The 2012 Boss 302 is a special Mustang made to feel more like a race car. Here, it matters because the speaker drove it on a track day in the rain, where traction is much harder.
A Miata is a small, light sports car that many people use for track days. In this story, the speaker keeps upgrading it for racing—tires, suspension, and brakes—and racks up a lot of time on track.
Slicks are special race tires that have no tread. They usually grip the track better in dry conditions, but they’re not meant for rain or normal street driving.
Suspension is what connects the car to the wheels and controls how it moves over bumps and during cornering. Upgrading it for the track helps the tires stay planted and predictable.
Brakes are how the car slows down, and on a track they have to work much harder than on the street. Upgrading brakes helps them keep stopping consistently even after lots of hard braking.
The E36 M3 is an older BMW M3 that’s famous for being fun to drive and popular with track enthusiasts. In this segment, it’s the speaker’s upgrade because it has much more power than their Miata.
Time trials are races where you try to set the fastest lap time. Instead of racing side-by-side, you’re mainly trying to beat your own best time and the clock.
Wheel-to-wheel means racing cars are side-by-side on track. It’s more intense than timed laps because you’re dealing with other cars right next to you.
Grid Life is a racing event series for car enthusiasts. The speaker is saying they did it last year as part of their track experience.
Concept
GLGT
GLGT is a racing category the event uses. Categories like this group similar cars together and follow rules about what’s allowed, so your results are compared within that setup.
Laguna Seca is a famous road-racing circuit in California, known for its challenging layout and elevation changes. When the speaker says the friend “blew up his engine at Laguna Seca,” it signals the failure happened during a real race weekend at a track that stresses engines and drivetrains.
Term
TC races
“TC races” is an abbreviation for a type of race series or event. It usually means a particular group of rules and classes, not just any random track day.
Lime Rock is a specific race track in Connecticut. Different tracks need different car setups, so mentioning it hints at what kind of racing conditions they’re planning for.
“The Glen” usually means Watkins Glen, a famous race track in New York. It’s the kind of place where car setup matters a lot because the track has demanding braking and fast corners.
This refers to NASA (a motorsports club/organizer) running events at NJMP (New Jersey Motorsports Park). The conversation is about whether the guest will attend upcoming track days/races there.
An engine swap means replacing the car’s original engine with a different one. In this case, they’re doing it because the old engine failed, not just to make the car faster.
“Set up a car” means tuning the car for the track. Instead of just going faster with more power, you change things so the car turns and brakes the way you want. It’s about making the car easier to drive at speed.
Tire pressure is how much air is in the tires. On a racetrack, changing it can change how the car turns and how well the tires grip. People adjust it because the tires heat up as you drive.
Brake pads are the parts that squeeze against the brake rotors to slow the car down. On a track, the type of pad matters because it affects braking power and how well the brakes keep working after lots of hard stops.
A track day is when people drive their cars on a race track for practice. Since the car gets hot and tires wear differently than on the street, it’s a good time to test setup changes like tire pressure and brake parts.
Race Setup Pro is an app that helps you set up your car for track days. You enter info about your car, and it gives suggestions so you’re not guessing as much.
“Bone stock” means the car is basically as it came from the factory, with no big modifications. They’re saying the app can still help you set up for your first track day.
Cold pressures are the tire pressures you set before the tires heat up on track. Because tires expand as they warm, starting with the right cold value helps you target the desired operating pressure during driving.
A pyrometer is a tool that measures how hot your tires are while you’re on track. Knowing tire temperature helps you figure out if your car setup is making the tires work the right way.
Oversteer is when the back of the car slips outward in a turn. It usually means the car isn’t balanced—either the front or rear tires aren’t getting the grip you need.
Term
corner exit
Corner exit is what happens after you pass the middle of the turn and start going faster again. A good setup helps the car hook up and accelerate cleanly out of the corner.
Term
quarter entry
Quarter entry means the car’s behavior near the beginning of turning in. It helps describe whether the car feels balanced right when you start the corner.
“Stickers” is slang for fresh, grippy race tires. If you switch to newer tires, the car can feel noticeably different because you’ve changed how much grip you have.
A “heat cycle” is when you drive the tires until they get hot, then they cool down again. Tires can grip differently depending on how many times they’ve been through that hot-and-cool process.
Term
tire attempts
“Tire attempts” means keeping track of how a tire set performs across different runs. That way you can tell whether the car feels different because the tires changed, not because your setup did.
Garmin makes GPS devices that some racers use to record driving data. In this case, the system doesn’t require Garmin logs to work—it focuses on setup information.
Firelapse is a brand of track-data tools some drivers use to record what’s happening during a session. The host says they personally stopped downloading data after installing it, but the new system doesn’t require that car data to function.
Spring rate is how stiff the suspension springs are. Stiffer springs help the car stay flatter and respond quicker, but they can make the ride harsher and sometimes reduce grip on rough pavement.
Hot tire pressures are the tire pressures measured after the tires have warmed up from driving or track laps. Because tires expand with heat, hot pressures are more representative of what the tire is actually doing during a session than cold pressures.
Hot temps are tire temperatures after you’ve been driving. They help you understand whether the tires are being loaded correctly or if the setup is causing uneven heating.
Aero is how the car’s shape and wings push down on the road. More or less downforce can change how stable the car feels and how hard the tires are working.
The Chevrolet C8 Corvette is a Corvette with its engine in the middle of the car. Because of that layout, the suspension and setup can work differently than on older Corvettes, so tuning matters.
