DwD 0760: Life Lessons From Endurance Racing
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Concept
endurance racing
Endurance racing is about staying fast for a long time, not just for a few minutes. Since the car has to keep going, teamwork and careful maintenance during the race matter a lot.
Concept
teamwork taken to another level
In endurance racing, it’s not just the driver—lots of people have to coordinate to keep the car running. Even other teams can matter because the race is about staying on track and finishing.
Concept
pit work
Pit work is what the crew does in the pit area during the race, like refueling and quick repairs. In long races, doing it well helps the car lose less time and stay running.
Concept
Lemons
“Lemons” is a kind of race where people run budget cars and the goal is to finish and keep going, not just win on speed. Teams often help each other so cars can get back on track.
LIVE
From the great halls of their house, there are assembled three who hope to one day be
the world's greatest driving heroes.
Created from the cosmic legends of the universe comes our team captain, the vision Bill Fisher.
They're soon to be Wonder Woman, Vicky Fisher, our captain Marvel and head flight trainee,
Jennifer Scribchuk and our Batman, the master of tools, gadgets and all things mechanical,
our mild-mannered soon-to-be billionaire, Alan Danvers. Their mission to fight injustice,
share what is right and wrong, to get you out of your house and come out racing with them
and serve all mankind. They are the garage heroes in training team.
Dominating with Dawson. Ben Dawson, Ben Dawson, I need me, Ben Dawson.
Yes. The aerial. So we go in later tonight, go in later. Got my DJ voice going here.
I've been talking all day. It's crazy.
We had one that was, it's one that's been on the list for a while. I think it's been fun.
All right. And we wanted to have more than just you and me. So Ms. Vicky, are you here?
I am here. Oh, look at that. Hey, there we go. Hey, Ms. Vicky.
Hey. Yes, we're having internet issues. So I'm talking to two people in the dark. It's fun.
I'm sitting in the dark, so that helps. Yeah. So
this one's for both of you. And I may chime in, you know, if you guys get terrible answers.
Sure. Sure. Naturally.
What life lessons have you learned from endurance racing?
Oh, I mean, I feel like we may have covered some of this before, but I know I've talked about,
you know, perseverance, creativity, trying to find a way around a problem, you know,
just a couple big ones right there for me. What are you, Vicky?
My life lessons that I've learned.
Rapping cars, not that hard. Patience.
I thought Mary to me would have taught that, but that's true. Yes. Patience in just enjoying the process.
What do you mean by that? Well, because sometimes when people hit the track
for the very first time, they're there to win when they show up for the very first time. But
I think for my life lesson is just to enjoy the process. Enjoy the process of learning.
It's a journey. It is a journey on it, and it will take time, and you never stop learning
and celebrate the wins.
Little laugh. It is problem solving.
And I think for endurance racing, oh my gosh, all the skills that come with it.
When you jump into racing, it's more than just racing. You end up in the long run becoming a teacher.
I have, that's true. You become a teacher along the way.
Yeah, so those are my skills, I think. How about you, Bill?
Go ahead, Ben. You were on it. Oh yeah. I think one of the other life lessons that's been sort of
selfish, but it's still a life lesson, is how the inclusivity that is so important in racing,
just to build a fun field and have enough people to race with, is that as a byproduct,
it's taught me, I think I already naturally have been an inclusive person in my life,
but it's helped me see like, hey, I don't want racing just to be a bunch of one type of person,
we'll say, and it's pretty easy to guess what I'm talking about. It doesn't need to be a bunch of
just run-of-the-mill white dudes out there. There's plenty of people who want to race,
and the more people we can roll into that, they're going to add more competitive fun
people to the field. So I think reinforcing inclusivity has been a great life lesson for
me, and I've been experiencing racing, even if it's me selfishly just wanting more faster
people to race against. Yeah. But another one for me is, we talk about how getting to the track
and getting the race wheel to wheel is a mount top goal. It's a lifetime experience. It's something
that many people dream about and maybe think they'll never be able to do. And it's easy when
you're having a tough time with the track to be out there thinking like, oh, shit, this is
terrible, blah, blah, blah. But remember, you're at the racetrack. This is the thing you dreamed
about when you were as a kid. And sometimes racing has taught me to step back and go, hey,
even though this moment sucks, I'm still doing the thing I dreamed about for my entire life
growing up as a huge racing fan. I thought it was the coolest thing I never imagined I'd be
able to do any kind of racing at all. And here I am doing it. So even when it's a bad time,
even if I don't win or I don't get a result, and even when I do, even when we've won races,
it's easy to go, all right, boom, let's think about the next one. No, stop. Enjoy that. Enjoy
the moment. So it's definitely helped me be more present in my own life in other ways.
