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DwD 0739: Lessons Learned From Endurance Racing

DwD 0739: Lessons Learned From Endurance Racing

Garage Heroes In Training Nov 07, 2025 17 min
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About this episode

Endurance racing teaches valuable life lessons beyond the track, such as perseverance, teamwork, adaptability, and pacing. The hosts discuss how facing mechanical failures and challenges fosters a mindset of problem-solving and resilience. They highlight the importance of recognizing individual strengths within a team and how racing can unite people despite differences. The episode also touches on how racing skills improve safety and discipline, and how the endurance mindset applies to everyday life and relationships. Listeners are invited to share their own lessons learned from endurance racing.

Topics: endurance racing life lessons perseverance teamwork adaptability pacing problem solving racing mindset safety community
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Dominating with Dawson.
Well, let's dominate.
Ben Dawson, Ben Dawson. Listener question, listener question, coming in.
A listener question? That's one of my favorite things in the world, other than like Keyline Pie.
Well, I mean, this one's not tasty, but I thought it was a good question.
Oh, that's cool. Must be a pretty insightful listener. I'd love to hear what they have to say.
Well, I don't know how insightful they are, but you know, we call them Code Name Ben.
Sounds like a solid person. I'd love to hear what Code Name Ben had to say.
I think he was just sucking up to you, but whatever.
It's all good. Code Name Ben, right in again anytime.
Oh, I sure will.
Shoot, I hate when that happens. Now you gave it away.
They might have broken my entire code structure and figured out how to translate into...
It's all done. Pack it up.
Pack it up.
I have to come up with a new, more complex one.
I'm going to need one of those Turing machines now.
Yeah. Wow, yeah. Taking it way back.
How about that? That's like almost a hundred years. Not quite, but getting close.
Yeah.
All right. So Code Name Ben asked, you know, hey, you got to do this endurance racing thing.
And we always talk about how to go fast and how to get better at it and things you need to do to make it easier.
But after you guys spend all this time, after you guys spend all this money,
and after you guys do all this, are there any life lessons you learn from endurance racing?
Does it make you a better person? Do you get better posture? Do you pee straighter?
I don't know. I don't know what they were looking for.
Do you pee straighter? Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I mean, it's just the way it is.
So Ben, can you help Code Name Ben out?
And maybe a life lesson or two? And then I would challenge the audience,
because I know no matter how many you give, no matter how many I give,
we're going to forget something that's like obvious or hugely important.
Any life lessons? Any life lessons from endurance racing?
Yeah, for sure. One that pops into my mind and one that might have been on Alleged Ben's mind was...
That is Code Name, not Alleged.
Code Name Ben. Code Name Ben's mind is, I recently had a friend,
some civilians and non-racers who were headed out of town and they blew a tire.
See, I know I'm seeing a picture and a text of their car on a rollback.
That's a big tire they broke then.
They didn't even change the tire. They were like, well, we can't go,
we were headed out on vacation like, well, we can't make this trip on a spare time.
We better just go back to Chapel Hill and regroup and figure out what we can do,
which then it occurred to me. I just thought as an endurance racer,
I think I probably would have just slapped a spare on and adapted to what I was doing
and still going on the trips.
It just occurred to me that once you've been doing endurance racing long enough
and you faced all the constant litany of tragedy and failure and success.
Let's say positive.
Challenges. Challenges.
The litany of challenges and failures and successes and things that go well,
things that go poorly, things that were game of inches,
things that were just a spectacular mess.
All those things had to boil down, but they really, if nothing else,
endurance racers are going to persevere, try their hardest to get themselves
across the finish line all the way through the weekend as best they can.
I just kind of realized there must be a lot of life lessons embedded
in what we're doing, whether we're conscious of them or not.
The biggest one that pops into my mind is whether you are a persevering type person
or not before you started endurance racing.
Once you've been at the track and faced like, oh, well,
we could either hang it up at this first kind of small failure,
or we could go to the junkyard and not waste this whole weekend.
We're all four hours away from our house and we're way deep in money.
You try to be here and I can just have a small failure and throw it on the trailer
or we could gut it out and try to go find the part we needed here
at the track from somebody, go find it at the junkyard.
You start doing endurance racers yet and figure your stuff out
and get back on track.