“Production vehicles” are regular cars sold to the public. Race cars are built differently, so the same setup advice and temperature/pressure assumptions may not match what the tires and suspension are doing.
Here, tires aren’t just “the rubber on the wheels.” They’re treated like a measurable part of the car’s setup, because their condition changes how the car handles.
Brand
Handcook RS4s
They’re talking about a specific tire model (“Handcook RS4s”) and how its grip changes as it gets used. The point is to compare the car’s behavior when the tires are fresh versus when they’ve been run for a while.
Preventive maintenance means you check and service things before they break. Instead of waiting for a problem, you use past experience to decide when to inspect brakes and other wear parts.
Rotors are the metal discs the brake pads squeeze to slow the car. If they get overheated repeatedly, they can crack, so it’s smart to check them before they fail.
Tire tracking means keeping notes on how your tires are doing as you use them. That helps you know when they’re getting worn out or losing grip so you can adjust before it hurts lap times.
Oil chips refers to small metal particles found in used oil, which can indicate abnormal wear inside the engine. In motorsport, teams may analyze oil to catch developing mechanical issues early—before they turn into a failure.
Blackstone data is information from an oil test service. They look at used oil to see if there are signs of engine wear, helping you catch problems earlier.
Endurance racing is long-duration racing where the car has to keep performing reliably. Since drivers swap in and out, the setup has to work well for more than one person over time.
Different drivers drive a car a little differently. In endurance racing, the team often needs a setup that works well for everyone, not just the fastest person in the car.
A test-and-tune day is when a racing team practices and experiments before the main event. They use what they learn (and the data) to make the car better for the race.
Pit stops are scheduled stops in endurance racing to change tires, refuel, and sometimes make adjustments. In data analysis, pit stop timing and driver stint assignment can complicate which driver’s inputs correspond to which on-track behavior.
Endurance racing is about doing well for a long time, not just one fast lap. The car setup you learn during practice often matters more than what you can change during the race.
A “race environment” is when you’re driving like it’s a competition—harder braking, faster cornering, and more repeated laps. The car’s handling differences show up more clearly.
Term
day at the track
A “day at the track” is when you drive the car in a controlled environment. It’s the best place to test changes because you can push the car safely and repeatedly.
A “sweep” here means running a planned series of tests. You change the setup step-by-step so you can tell what each change does to how the car drives.
Concept
HBD weekend
An “HBD weekend” sounds like a track event where you follow a planned schedule. The goal is to change one thing at a time so you can learn what actually improves the car.
Suspension damping controls how the shocks move. “Compression” is how the car settles, and “rebound” is how it comes back up—together they affect ride and grip when you’re pushing hard.
“Full stiff” means you set the suspension adjustment to the hardest setting. The car will move less, but it may ride harsher and feel different on grip.
Camber is how much your wheel tilts in or out. Changing it changes how the tire sits on the road, which can affect cornering grip. The point here is that it’s not something you want to keep changing between races.
Struts are part of the suspension that help absorb bumps and control motion. If you adjust them, the car can respond differently over bumps and in corners. The host is treating it as a tuning adjustment you can make at the track.
Corner balance is tuning the car so the weight distribution is right at each wheel. That can make the car handle more evenly and predictably. It’s a common track-prep step when you’ve changed suspension parts.
Alignment is adjusting the wheel angles so the tires point the right way. On a track car, correct alignment helps the car turn predictably and keeps tires from wearing unevenly. It’s usually more involved than quick tire pressure changes.
An LS swap is when someone puts a GM LS V8 engine into a different car. That can change how the car sits and handles, so the suspension and alignment usually need to be adjusted. In this story, that’s why they’re doing a full setup cycle.
Term
quarter balance
Quarter balance is about making sure the weight on each wheel is set correctly. If one corner has too much or too little load, the car can feel off in turns. The host is saying the car’s balance wasn’t right after the engine change.
Toe is whether the tires point slightly toward each other or away from each other. It affects how the car tracks straight and how the tires wear over time.
Pit Race is mentioned as where the track data is coming from. It’s part of the system the driver uses to review what happened during the session.
Concept
AI
In this context, AI is being used to analyze track setup inputs and generate recommendations for things like starting tire pressure and alignment-related changes. The hosts caution that AI can be confused by unfamiliar brands or incomplete data, and that accuracy improves as more users feed it results. They also describe it as providing a baseline assessment even for drivers who are new to track driving.
A Mustang GT is a sporty version of the Ford Mustang. Here it’s used as an example of a car that’s basically stock, and the software helps you figure out what to change for track driving.
Camber is how much the wheels tilt in or out. “45 degrees” is a huge amount, and it can make the car behave differently than you want for a normal track day—so they’re saying you may need to reduce it.
“Stanced out” usually means the car is lowered a lot and set up with extreme wheel positioning. That can be fun for shows or certain competitions, but it may not be ideal for a track day where you want consistent handling.
“E36” is a BMW 3 Series from the 1990s. It’s a common car people use for track days, so the hosts are talking about using that car’s data to help with race setup.
Rear camber is the tilt of the back tires. If it’s set too aggressively, the car can handle differently and the tires may wear in a way you don’t want.
“105s” means the car is taking about 105 seconds per lap. They’re saying if your lap times suddenly get worse even when conditions are the same, the system should warn you to double-check what’s going on.
Lap time is how long it takes to drive one full lap around the track. If the number gets smaller after a change, that usually means the car is working better.
Tire temps tell you how hot the tire is getting while you drive on track. If one side of the tire is much hotter than the other, it usually means the car’s setup needs adjustment.
