keep it on all the time, whether you are, keep it on in the race,
08:15
keep it on in the track event, keep it on the street, keep your ABS on.
08:19
I've driven cars without ABS. It's not as much fun. Because when it goes back,
08:25
it's harder. It goes really, really hard. And then the other thing is take into account the conditions.
08:32
Like is it raining? Is it snowing? Is it raining at what mid Ohio used to be? I don't know that
08:40
it's better now, but it used to be an ice skating rink. Leave it on. Just leave it on.
08:47
And I'm talking like first weekend, first day, you know, I would say leave it on
08:54
until you know you don't need it. Now what I would say is if you leave it on, try to get to the
09:01
point where either you or you and your instructor are paying attention to when it intervenes,
09:07
because that'll tell you without your car getting out of control, when you would have
09:12
got the car out of control without having any of the risk. So a lot of people that I've dealt with
09:19
turn it off like second day after their warm up or a couple of people like to have done it
09:28
first day, like third, third run, but there's nothing wrong with going through your first
09:33
weekend and leaving it on. Yeah, I don't, I don't disagree with that. I think it's a
09:38
that's okay, especially if you're just getting your sea legs out there. But yeah,
09:42
eventually I think it's ultimately going to make you a better driver to have those things turned
09:45
off and to feel the limits and the natural way that they would occur between your tires and the
09:49
track and whatever, whatever grip your suspension back as well. Yeah, the other factor you got
09:55
to look at about taking into account is what car am I talking about? Am I talking about a
10:02
you know, a 90s car? Or am I talking about a 2020 car with 3, 4, 500 horsepower monster tires and all
10:14
that good stuff? And while it is a surgical weapon on the track for somebody with experience,
10:20
if you don't have experience, you can get into stuff real fast, real bad, and it won't be good.
10:28
So if you've got a high performance car, especially if it's one that you like,
10:35
keep it on for a while and you know, you'll know when it's limiting you and your instructors will
10:40
know. And if the nanny like I drove with one guy, he had, I'm not going to say the car,
10:45
let's just say north of 500 horsepower. And every turn, every time he went to the gas,
10:55
you could see the light come up, traction control, and I'm just like, he's like, I think I'm ready
11:02
to turn off. I'm like, dude, you haven't had one turn where you haven't hit it on at least three
11:08
times. This would not be good right now. You are, you are too much of a blacksmith and not
11:14
enough of a surgeon. You are just, you know, when you hit the pedal, you hit the pedal.
11:19
And this car is like a nuclear weapon. And you are not being gentle and it will bite you.
11:26
So I did say it is your car. I think you need to leave it on.
11:32
Well, Bill, how about this? How would you change your approach if you got in with that student
11:38
in the next session and said, hey, I turned everything off. You know, you got to ride
11:41
with that person. Suddenly, it's more of a game of survival. How do you coach that person
11:46
and their right foot to say, all right, well, let's, let's go do it. But you know,
11:49
how do you set limits? How do you, what would you do to express to that person that here's
11:53
how we're going to approach this now that you got the traction control off on this
11:56
600 horsepower monster or whatever? Yeah, it was, it was like 4,000 plus pounds, 600
12:02
horsepower. I was like, oh my God, this is, this is not the car I want to be in.
12:07
We backed up our brake markers because he did turn it off. Yeah, he did.
12:12
Okay. Back up our brake markers and then worked our way forward. And I told him to,
12:21
I wanted him to be as smooth as he could with turn in. And I really wanted him to feel
12:30
like a nice, gradual application to the throttle.
12:35
Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, I would be all, I would mostly be talking about the throttle
12:39
in that situation. So we got to go. It was also, you know, that, that that's going to teach that
12:44
I'm sure you ultimately taught that person to be a better driver. But one thing that to
12:47
consider in that situation too is as they get better and better and more refined that
12:51
approach, they're going to get faster and faster down the straightway. So having that person
12:54
back to brake sup to begin with, and then you can walk them up a little bit further.
12:57
But that's it. That's it. That was a really smart strategic move to say,
13:01
all right, we're going to start braking way earlier because you're going to need
13:03
this a little later. And then we'll kind of work it up from there.
13:06
Yeah. I mean, we were, for the good or for the bad, we were the lead sled that was the fastest car in
13:12
our HPD1 group. I mean, this car was just a beast. Great car, but maybe more than I'd want to see
13:19
for somebody on their first day on track. But then it was, it was interesting. It was,
13:25
I mean, he did fine. He did everything safe. The brake pads actually got toasted
13:31
because the car weighed so damn much. But he did fine. It's just your first day, your first weekend
13:42
is not the time to show that you're out in the center. You know, just learn the track,
13:46
learn the fundamentals. Don't sit there and try to break a track record,
13:50
because the only thing you're going to break is your car for you.