So that kind of stuck out to me as a big one is you definitely
get into a perseverance mindset with endurance racing.
What have you noticed about endurance racing that seems like it can be
valuable in your life away from the track?
Well, I mean, the easy one is driving skills make you safer.
I mean, that's like the first thing that I think of.
But I agree with the, you know, we have a mission.
We have a goal.
We're going to make that goal.
I think the other thing that you realize for, I've realized,
and you probably did as well, is endurance racing is a team.
And it's not only the team that you have,
but it's everybody at the paddock in our level.
So you may be strong at A, B, C part of the race or the driving
or the car or the mechanical or all of the stuff.
But if you don't have A through Z, you're not going to do well.
But if you have teammates or friends, race friends as codenamed
Con usually says on his podcast, you can fill all those little
gaps and all those little nuances and become way better than you
probably should be because you're working together as a team
and you're recognizing the skills and what everybody brings to
the team.
So you actually not only generate friends, but you learn how
to work together in groups, which can only help you.
I'll tell you, you're highlighting something else that I
didn't think about, but it certainly has been a positive
in my life.
Thank you, Ben.
I mean, you don't have to bring it up on the podcast.
I appreciate that though, but thanks.
You may or may not know this, but I am a bit of a cantankerous
coot who doesn't really appreciate people for really any reason
at all.
I would rather just not talk to somebody as much as anything.
You know what I mean?
I'm an introvert.
I got my own stuff going on.
I'm not trying to get to know a million people.
And I certainly am not big on blowing smoke up anybody's
ass or like, you know, being overly positive about anybody,
but if you need parts of your anatomy signed and Sharpie,
just go to Ben and any product.
That's true.
That's true.
But I'll say this and you know, working that one aspect of
the teamwork part of endurance racing is it certainly has
helped me be able to pick out and identify strengths in
people and people will show strengths that you never
could have imagined and the kind of the desperate times
that spring up for endurance racers.
I've come to appreciate my friends who have a much greater
engineering mind or much greater creative mind.
I might be creative with the way I could put a sentence
together or the way I could drive a car on the track,
but I'm not creative when it comes to how to wire up a
switch panel or a certain way to do something in a car.
And that is definitely something that I've come to
appreciate about varying contributions from people at the
track.
We're not always all going to be the fastest person on the track
and that's not often not what matters the most either.
So being able to identify strengths in people and then
a role with them is certainly something that has been more
solidified in me and endurance racing that I hope has born
out in the rest of my life, in my career and just in family
relationships and everything.
It's just seeing identifying the strengths that people bring
and celebrating and recognizing them.
I think that helps bring people into the team too and they
can feel that this is being recognized and it's being
valued by the people that you're doing it with, whether
it's trying to set up a picnic with your family or keeping
a race car on the track.
I don't know if you've ever noticed this Ben and maybe
our listeners have never seen this, but I have heard
and witnessed I think once or twice at least.
I'm not sure.
I've kind of didn't count that people tend to silo on the
Internet and argue about things.
I don't know.
I mean, I've heard about this.
I've never seen it before.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's so it's so rare.
I've never done it.
No, no, nobody.
So, so they have their beliefs, but when you get
them to a racetrack, right, you can get somebody who
believes one thing and somebody else who believes
something else, but you have different skills and you
work together and you solve the problem and you
realize, Hey, just cause you think my shirt is purple
and I think my shirt is red.
You're not so bad and maybe just maybe you're
actually a human and we can get along and have, I
would guess thousands of things that are shared as
the same and maybe we differ on a couple of things.
That's okay.
But you're not a piece of garbage or less than I am
because you think my shirt is purple.
Yeah.
It's just an example.
So racing can save the world.
They can certainly bring disparate groups together
at the track.
I've seen it.
I've seen it many times and been a part of them
many times myself too.
So you're, you're right.
It can help keep that help keep what's important
right in front of your face and put that, put that
more in perspective.
I agree.
One thing that I, that, that racing has definitely
been good at for me is helping me to follow
directions, you know, understand, understand the
mission, understand some rules and then adapt to
them.
That's, and that hasn't always been the case for
me in my life.
I've never been that great at paying attention to
the rules or worried about them.
But, you know, when it comes down to, you know, I
need to have the car in this, in this kind of shape
or I need to, you know, be following this rule
and this rule to be able to compete.