A thermocouple is a sensor that measures temperature by turning heat into an electrical signal. On a race car, it can help you see how hot the tire is getting so you can adjust the setup.
A perometer is a tool for measuring how hot a tire is. The point is to get accurate readings so you can tell whether the tire is heating evenly or not.
Some tire temp tools use a laser to read the surface heat. The hosts are saying those can be less accurate than probing the tire, so you might chase the wrong setup change.
Racers check tire temperatures to see how the tire is touching the track. If one edge is much hotter than the others, it usually means the setup isn’t right.
The contact patch is the part of the tire that’s touching the ground. The goal is for as much of the tread as possible to sit properly on the road so the tire can grip consistently.
“Dialing in” means fine-tuning the car for the track. You make small changes, then check what the tires and lap times are telling you until the car feels right.
These are shock settings that control how the suspension moves when you hit bumps and when it springs back. The right settings help the tires stay planted instead of bouncing or losing grip.
This describes advanced shock absorbers you can tune in more than one way. External reservoirs are extra fluid tanks that help the shocks keep their behavior more consistent when you’re driving hard for a long time.
“Feedback” is what the driver feels through the steering and pedals. If the car feels off, that feeling can help point to what needs adjusting, even if it’s not obvious at first.
So helping, helping same said friend who LS swapped his BMW. So now his suspension is completely
different. I've been on the phone with them most of today. And we were focused on getting his
brake within reason, because with the new engine, the quarter balance was not ideal. And it handled
that way at CMP. So we spent today getting the rake set up properly, then corner balancing it,
then aligning it, and then you go through that cycle. So when you talk about the prep side of it,
like, it could be eight hours on the front end to get your rake and your alignment in your corner
balance all correct. Right. Now, he'll go to the track, he'll do his first track day. And at the
event during the day, he'll likely adjust air pressure, suspension settings, maybe sway bars.
That evening, if he wants to get ambitious, because he now will be checking tire attempts,
because he understands how important it is, maybe we'll adjust his camber. The toe, you know,
and BMWs is pretty dialed in. So you adjust your camber, get your toe back to where it needs to be.
But when I switched my race car from, it only ran slicks to 200 treadwear, so I could do grid life.
For me, it took me four track days to get my alignment perfect. So I had to figure out tire
pressures, which were easier. But I was running the camber that I've run on slicks, I was running
4.2 up front in my 36. And on 200 treadwear, it loves like 2.9. But I wasn't, I wasn't willing
to go from 4.2 to 2.9. And I wasn't making the changes at the track because I'm often instructing.
So I took all my temperatures and pressures throughout the day, made adjustments as I went,
got home, realigned my car, read corner balance my car, did the next track day,
attempts were better. By the time I was done, most of my temperatures were about 15 degrees
across my tire, and that's at 295. So if you were to look at my Firelapse data from pit race,
on 200 treadwear, I was pulling like 1.4 Gs. That's really good grip on a 200 treadwear tire.
On flat corners, this isn't like, you know, corners that are, you know, you got extra,
you know, downforce or camber to help you get grip. This were flat corners.
So does your program, just from the initial setup again, we spend a lot of time,
we spend a lot of time with newbies. So our, if Bill has, or anybody has not really
had, gave you any backup of what we do. We're kind of like a 101 podcast.
And ours is bringing racers into racing. That's our specialty. So we, we, we talk about and we,
and answer a lot of questions for much like what you're doing right now. It's like,
they don't understand full setup. So sometimes when we, when we talk to our audience for that
certain segment of the audience that are just entering into racing and they get so excited
about entering, like we even ambassador to these people, right? So does your program
offer suggestions or does it, does it say, okay, well, if you're like running Ray Bestos,
that's, you know, and this particular brand, that's not the brand that you want. You need to do
this or these tires are terrible tires. You need to, and does the suggestion appear for you?
So it does make recommendations. So this is where the AI can get confused. So if you said
I run Ray Bestos super specials, like it's never seen them before, right? It literally has to do
what AI does, which it can go on the internet and see what they are. But if there's four forms that
say those are horrible brake pads, you're going to get advice that it's horrible brake pads,
even though maybe they've been running it for two years and like it. Right. So that is, you know,
AI at best, you know, untrained, maybe 50% accurate, like, you know, it'll apologize when you call it
out for being wrong and show that it's wrong. But so that's, you know, that's where the software
is improving. So the more people that are using it, the bigger our database bill, as you mentioned,
the bigger the database, the better the data. But yes, it will give a base assessment of their car.
And this can be for the, the, the never ever the person that's never been on track. You guys said
you just went out and bought something, you bought your, your, yourself a Mustang GT and you're
going on track. Nothing's done to the car. It will literally just say like, here's a good starting
pressure. Okay. If you take your pressures and temps at the end, it's going to make recommendations.
And here's one of the biggest mistakes we see people make. All four tires are running the same
pressure, but all four tires aren't doing the same amount of work. You're not going in a straight line.