13:55
That's a fact. Yeah. I can't tell you how many times I pull up to a track about doing
14:00
the instructor's prayer, please no Hellcat, please no Hellcat, please no Hellcat.
14:05
Yeah. Or you drive in and you see somebody sitting over in the Hellcat and you're like,
14:08
that better not be my guy. Please don't be my guy. There's a whole bunch of those. It's like,
14:13
please don't be the Hellcat with the drag wheels, right? Please don't be a caged car with
14:20
slicks in HPD1. Please don't be that. And you know, there's a couple cars where I'm
14:27
like, I don't know that I can fold up in those cars for an entire weekend. They're really small,
14:33
you know, because I'm not the smallest dude. And, you know, getting the NA Miata sometimes can be
14:41
a bit of a challenge towards the end of the week, especially if they have the hard top.
14:44
You know, and it's like, oh, this is going to be tough. Yeah. Yeah, that's a rough one.
14:49
They assigned me somebody with a Miata and a hard top. I used to drive a Miata in the
14:54
hard top, but this person had like an aluminum, quirky seat as a passenger seat. It was set way
15:01
forward and it was for a size for about a nine-year-old child. Because their structure had been a
15:08
bigger person than me. And I mean, I'm six foot something, not svelte. They were like,
15:12
hey, this guy can't get it right. Can you try this? Like, I remember trying to like
15:15
rotate my hips sideways in that child seat. I think, dude, I made it one session. I was
15:19
like, this is miserable. This person is fine. I love to drive by themselves.
15:24
Yeah. Yeah, you uh, there's a whole bunch of stuff. I remember one time a friend of mine,
15:29
he was instructing and a guy had a like an old cobra, like the 60s.
15:36
Oh, man. I got one of these too. Yeah. So it had the hoop behind the, the drivers,
15:43
but no hoop on the passenger. And he comes up to me and he's like,
15:47
what do you think? I'm like, I ain't getting in that car.
15:54
That was literally my first student. So after I went through NASA instructing school,
15:59
I couldn't say that we can add that. I can just, I can do the school. I couldn't stay the weekend.
16:02
So then the SVT cobra club was lucky. It was nice not to let me instruct from my first time
16:07
with them. Like the guy, this guy, Tony Sorrentino was like, Hey, everybody's
16:11
got to start somewhere. You're officially qualified. So we need instructors to go
16:14
for it. I get there and my student is this guy who's older than the Thuzila in 2010.
16:20
Whenever I started, this guy was already a hundred million years old.
16:25
And we go, all right, let's go check out your car and welcome. This is beautiful cobra replica.
16:29
Hoop for him. None for, none for B. I was like, Nope. We're not ready. He was like,
16:33
Oh, that's no problem. I got my 20, 20, 2010 Z 51 or something. Like,
16:38
you know, he had his, he had his brand spanking, like brand ass new Corvette.
16:42
He's like, we'll just ride this. I was like, yeah, the Corvette with the seatbelts and the
16:46
fucking top, you know, he was the worst student there, a witness to a thing I told him to do.
16:53
It was a horrible. I was like, is this what it's directing is? I quit. It's terrible.
16:58
It was the worst. It was the worst like intro to a stroke. He's like,
17:01
let's get in this car that's going to murder you. Like, no, we're not doing that.
17:04
And I think eventually we had to go like a bunch of a song trying to put that
17:08
cobra up on his trailer. So we all went to help them because he was like getting
17:10
all slewed off to the side. We eventually had like put the jack up under the back and
17:15
slide it over on the trailer for him. Like it was, it's got to not have any business
17:19
being at the track with his old ass. It was terrible.
17:22
You know, we should have a time in the Dawson with bad instructor stories.
17:25
We need a couple of friends to come on and yeah, some of the best things.
17:31
I could, I could tell you, I'll tell you another one, just another bonus.
17:34
I think my second ever instructing experience with this kid who had built
17:38
an Acura Integra with like a 700 or something like 600 horsepower turbo engine.
17:42
And it like, like intermediate tires, okay, brake pads, like sport brake pads.
17:47
I mean, this thing would get up to like 160. He used to have 170 on the straightaways.
17:52
I was like, and you could feel like he had, he had standard like seat belts,
17:56
like standard shoulder belts. And I didn't know, I didn't know.
17:59
I didn't understand my agency as an instructor well enough this time to go,
18:02
okay, here's your limit. You can drive up to, you know,
18:05
5,000 RPM and we got it back up. Whatever, I didn't set any limits for this guy.
18:08
I just thought I had to ride, just thought I had to ride this missile and try to do my best
18:11
to help him be a better driver. But luckily he was, his nannies would come on,
18:17
like his, his engine management system would go like too hot or whatever.