Or, you know, whether it's how, you know,
making sure you got the right kind of feeling
pan that, you know, catch pan for your
fueling stops to, you know, make sure your
cars comply in this, in this way or that way.
All of a sudden that stuff gets really important
when it's going to be this thing.
If I don't get it right, I'm not going to be
able to compete.
So that kind of focus on, on organization
and rules and compliance.
I mean, I'm not big on compliance in many aspects
of my life at all.
But when it comes down to, is this going to stop
me from getting on track?
Suddenly I'm like, yes, sir.
Tell me more, you know.
Yeah.
And that's a skill that, that's a skill that
has served me well in other aspects of my life.
It does.
And, you know, especially in endurance racing,
you realize once you're decent at the
sport, you realize that it's a marathon,
not a sprint.
Yeah.
Life tends to be that way more, like I'm,
I'm naturally a sprinter.
Yeah.
Style, stylistically.
But it helped me to realize, you know,
I can't go my 100% and it's physically
impossible to do 110%.
Just look at the math of people.
But I can't go at 100%, 100% of the time
because as my beautiful bride refers to it,
I will work myself into a ditch.
Yeah.
And get sick.
Just the same thing with our car.
I don't know if you realize this, Ben,
because, you know, the one race you came to us,
we had no car difficulties at all.
That car, were you in the car when it broke
or had any issues whatsoever the entire weekend?
No, you were not.
The car was on jack stands the entire weekend
because it broke.
The cars that we drive can't run at 100%
for the 15 hours or 18 hours or however many
hours it is, they will break.
And this is something that it doesn't fit
my personality, but, you know,
I've had to acknowledge and say, you know,
unless I'm willing to spend umpteen
medullion dollars, my cars are not
able to run as fast as they possibly
could, although some of my drivers don't
listen to me.
But that's a different podcast.
But, you know, pacing is something
that probably should be used more
in our lives than it is now.
Yeah, I agree.
What do you think about adaptability
and being able to go with a flow and be flexible?
Is that something that's gotten better
with you from endurance racing?
No, people still suck.
I can definitely say that those are
some attributes that have gotten
stronger and more easily accessible
in my own personality profile
through endurance racing.
Being able to just kind of figure it out
and go with it.
Yeah, I joke because, you know,
the two jokes I have is like the
worst part of racing is the car.
You know, sometimes the worst part
of racing is the people, but at the
same time, the best part of racing is
the people.
So, you know, I think being,
the weird thing is you're an introvert,
I'm an introvert.
What do we do?
We talk on a podcast to, you know,
literally sixes of people.
So, I don't know.
Racing has given me so much in life
lessons wise, but I feel,
I don't know about you, Ben.
I feel kind of dumb because I'm sure
we're missing stuff.
Oh, yeah, we definitely are.
For me, it could be the kind of aspects
about perseverance and being able
to be flexible and go with a flow
or kind of the ones that stick out the most.
But there's so much to race and I'd love
to hear what the six listeners
or six, six, seven.
Sixes.
Maybe sevens.
Maybe sevens of people.
I would have to say that too because it's
what we do is a pretty,
a pretty rich, thick tapestry
of life and death, failure,
success, all that kind of crap,
all weaved into one thing and it's
there's a lot to it.
So, I'm sure there's more than what we're saying.
Yep.
I'm sure we're, and it's probably like as soon
as we stop recording this episode,
we're both going to sit there and say,
you know, I forgot it was, you know,
how could we not have, and then, you know,
if there's more after this,
I edited it in and nobody knows.
But it'll be fun.
Let us know.
Grashers are joining at gmail.com
or maybe Instagram or maybe Facebook
or maybe Ben Hobbit-Foot Dawson
at gmail.com, you never know.
Ben Hobbit.feat.
No, no, no.
I mean, you know, it's
Ben Hobbit Dawson.
Ben the Hobbit Dawson at gmail.com.
There we go.
So, it's a highly coveted
name that we put
onto gmail
and Google is called saying that we owe them money
because of all the traffic that we've generated there.
Great.
I think the problem
was a lot of videos came in
or went out.
I'm not sure what you were doing there,
but whatever.
It's fine.
Well, you know,
I'll never tell unless
my subscribers will find out.
Yep.
That's right.
Thank you, Ben.
Thank you.
That was good.
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