And the only way you know this, and maybe your camber is different on one side than the other,
right? The only way you know this is by taking temps. So when you enter this in, it's going to
say, Hey, by the way, you know, you need more camber. So like if you have a bone stock Mustang GT,
maybe you can adjust the camber a little bit, maybe you can't, but it's going to start putting
you on that path of here, here's the recommendation of what needs to be done, but it's going to look
at your car and what you entered is it's stock. So here's what you can do. Here's what we're
recommending for the future. We will likely have partners. We already have a few partners as part
of the website, but we will have, you know, suspension company or companies that it's like
here, reach out to our friends at suspension X and they can help you because you need more than
what your car has. But it'll take the newbie, newbie that's never been on track and then it
can take the first time racer, whether it's time trial or endurance and what is it they're trying
to do? Right. So is there like a central storage where things get shared? Or is each account
each account separate? I guess each account is separate. Yeah, you're okay. So, so I have
no, so there's different levels. So if you do a starter, there's different packages where you
can do, you know, new where you get one car and a couple of setups all the way up to a pro level
where like if for somebody like yourself where you have a fleet of cars, the pro level allows you
to enter all of the different cars and all of the different setups for each car. This might be the
only thing we're pro at in racing. Oh, stop it. Trying to be better. All right. So I didn't say
it. I didn't say we weren't trying. We're like, look at the training training training.
Anyway, because what I was trying to get to is it was separate than that though. It was,
why is my camera doing weird things? Good thing I said in the video podcast.
Where are you with? I don't know. I just blew up. My head's like the size of
it is in real life. I'm just terrible. Sorry. You know, I have a double X helmet, but you know,
who's bragging? Okay. Because what I was trying to get to was, let's just say that, you know,
we'll use our cars, an example. We do a 93 Civic hatchback, you know, with some minor suspension
changes. And obviously, it's fully gutted and everything. So it's not a race, street
car, it's a race car. But suppose we put in what our parameters are, would it sit there and compare
it to the, I'm not looking for, you know, what Tom O'Gorman did in 1993 when he was running
autocross and, you know, actually he was probably, he probably wasn't even born then. He's so young.
But, you know, something that says, hey, that might not be it. You know, like you're running,
you know, I'm running a super stanced out car, you know, I've got the, you know, 45 degrees of
camber. You might not want to take that to the HPDE. You might need to dial it back just a little
bit, you know? Yeah. So it is going to look at right now, because I have hundreds of track days
entered in with an E36. And then Tim, having an E36, multiple friends that use the beta as an E36,
we have all of that data on that platform. As our customer base is growing, like we are seeing
more Miata's and we're seeing more front wheel drive cars. So as the database grows, yes,
it will collectively look at that. It's not going to tell you, hey, this person's doing this,
that's their secret sauce. Jackie runs this, we can do that. But it's just like sometimes you,
like when you're new, again, you know, we do the training work. Sometimes, you know, I, you know,
my friend told me, because they know a lot about cars, they've never raced a car in their life,
but they know a lot about cars, that I need five degrees of camber in the front and six in the
back, which we can't physically can't do. I'm just wondering if the software has the ability to say
correct. Yes. It's feeling the way to go. And in one of the ways we use AI is to humanize the
website. So it'll say like, hey, great job in setting up your 93 Civic. That looks like a real,
you know, fun track car. But it also goes to the extreme when it says highly dangerous,
like running too much camber, right? Are you smoking crack? Yeah, we have had to tame it down
to get away from like highly dangerous caution, high risk. This is not the plan.
You know, it appears you're running more, you know, rear camber than what's recommended.
Hopefully this is a typo. Yeah. What about the other way? So let's say we run a car and we'll
use the 93 Civic because, you know, why not? Or I could use a BMW 36E46. I don't care. It doesn't
matter. Suppose we run the car and we get we know all the data is set, right? And we know the,
like, let's just pick a pick a track track, track, metropolis track, you're familiar with it.
We we run a minute 40 every single lap. It's like a 100 second lap every single time, every
single time. Same same day, perfect weather. It's always 75 degrees. This is a wonderful track.
And then all of a sudden, we're now running 105s. Yeah. Okay, 145, sorry, 145, 105 seconds. Yeah.
Does the software have the ability to say, Hey, something's not right. Maybe you want to go look
to make sure this, this, this, just check it because something's weird. Can it go the other way?
So this is where we do want to incorporate the data side of it. So we can look at lap times
early on in the in the beta, the initial launch, we were asking lap times. And then we kept getting
asked the same question. Well, what should my lap time be? And it's like, it should be faster.
It should be faster. Right. Faster, of course. So we've stayed away from that, but we definitely
see the opportunity. Now, likely what you would see when you added, you know, the
five seconds per lap is something's going to change, right? Or something changed and I didn't
like maybe my, my camber right off my tie rod bent. Right. The data is going to show
that that all of a sudden like, Hey, now you're, you know, your passenger front tire is the outer
edge is, you know, 60 degrees hotter than the inner edge. Like something's changed in the camber.
You need perhaps the, perhaps the sparks coming off the car from the steel hitting the ground
is a problem. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is where, you know, it's shocking how few people
take tire temps. So some of the people that I know that, I mean, they live in their data,
they live in race studio. They're looking at everything charts, graphs, but then they're
not looking at the tire temps, which is the best indicator of what's going on with your car on
track. So tire, tire temps, you went there a little bit earlier and I, you know, I was being
somewhat polite. It's rare for me on the podcast, but, you know, I try. You said you used a long
acre, but you said perometer. Are you using the long acre thermocouple or the perometer?
I'm actually using the perometer, the probe style perometer.
Okay. Okay. All right. Cause that was, that was where I was going to the laser ones aren't really
getting the job done. Yeah. So unfortunately, they're like plus or minus five degrees compared
to plus or minus 0.5 degrees. So we, we do recommend and they do cost more, but again,
for what this sport costs, it is the most valuable tool you can buy. So we are,
we're researching the globe literally trying to find, I found a product over in Europe that's not
in the States. That is a smart perometer and it can even do tire pressures, record it all.
