GHIT 0334: How to Test Your Car at the Track with Scott Robertson

Garage Heroes In Training

GHIT 0334: How to Test Your Car at the Track with Scott Robertson

We often hear how important it is to test your car prior to racing. While listening to Scott’s Track Walking podcast (a can’t miss podcast), Scott was discussing how he and Becky were able to conduct a full track test and tune evaluation of their vehicle during a recent HPDE. Since Scott is a respected coach and offers a service to help a driver to dial in their car at the track, we thought he would be a perfect guest to discuss how to best conduct a test and tune day most effectively and efficiently. We start the discussion with what a test day means and work our way up from there. This was recorded several weeks ago prior to the 2022 One Lap of America where Scott and Becky entered the OLoA in their Mazda 2 Sundae Cup car lovingly called Mooncake. If we could go back in time, we would have asked how that car was able to come in second overall on the skid pad event versus some very capable and sometimes expensively prep’ed vehicles.

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/TestingYourRaceCar

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Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights for this episode include:

1) We start off with pre-event processes such as planning what you will test. This includes aspects of what tools you have, what you are capable/willing to change at the track.

2) Some examples of the testing order and priority. Things to do and things not to do.

3) One of the key aspects is to determine what you are trying to get from the process, i.e., driver experience/education or car optimization etc.

4) We also cover some of the key changes that you would like to change, as well as what tools you need to have for some of the key areas you will likely test. Hint: you will need a good tire pressure gauge and ideally a tire thermocouple or equivalent.

5) The best aspects of seeking an outside perspective or even better an experiences coach or F1 engineer, or even somewhere in between.

6) Ideas of things that you would like to test, including front sway bar (full hard to disconnected), rear sway bar (same), shock sweeps (full hard to full soft), rake adjustment, alignment, aero, tire pressure, etc.

7) Tips on how the impact of driver adaptation can affect the tests.

8) The importance of testing documentation and how it can help you going forward. A partial list of the items to summarize include the weather, track conditions, alignment, tires and condition, driver etc. This will eventually lead towards secondary goal of building you set up database for the car and the tracks

9) We go into last year’s One Lap of America and the (at that time) upcoming 2022 which since been completed.

10) Scott and Becky finished first in class and 54th out of 84 entries for the entire event and stunned the world on the skid pad with a 2nd place overall.

To follow Scott, you can go to:

@TrackWalkingPodcast on Facebook or Instagram

@RobertsonRacing on Instagram

@RobertsonRacingMiata on Facebook

Or you can email Scott about coaching etc. at: [e-mail]