Being at the track reminded me to go, hey, take a break. I always often brag about how
the times where I'm really able to disconnect and feel pretty free and not worried about everything
is times when I can get in the race car. As long as I'm not burning up or something like that,
as long as I'm relatively comfortable in a pretty neutral car, it can be a ton of fun and a time
that I'm just totally disconnect and get into, I don't want to say flow state because I think
that's kind of dumb. But I think it's a time to just really get into your rhythm and just enjoy
and the thing that's a mountaintop experience. So another thing besides the basic, just like
perseverance, be creative. Never give up. Go find a way around a problem. Also, yeah, more esoteric
things like inclusivity and just being able to be present and remember, hey, this is the thing
you wanted. If you are doing it, even if it's not perfect, it's still way better than a lot of
pursuits you have in your day-to-day life. Yeah, it is. And to piggyback off of that one,
it helps and introvert
managed community building. Inclusivity because usually in racing, it's like your first day
in college or your first day in school. Everybody's on the same page. Everybody is there. They're
excited. There's a lot of new people that have shown up and everybody has the same mind focus
of what they want to achieve and why they were there. And it's for fun. They're there to have
a good time, which means everybody is open. Everybody is social and it's a great place for
introverts to just get to know people because people are just so open to share the experience
that you are about to enter into. And us introverts don't need an icebreaker because you're already
all there for the same thing. The ice is broken. You're all there immediately for the same specific
target activities. So you don't need an icebreaker. You can go up and go, hey, what are you driving
this weekend? That's all you need. need to do. You could just say, hey, tell me,
what do you got going on in your car? And I tell you, just made a friend. Yeah, what are you guys
racing this weekend? And if you want to make a double friend once they tell you, oh, that's a cool car,
even if you don't want to think about it or you don't care, y'all, that's a really cool car.
Then all of a sudden you got a really good buddy. And exactly. It helps an introvert become a little
bit more extroverted. It has me for sure. Anytime I tell a track person that I'm an introvert,
they're like, get the fuck out of here. And they're like, nope, it's true. I'm a good extrovert
acting introvert. Right. You're an introverted extrovert. But I mean, I truly am still an
introvert. And the contact with people takes stuff away from me and I have to recharge on
batteries. I think a true extrovert gains energy from contact with people. It does. It does. I
truly am an introvert. Like no matter how well I think about all weekend, when I get away, I can
need that long drive or whatever. Listen to some podcasts, give my thoughts back together. Like,
yeah, that's another good point. It really is. And because of that, it can help you
when you're away from the track to talk to other people, you know, you've just kind of,
you've kind of worked a language and a way of approaching people. And then you have better
reads on people. So yeah, a life lesson in there is it has helped me become way more
available just to talk to just people out in the general public neighbors that I've never met before.
And, you know, just going out by myself and just sitting somewhere and just starting up a random
conversation with people. It's a very good way to build that. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
No, what are you saying? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Oh, I'm fine. You guys did a good job. I'm just here
I'm just here to serve the platters for the wonderful host. That's the things that come
off my mind right now. Yeah. What about you, Bill? Do you have any?
That's a good question. I think dealing dealing with setbacks is monster because
I don't know if you realize it, but our junk breaks a lot. A lot. And drives me absolutely
bad because I always think if I can prepare everything, it shouldn't break. But, you know,
that's just not feasible for some of the stuff we put the cars through. They're not made to do it.
What we're doing to these cars is crazy. Yeah, they're gonna break. They're not made for this.
Grocery getters were not made to do what we asked of them, but that doesn't mean I still can't get
frustrated by it, but that's for sure. And then I think specifically for endurance racing, the
thing is it's teamwork taken to another level. It's not like you go on one of those work retreats
and you have the fall tests and you catch people as they fall back in your arms and all that.
I mean, this is like literally in some ways your life is in the hands of the people who
repaired the car and the people who are working on the car and people filling the gas in the car,
whatever. And you're working together, but it's not just the three or four or five people on your
team plus those people who support that team. It's the 50 other teams as well. So we always say
you're racing the track. And then one thing in Lemons especially is you want everybody out there
on the track, so you will go help your competitor get back out on the track. But you're all one
big team and whichever team happens to do the best that weekend, they win. But it's not like
there's very few people that we've raced with in endurance racing where I'm like,
I would root against them. There's a couple. And if you want to hear who
they are, the only fans version. I do have to say that there have been a couple teams that I have
come across. I can name a small handful of them. There's not many though. No, it is not. That
a new team that has been put together, and it's always been a new team put together, that whatever
personalities that are hidden from, like you have personalities that are presenting and then you
have true personalities, a race, the stress of a new race will bring out that second personality
that you have been covering. So I have seen teams instantly crumble on their first day.
Well, after their first weekend, I have seen teams crumble because they're like,
oh, I didn't know about that person did that. That's just if prepping a card together doesn't
kill all the relays. We had a teammate who was real serious and we have another teammate who likes
to be playful and fun and messing around no matter what's going on. The real serious teammate was
trying to do some kind of tuning thing or something real serious. We just got to the track and we're
going to be testing this weekend. And so he was serious about something. The other teammate was
just goofing around, just trying to make everybody have a light and fun moment. And the serious
teammate just jumped on him. It's like, oh my God, you want to see this? We're all just standing.