And then so we want to see if we can get it to just upload right into our software.
Okay. Which yes, you need inner outer center. And I'll share most of the time we find people
are running too much camber and too high of tire pressure. Okay. So it's shocking the number of
experienced people that we've said, Hey, try this, like forget what you know, just try this for one
day. Just follow this path. And but it's what I always did. It's what I always did. And we had
somebody that lives at New Jersey Motorsports Park. So you can imagine how often they're on track.
And on their streetcar, they cut almost two seconds off their personal best. And they're like,
yeah, my tire pressures are four to four PSI lower than what I was running. I'm like, right. So
yeah. But then the big one is, you know, like for my car, my car likes two PSI lower in the rear.
But that's for my car. That's not for every BMW. But that's what my car like. That's where the
temperatures are nice and even right across. I have full contact patch. So this is what the
temps tell you. But that may not be the same for your car with someone else driving. Oh, of course.
Like I mentioned, my friends that love to drift, they're going to get on throttle. And theirs are
going to be off the chart. So, you know, we have to adjust the car for that. So this is where
asking the person parked next to you or asking the fast person in the Miata, like, what's your
alignment? Like it doesn't matter. Because you're not that you're not them. Like, and you're even
if it's a spec, your car is not theirs. Correct. Correct. So this is where collecting the data
is so important. So how long do you think it takes for the the data to really be dialed? Like,
I imagine it gets a better understanding of you and your car at that track with more time. But
like first time on the track versus 10th time, where do you think it starts? It's going to just
funnel down or is it pretty quick or does it take a while? No, I mean, the people that are using it
are experiencing, you know, gains immediately. Because a lot of it isn't the fine tuning of
their driving style. More often, it's like, hey, you're running way too much camber. Well, you
have it online. Everybody runs this. I'm like, I don't like I don't care. Here's what your tires
tell you. The data says right data. And you know, I'll put an asterisk here and say, look,
if your toe is way off, that is going to throw off tire temperatures. Sure. But like if I can see
that your car is bow legged, like I'm going to tell you, you need an alignment like nothing I'm
going to do with tire temps is going to help you. But you know, you know, the assumption is somebody
had their car aligned, you know, you even stock alignment or for the track and it's somewhat close.
But there are there are those out, you know, out skirt situations, outer edge situations where,
you know, somebody's toe is so far off, it could throw off inner or outer temperatures because
they're dragging tires. But that that is the rarity. Last event I was at, there was somebody really,
you know, struggling with their car. I'm like, all right, I walked over. I do have the knowledge,
so I didn't bust out the laptop. I just checked all their their settings for compression and rebound.
I adjusted them. I didn't tell them what I was doing. I just adjusted them and I adjusted their
tire pressures. And he came in 1.6 seconds faster than the session before. Wow. My car just feels
better. Now he then spent two days, you know, I helped him remotely because he's a friend.
Go through his entire car, but he's got three way adjustables with external reservoirs.
Like most people don't know what to do with that. That's just more things for me to get wrong.
Yeah. And I'll share most people are like, Oh, I need more compression. So they hit plus. Like,
no, like you went the wrong way. So there's people adjusting their suspensions the wrong way. And
this is all the stuff we can help with. Yeah. Okay, couple more things. Yep. Any chance. And I think
the answer is no. But you know, hey, why wouldn't I be like every other customer says, Yeah, but it
does do this. Does it do this? Is there any chance the feedback that you're getting could say
influence what the driver should be doing? Like, like, what track are you familiar with most?
Let's go with Palmer. Oh, God, I don't know. What's your home track?
Thompson. Apparently Palmer. Okay, Thompson. Cool. Okay, let's say that. Oh, this doesn't do data.
All right. Here's, here's what I was thinking. Bring it up anyway, though.
Here's what I'm thinking. The car is performing well in turn. Let's say we're using Firelapse.
The car is performing well in turns one and 23 is bad. Four is okay. Five is bad. Six is
great. Seven is bad. You see where I'm doing? Yeah. Would your software say, Hey, you've got a problem
because all your left turns suck. Yeah.
So perhaps it's either the driver or the car, but one of them makes right turns good,
left turns bad. So I'll do it a little differently because this is real world.
So helping somebody that their car understeers into the corner and oversteers out of the corner.
I should hold this podcast, not me. Sorry. My question sucked. Yours is much better.
No, it's the same thing, right? It's what should I be doing with it when there's multiple things
or multiple corners? The software is going to recommend one thing at a time. So if your car,
so you're saying all left handers. I was just picking something that's like your car should
be doing better in the bowl at Thompson, right? You're terrible in the bowl. Why are you so bad
in the bowl? So we did early on when we did, you know, we did it for two months. We offered the
service free to about 20 people that were using it all over the world actually. And we allowed them
to just put in the note section, like how's your car handling? And because it's less data driven,
now the AI is really trying to solve it. And that's, that's where it ran into issues. So we
had to pull that back. So this is where we would say like, if there's multiple things or multiple
corners, we're going to look at what corner has the biggest impact on your lap time. I think
that's your focus. So it's like, okay, we want to focus on five, or maybe we want to focus on nine
at Thompson because that sets you up for, you know, the big street. Okay, so, so that would be kind
of cool. Then I got two more. Yeah, they give me have a bunch. I got, but I'm in, I've been on note
writing. Well, I can't say anything, but I got notes. Let's say, for instance, a team, let's just
say, Roger was in training at gmail.com. It was going to have a race in May at NJMP. And then
it was going to have another race in June at NJMP. But then in July, no, not July, September,
they were going to go to Gingerman in the same car. But they'd never been to Gingerman in that car.