18:19
So we'd make it half a lap and then it would like limit his RPMs down to like
18:23
2,000 RPM. I was like, oh man, what a bummer that came on again.
18:27
He got limited here and limiter came on again.
18:29
Well, we'll just have to work on the line and not dying because if I could see,
18:32
like when that guy would get that thing up at full song,
18:34
I could see my helmet buffeting. I could watch my helmet in his,
18:39
in the passenger side of Ruby, I could see my helmet buffeting outside the plane
18:42
of where the window was. So I was like, oh, this is where my head's going to be more
18:45
flippant. You know, I was just like, I'm going to die this little bachelor's car.
18:49
He was, okay, driver, but man, every time that every,
18:51
every time those nannies came on and slowed it down, I was like,
18:54
thank you, Jesus. In like the last session of the weekend,
18:56
he lost his power steering pump or something like that.
18:59
And all this smoke starts pouring out the vent. So I was like, oh, oh no.
19:03
Well, pull off over here, pull up down in Texas. Right. I guess that's it for us this weekend.
19:07
What a shame. Man, that really is a bummer. And I'll be bail out.
19:10
And they're like, oh God, give me a cue here for this kid.
19:14
I think we've all had one or two of them. Oh, Lord, I got scared of crap out of me.
19:20
That was way before I was waiting for my kids. For sure.
19:22
All right. So you know what I think we should do, Ben?
19:25
Turn the traction control off immediately, no matter who you are. Is that what we're saying?
19:29
That wasn't where I was going, but I, I was, what do you have?
19:33
I was skewing off towards where we just went.
19:37
All of our fellow instructors, please write in with some instructor stories.
19:41
I think we should have an instructor's story time.
19:44
We should. We can even have an instructor conclave where we have several
19:48
favorite people to instruct and get together and we can all just talk.
19:50
So I mean, I already told some of my best ones, but I can tell them again.
19:53
Yeah. We can tell them with lies.
19:54
We can make more stuff. I mean, we could make them bigger.
19:58
Garage, heroes, and training at gmail.com.
20:00
Can't wait for those instructor stories. That'd be fun.
20:03
Yeah. Turn the traction control off, get busy, wreck that car, whatever.
20:06
No, we should do that.
20:07
We should not have Vicki on because she's going to be an instructor this year.
20:10
We don't want to scare her.
20:10
Hey, that's awesome.
20:11
Don't want to scare her.
20:13
I don't want to tell her.
20:14
I'm a, I'm a extremely scary stories from the beginning.
20:17
I start to, hopefully, hopefully that's a, hopefully that's an uncommon experience.
20:20
I think I encourage anybody who wants to instruct a look into it because
20:25
we need more people in our sport.
20:26
We need more cool people showing other folks, other folks how to do it.
20:30
Yep. Because some of the people,
20:32
we don't want them showing.
20:35
There are some instructors out there.
20:36
There are some real turds, you know?
20:42
Luckily, not us, but, you know, whatever.
20:45
It's definitely not.
20:46
It doesn't apply to me at all.
20:48
But yeah, there are definitely some people out there doing it for the wrong reasons
20:51
and wish they were good, but aren't or whatever.
20:53
So it's always an ever rotating pull because people have kids,
20:57
people get divorced, people be like, screw you.
20:58
I don't want to do this anymore.
21:00
There are always more instructors needed.
21:02
So if you have a colleague or you feel like it might be fun, check it out.
21:06
Some of the most fun, I love racing.
21:09
I'm a racer through and through, but also instructing has been extremely rewarding
21:15
And it helps you get better, too, because you have to actually think
21:18
about what you're trying to tell you, as opposed to just doing it.
21:22
Yeah. If you're able to instruct without your analytical side ever coming out,
21:26
then I don't know what's wrong with you, but yes, you're right.
21:29
It forces a lot of introspection and self-evaluation, too, which is a good byproduct.
21:35
I can't remember if it was the end of my first year or the end of my second year.
21:38
I was just looking back on, I did not know all the ways you could screw up a turn
21:43
that I have now seen.
21:44
I'm like, I don't think I was this bad.
21:47
But they are coming up with more and more ways to make this harder
21:52
that I never even thought about.
21:54
I mean, I'm sure I did other things wrong, but I was just like,
21:57
what are you, where did that come from?
22:00
You really build up that muscle, that muscle that makes your voice go,
22:04
bring, bring, bring, bring, bring.
22:07
That muscle really will get very prominent.
22:09
I have not had too many of those.
22:10
I've only had twice where I had to get on the break, guys.
22:12
So I've had some great instructors.
22:14
Thank you for all the associations for steering me clear of some of the nightmares
22:19
But Nightmare Stories, Garage, Heroes, and Training at gmail.com.