Luckily, you had to go a lucky teammate just to get him to try and then worry about it. But I was
standing like, if this person has spoken to me that way, it'll be the last time they saw me. You
there was a team that broke up that we went to where that teammate got so upset that he packed
up his trailer and went home. But that trailer was a trailer that surprised the entire team.
Oh, yeah. I had the little I don't know what is this topic even about? What are we talking about
life lessons? Yeah, I'm not gonna tell my horror story, but I have been abandoned with my race car
at CMP and the person with the trailer went back to the Raleigh area and I had to figure it to
fuck out. And I did. And in that same weekend, a team who had never driven together, the three of
us who got it together and figured it out, had never driven together. It was the first WRL race
in the Southeast and we won it overall. So good things can come out of huge setbacks. I mean,
that weekend began with me standing there with my race car with this insane dude who I decided
would be good to race with, just got upset for what I could not even discern and took the hell
back to New South Carolina. But it's all over back to North Carolina, leaving us in South Carolina.
I was like, Oh, I got it. But we figured it out. I got to race and bring his trailer and we went,
we won and went home. And you know what? And that's the one thing too is that when something like
that happens and you can rise above it still, you know what? It also kind of works out. But
that's a good life lesson. That is a good life lesson. That is a good life lesson. But yeah,
you say you do learn to persevere. You do get to know people on a secondary level,
on the next level you do. But yeah, that was kind of, there was something out someplace,
somewhere I was going to go with that. But yeah, no, I kind of understand. You get to learn about
people and it's kind of rare that it does happen that way. But that's though I remember what I was
very good thing for you people out there that are starting a new team. Listen, when you first get on
that track, you are not going to win. I'm telling you, you are not going to win. That's not the
reason why you're there. You are there for at least, especially for your first year,
only to learn. You are there only to learn. And what Bill has always said, which is a nice way
that he introduced everything was, listen, if we wanted to win this race, we would have brought
different people in a different car. So we're here to have a good time. We're here to learn.
Okay. That's a great life lesson in itself for track people is this.
Right. Come and have fun. Calm down. You're here to have a good time. You're here not to win.
You're here not to break the car. That comes much later. That's much later.
But yeah, for all you new teams,
you know what? I want to hear some of our listeners have learned through their racing
careers. I know there's a lot of stuff we left on the table, but that's what I can think of right
now. But I would love that you're more from things our listeners have learned.
Absolutely. That's where I was going. I'm like, you know, I bet you there's
literally thousands of things we didn't cover that, you know, we just didn't think about. And
I'd love to hear the stories. I'd love to relay them and, you know, perhaps return to this topic
again and as we get some right in. So garageers and training at gmail.com.
Damn right. Yeah. Yeah, buddy. Another one in the books there, Mr. Dawson.
Yeah, thanks. That was a fun one to kind of go through. It's good. It's kind of take a mental
inventory and a little bit of a gratitude journaling session. I didn't like when you
started this one going, I don't know why we talked about that.
No, but, you know, we are getting ready to get back on the track. At least we are. So
it's good to kind of refocus on gratitude. Yeah. I think it's, I'm hoping I'm hoping to kind of
maybe get through the middle of this year and get myself back out there sometime soon too.
All right. Keep us in mind, you know, we still have to make our little trip to our annual
pilgrimage that has never happened. That's right. I think maybe one of our next big goals
would be what we talked about in a more recent episode is getting you guys down here and getting
me in the car with Vicky. That'd be a lot of fun and very useful for driving. We would have our
first in-person dominating with Dawson. Yeah. We did him a tight race. Did we do a tight race?
You know, we did him in the camper. Yeah. We even had Scott and Michael rolling.
Oh, that's right. Maybe some other folks. That's right. I felt so bad that the car
didn't work and you drove all that way. We can always do more live, live DWDs.
That's right. Yeah. Well, that was great. That was a fun one, you guys.
All right. Thank you so much, Ben. All right. Thank you, guys.
All right.
About this episode
Endurance racing becomes a lens for life lessons: learning to be patient, solve problems, and stay present instead of chasing results. Hosts and guests connect the sport’s teamwork culture—especially in Lemons, where teams help competitors get back out—to real-world resilience. They also share practical track guidance for newcomers: expect to focus on learning, not winning, and prioritize not breaking the car. Community grows through simple conversations like asking what someone is driving.
Original notes
DwD 0760: Life Lessons From Endurance Racing
Endurance racing is not only incredibly fun but also is a great teacher of things that can apply to your home and work life. We named a few. Who better to talk to about this than Ben Dawson. Let's Dominate!
Did we miss something? Please let us know at [email protected]
A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/RacingLifeLessons
We hope you enjoy this episode!
If you would like to help grow our podcast and high-performance driving and racing:
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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
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