Would this give us kind of a, hey, I know you run this and this at NJMP, but for Gingerman,
maybe you should run, hey, you know, I do a podcast. That's why I get paid zero bucks.
Would the software be any suggestive help? Suggestive help? That's the only fan's podcast.
But anyway, you know what I mean. And it will make recommendations on the track. So I don't know
Gingerman well enough to know whether it's... It's quite fun. No, no, it's Michigan. It's Michigan.
Right. It's going to make recommendations on that compared to club motorsports, which is all
these crazy elevations in Canberra corner. So it's going to make recommendations on the track.
Only place where we're working on improving it is a track like Palmer that runs in both directions,
which isn't common. The Thunder Hill too, right? Yeah. The software gets confused when somebody's
running it in, you know, the reverse. So because if you say turn seven, it's assuming one direction,
not the other direction. So yes, but it will make recommendations track specific.
Okay. So one direction, just name it Palmer and the other name it Remlap.
Remlap. Yeah. So we have and we've played around with it. It still just gets confused
running backwards. Yeah. So do I. Gingerman, you can run backwards too, by the way. Okay.
So it doesn't directly do suggested driver input changes. Like think NJMP and the light bulb on
Thunderbolt. There's different ways to approach the turn. Like the argument is always
diamond or, you know, gradually decreasing radius. And, you know, everybody knows the fastest way.
And you know what? Surprisingly, it's the way that they do it. 100% of the time, no matter what,
it's the way I do it is the fastest way because I know everything about racing.
Right. Yeah. Fastest way they're most comfortable and confident.
No, no, no, it's absolutely the fastest way is the way that they do it.
So we are talking to a couple of pro coaches. And the idea is to be able to incorporate that in,
but you know, I can instruct it lightning and I will tell them the fastest line because it's
the one I drive, right? Obviously. But we're talking to a couple of pro coaches. This is where
we're building out the partners in different categories. And the idea would be like if you're
going to lightning, if that coach has available a track walk, right? So now you have a pro level
coach walking you through the line. Now, that's still going to be the line they believe to be
the fastest, which it might be different than Bill. So it's going to be slower. So if it's
different than mine, it's slower. I mean, but yeah, so those are those are definitely things
that we're looking to incorporate is we'd love to be able to have track walkthroughs on the front end.
The suspension company that we're moving the fastest with is likely going to be able to put
white papers behind the scenes on every aspect of the suspension. If you truly want to know
low speed compression and what it does does, you know, in different situations,
there'll be there'll be the FAQs and white papers to answer that. But we also want to have the
coaching level. So at the end of the day, and this is where, you know, we haven't incorporated with
fire laps, but we talked a lot about this concept of incorporating the two. So you're getting the
coaching as well as the car side of it. So lots of options there.
So how does the integration with fire laps work? I'm trying to think my computer is going to die,
and I have no. So right now it's, you know, we're friends. They have a discount code to our
software. We have a discount code to their software. So people that sign up get the ability to use
both. And Bill is missing in action. And Vicki can't help herself.
Obviously there's Racebox. There's Garmin. There's AIM. There's another new one that just popped up.
I'm drawing a blank on their name right now. But we do have the ability, ability to integrate
with those. So now you have the data analytics, the coaching, and the car piece.
Okay. So sorry, the laptop was going to die. And since I'm the one who records, it would have
been a bad day. We would have been scheduling for another 20 times. Recording from a hotel.
I was worried about the internet and now my computer is on a juice because the plug
is plugged in. Who doesn't have any energy? But anyway, a peek behind the scenes of a podcast.
You'd think 800 episodes in. We know what we're doing by now. But no, no. Anyway, okay. So
does it, I'm talking, I'm thinking for autocross friends, they don't really have things called
tracks. They have things called parking lots or strips. Can, can this be used for them as well?
And it, yes. Is it designed for it? No. You know, they're not going to get the same
data points, right? The hot pressures, cold, you know, cold pressures, hot pressures, hot tires,
are necessarily going to be as effective. So, you know, we're looking at autocross,
we're looking at hill climb, we're even, you know, we've been approached about circle track.
So we're talking to somebody that specializes in circle track and can provide the data on the
back end. But we don't, we just don't have the database or the data sources for autocross hill
climbs, because it's more of a one-off. It's a one and done rather than, you know, eight laps,
get some measurements, eight laps, get some measurements. Right. What about the people who
are, they're handicapped? They only have two wheels. They don't have four wheels. Yeah, no, no
motorcycles. No. Okay. I'm just, everybody's like, why don't you drive a motorcycle? Because I would
like it. And they're like, that doesn't make any sense. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it does. It really
does. Yes, it does. You don't need another hobby. You'll be racing one or two. No, I can't, I can't
keep up with the ones I have. Yes. Okay. So I'm sure I've only begun to scratch the surface of this,
and this is one of those things we wanted to add for this season. So since we, like all of our
listeners has probably been enthusiastically looking forward to trying this out, and they want
to know how do they do that, like we do? How would they do that? Well, so they're going to go to
racesetuppro.com. They're going to sign up for an account. They're going to use the discount code
G-H-I-T likes Apex. That's an accurate statement. I cannot deny.
So with that coupon code, they will get 30% off, whether they do monthly or annually, they will
save a bunch of money. And yeah, and from there, it's start using it. Email address that right
right in the software. If they have questions that goes right to my email, I usually respond
within minutes unless I'm sleeping. But we don't, I mean, we don't get that many questions. The
biggest questions we get are people trying to enter their car on their phone. So we are, we are
doing an upgrade this week that should make the phone a little bit easier, but it's still, if it's
a race car, it's still like 140 fields and you don't even know all the information.
140 fields? That's a lot of data points. That's pretty thorough.
It is. If you have a full race car, there's a lot that we're looking at.
So, so what happens if you don't know something? Do you just skip it or do you guess?
Oh, please skip it. Don't guess. Okay.
Anything like spring rates, I'm thinking, you know.
Yeah. So anything that's left default will, you know, it'll ignore.
Okay. So if you put something in there and it's inaccurate, like I had somebody on their Miata
that runs 205s, they were requesting the data. So I, you know, I get that email like,
hey, this doesn't look right. So I log in as them and I look at their car and I'm like,
do you really run 295s in the rear? I'm like, no, I run 205 all the way around. I'm like,
let you enter 295s. So it is better than 502s. Yeah.
So, yeah. So if you don't know, leave it blank. You know, the friend that was helping today,
one of the things we determined, and this is something that they wouldn't have known,
but they need the longer front springs to get proper rake for their car.
Their spring rate is correct, but the springs aren't long enough.
So these are the things that were helping people figure out.
So your software figured that out?
So, you know, me looking at what they were entering, because they were struggling,
you know, I went in and looked and then that's when I started asking questions about why do
you have two inches of rake? And they had never measured it before. They just corner balanced
their car. Okay. All right. Interesting. Yeah. So we're finding a lot of this.
You know, I don't, I'm not picking on any mechanic out there.
Mechanics are amazing. Just look at our stuff. You'll have plenty of stuff to pick on. It'll
be fine. I wish I were a better mechanic, but not all mechanics are suspension experts. So
you tell them what numbers you want your car set up for, and that's what they set it up for.
That doesn't mean it's right for your car. It's right for your driving. It's right for
your tires. It's right for the driving conditions. That's where we can help. And it's literally,
you're having, you know, the, there's dozens of data sources behind the scenes. It's so it's
decades of experience documented, you know, data in your pocket. So that's why we say it's like
a race engineer in your pocket. You're not asking the person next to you. You're not going over to
the person that runs a really fast lap time in their radical. And you're not googling right there
on the track. Yeah. And you know, we've had people give us the feedback, oh, I used, you know,
chat gpt and it said this, I'm like, right, as long as it's right, did it look at your entire car?
Or did it look at one piece of data and give you an output? That's what I was just thinking is that
it's summarizing all the data at one time. Correct. And then giving you the output of,
you know, because like you said, I can go in and check the tire pressure. I can go in and check
the springs, but, you know, you could just make adjustment on one, but you're going to offset
something in the other side. So he's going to be knitting the whole thing together. That's
really kind of fascinating to really think about. And I use a pro level AI in my, you know, full time
job. And then I can tell you about, I don't know, 50, 60% of the time, it's right. But you have to
verify everything. We've done that. And that's the difference when you have a trained platform.
Our platform is not going out to the world and saying, Hey, what do all these forums say?
Like, you know, our software is going after very specific data that's proven, like I said,
over decades and going, here's what you do in this situation with this setup,
with these tire pressures, with these temperatures, with this arrow, with these sway bars.
Right. Does your assistant have a name? Does what? Does your assistant have a name?
Yeah, it's, uh, no, not yet.
It's, it's very set up.
Usually curse at it. It costs me a lot of time.
We have a, we have a gnome in our garage that we blame for everything.
Yes. Yeah. We call him frickin rick. Frickin rick.
Nothing to be my AI now is now frickin rick because it's nicer than what I call it.
Yeah. Every time we lose something or whatever, he's especially good at stealing gloves.
He's working me out of frickin rick. Frickin rick. Yep.
We don't say, we don't say frickin though. But anyway, so I think one of the reasons we really
want to date you on was you needed to have a complete set of all the racing podcasts.
But two was, I think we set ourselves back when we first got into racing, because like I talked
to you before we started recording, we treated the car as a, as a black box that was just fixed.
And we worked on driver, driver. And then as we got better,
we realized that it wasn't always often it was the driver, but it wasn't always the driver. And
we found the several instances where the car might have been part of the problem. And then we
started fixing our driving to fix a bad car. And I think this, this could help some people
and it would have helped us back then. Well, it's going to help us now with the Honda. I mean,
the setups on the other two cars are fair, but the Honda, the Honda is, its setups are
fragmented. How about that? It's the Honda has a, yeah, I mean, I, go ahead. I'm sorry.
It's okay. She's, she's already starting to use it and she hasn't even bought it yet.
Well, I'm just, I'm just thinking like,
There she goes thinking again.
Yeah.
And I will send you your login credentials when we get off air. But what, what else?
It's going to be fricking Rick. It's going to be fricking Rick. So you can put a good driver,
you can put a good driver in a bad car and they can still go fast. Right. But, you know, my OCD,
if my car is not right, like I'll just come in, like I can't stay out there. Like if something
deals off and there's everything in between. So there's a lot of people out there that don't know
their car is off, even though they have the alignment that the suspension manufacturer recommended.
And, but in talking to those companies, when somebody calls in, they go, okay, what's
suspension you're running? Maybe they ask what spring rates, they don't know the sway bars,
the tires, the arrow, like they're just not asking all those questions, weather conditions.
So our goal is for somebody to use this and maybe they use it for a year or two and our advice
is putting them in the right direction. But like you said earlier, Bill, is where you really want
to educate them so they don't need to use the software. They know when I'm out on track, it's
like, oh, my tire pressures are too high. Right. This is not right. We want them to be able to
make that decision without having to go in here. Right. I think the worst. It's still going to be
a database for them where they can go in and enter and then they can go, okay, when I went to
Gingerman last time, here's what we ran. And their new starting point is where they ended
the last time they were there. Right. I think the worst position that we were in several times was
we didn't know if we were terrible or the car was terrible or both. Like when you're new,
you don't know what a good car feels like, right? Yep. So you don't know it's the car. And then we
sent out somebody who's a good driver in our car and they came back and said, that's a debacle.
Yes. Like, what are you doing? Yeah. It turned out we had tow out on one side,
tow in on the other. And our camera was off by like three degrees on one side.
You're like grabbing on the track. Yeah. It was terrible. And that does happen quite a bit at
HBD events. It's like, hey, can you drive my car? And so then you come in and you go, yeah,
this handle's like crap. What do you mean? It's like, yeah, you have great lab times,
but there's so much more out there. But if you don't know what you don't know.
Yeah. I think the, you know, I've come in a couple of times because I don't tend to drive
other people's cars, but a couple of times I've been with friends and they talked me into it.
And I came in and they're like, what do you think? And I'm like, I don't think anybody can drive that
car. I don't know how you survive in a car with a wheel falling off and still go fast.
Yep. So it's doable. It's just you don't have to sometimes. It's like, don't do that.
You know, the sport's expensive. If we can help you get, you know, a couple extra track days out
of a set of tires. Great. If we can save you a couple of sessions by starting off at a better
point at the beginning of each track day, like that's the win because, you know,
I can't complain about how much a pyrometer costs if I've lost a track day because my car handled
so poorly, like a one-time expense. So, but yeah. So we're seeing it. We're being used all over
North America at this point. So yes, up even up into Canada. So getting more users regularly,
the feedback, I'm going to say more often than not is positive. When it's negative, it was,
like I mentioned earlier, trying to do too much on the phone. So initial setup on your phone.
Or it's something that we don't really support autocross hill climb, you know,
we're trying, but we're not there yet. But for the road course, if you're driving a production
based car, so again, not an open-wield, you know, F1 style car, the outputs are accurate.
So production, all production based cars typically will understeer from the factory. So we're
starting from that mindset. Sometimes more than others, man. Yes. But, you know, they all
generally handle that way, all different types of suspension. We, you know, we account for them
all at this point. So yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is, if you stay within a production type
vehicle, you stay within a smaller parameter sandbox, and you can make better decisions.
Getting into the sport. Most people aren't, you know, going out and buying a radical as their
first car or even a rush or something like that. Right. Right. Yeah. Fresh would probably be pretty
close, I think, but maybe just outside, but close. Well, this seems like fun. And I apologize ahead
of time because this won't be the only time we talk. And you've got Ms. Vicki all excited. She
wants to go play now and blame Frick and Rick. Yeah. I'll send you your locking
credentials. You have the, I'll resend you the, what do you call it? Git likes Apex.
Do you hit likes Apex? Yeah. So you'll have a coupon code for your listeners, save 30%.
And yeah, we're here to help. Look forward to hearing your feedback once you've used it.
We will. And I'm warning you, once I get a discount code for our listeners,
I put it on every single episode. So we've had people from like episode 20 who still get it
every now and then. Somebody writes it. I did put the expiration date as one year.
No, there you go. We're going to have you on more than that. Okay.
Excellent. That was great. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Sounds fascinating.
I can't wait to hear your feedback once you've used it. Okay. Thank you. Take care.
About this episode
Race Setup Pro takes center stage as the hosts connect setup coaching to real track decisions—starting with why “Race Setup Pro” took “millions of times we rescheduled.” The conversation moves through how drivers progress from Miatas to an E36 M3, how teams diagnose issues with tire temps and pyrometers, and how software recommends cold pressures and prioritizes changes. They also cover limitations (not accurate for LMP3), data workflows, and practical trackside guidance like rake, corner balance, and driver preferences.
When we first started racing, we always assumed that the car wasn't the problem and essentially never changed. This error probably held us back for a good 3-4 seasons as we learned. If only there was a way to address car setup when you don't know anything, or even when you do but you don't have a full time race engineer/setup guru on staff. Now there is and we can't wait to tell you all about it with our guest Jeff Zisssulis.
Also, we get to add a new discount code for you and your team. For a 30% discount on the Race Setup Pro, please use the code GHITLIKESAPEX at checkout
If you would like to help grow our podcast and high-performance driving and racing:
You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, YouTube, etc.
Also, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that we would appreciate 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.
Best regards,
Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, Alan, Jeremy, and Bill
Hosts of the Garage Heroes in Training Podcast and Garage Heroes in Training racing team drivers
Money saving tips:
1) Enter the code GHiT 25 for $50 off the Fire Links hardware system with a 1 year membership included and/or a an extra three months if you subscribe now at https://firelaps.com/
2) Enter code "GHIT" for a 10% discount code to all our listeners during the checkout process at https://candelaria-racing.com/ for a Sentinel system to capture and broadcast live video and telemetry.
3) Enter the code "ghitlikesapex!" when you order and Apex Pro system from https://apextrackcoach.com/ and you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.
