Looking for some opinions as to whether or not you think there would be value in having access to a mentor program. (There would be no charge associated with it.) It wouldn't be specific to any one single club such as NASA or SCCA and would be geared towards people interested in autocross, HPDEs, Time Trials and/or Club Racing in the U.S. I realize that some clubs have mentors once a person actually gets to the track, but there are also many others that don't have anything in place, or if they do it isn't well advertised. From my personal experiences, I thought it would be nice to be able to actually speak with someone on the phone or via e-mail. Basically have a friendly voice they can speak with if need be. While there are various chat forms, I regularly hear that's not enough.

If something like this wouldn't be that useful, I certainly don't want to spend all of the time it would take to put it together and attempt to manage it. What are your thoughts?

 

Of course it would.
From my experiences being able to ask someone who is already involved in racing is huge.

Having someone on the inside to guide you from A-Z would be really helpful.

 

a great idea.

we have something like that in our local club.
it's a smaller club so the instructors at school events tend to look in on and sort of mentor students for a while after the school.

it helped me more than I ever thought it could. (not to mention built friendships)

 

Dirty19 is my mentor I am serious.

Yeah that would be awesome for people who are serious let me know if you need help on this side of the coast California I am in the process of putting together a webiste that would be like a virtual resource/mentor or late model crx/civic for road racing check it out I even have you book "Go ahead and take the wheel" a must read for any newbie I love it well its the only thing I carry lol.

www.pmgarage.com


The only problem I would see is if there is not enough demand or people do not take this serious so if anything you can make a low/self maintance website or resource that people can team up maybe you can team up with Honda tech to see if you can make a sticky and run it from there. I know people come here for all sorts of help.

 

Okay, so this isn't such a silly idea after all. I posted the concept somewhere else and they (experienced people) basically felt it already existed. Thanks for the feedback and motivation to keep moving forward with this.

Civic... I looked at your site and like what you're doing with it. Good for you, seriously. I also appreciate your support with the Go Ahead resource effort!!! It's been a love / hate relationship, more often discouraged.

Yeah, the mentor demand thing seems like it could cause a problem. It's a tough balance between having too much interest and not enough mentors versus the opposite.

A while back the resource I wrote had a sticky (in return I promoted this site and still do) but ownership changed along with the "deal"we had. Who knows, maybe they'd be willing to do something similar.

 

definately a good idea. some newbies don't know who they can talk to about a-z racing stuff. i'd be down to help out.

 

Awesome! I certainly could use both of your help and it's even better that you guys participate with NASA. (I happen to know more SCCA people since NASA road racing isn't nearly as large in the N.E. yet.)

I'll send you both a PM.

If Honda-tech doesn't mind, I can post an announcment here when this thing is made active.

 

I don't mind helping out either, and also think it would be a good idea.

Feel free to post an announcement anytime

 

I for one could use a mentor on the a-z stuff. just about everything actually as it seems no one locally is really into the honda/acura road racing.
most people here are either too well off to help a grassroots guy or maybe i'm just too nervous/shy to introduce myself.

 

There are sooo many knowledgeable racers and fabricators out there Im sure they have agenda's of their own.. preparing for the upcoming season and what not
Im surprised there isnt more people out there volunteering.
I'll do what i can if anyone needs assistance or wants to be led in the right direction.
I dont know it all but i know where to find the information.

 

exactly.
maybe it's more so i'm not much of the builder type but more of a driver type.
thats what sucks is i have more motivation to drive then to build the car.
and i want to learn more about the building of a car so hopefully i can find someone to tag along with and help in the pits and maybe one day have the opp. to drive for someone/somewhere.

 

As one who has been around Honda Touring Car Racing Internationally for about 35 years. I have often thought of writing a book on my racing experiences and even include some mentoring and advise for young players...
Having just finished reading Sara Palin's book "Going Rogue" I'm thinking ...How boring, Is that all you have to do to write a best seller!?

Some who have been associated with me and my team over the years will probably say they have learned some valuable stuff, others may say they have learned nothing!
I have always found that in order to be a good Racecar Driver, a certain amount of ego is required... However I have also found that the same ego can be detrimental to the Mentoring process, and often the person being mentored allows his ego to decide he knows it all!

As recently as a couple of months ago a person who I was "Mentoring" remarked to someone else ..."Oh Kiwi needs to curb his driving style and not be so aggressive and he will do much better..." This from someone who has never won a Championship, never even won a race in his life! So regardles of how sincere the mentor is and how much he really cares about the future of his protege, this is the type of thing you have to deal with, which can be as encouraging as a bucket of cold water!
My answer...< Jeff (Kiwi) Owen > Google it! now Google <BILLBOB QXYZ>

Ok enough about ego's. The other problem with mentoring is that if you have enough admiration for your mentors particular talent, be it Driving, Car Preparation, suspension set up, engine building... Whatever the talent may be. There can be only one! stick with him.
If you start gathering advice on the same subject from 10 different people you will end up with so much conflicting information you'll go backwards.

I'm not saying that collecting information from many sources is not a good idea, I'm saying that is not mentoring.
If your mentor advises you to XYZ then someone else proves to you that XYZ is completely wrong because... Then perhaps you should think about changing mentors.
Until then stick with the guy who has proved to be helpfull so far.

FWIW

Kiwi

 

I think I have some very good mentors. Some of the best in the business, and one of the reasons i say this is because they never had to big of an ego to shoot down some one else ideas. In fact many of them welcome some fresh/new/different ideas.

These guys never stopped learning, never diss-missed ideas unless they had been tried and encourage thinking out side of the box.

One likes to look towards the professional business world to find new/better ways to be organized/better prepared.

Another is very old school and has taught me a lot about being adaptive and a lot of hands on stuff.

Another is ALWAYS looking for people who are smart in different areas and never discounts an idea unless previously it has shown to be not worth it. Even then some times he will give it ago.

I like the idea Dave, and really admire what you do for the 'scene'.

 

Excellent summation there Jeff!

I believe when you are being mentored you should be on the listening side.
Take in all the information a mentor has to offer.. After all you are being mentored for a reason.
One who is being mentored should show much humility, and keep in mind that the mentor is not only giving you his/her knowledge but their time. To pass judgement on your mentor is disrespectful.
You can't learn it all in 10 minutes as a student, and it takes a lifetime to aquire knowledge to be a good mentor.

 

this would be awesome being a n00b with no exp with autox or hpde and going in fresh for the first time. a program like this would help a person like me in my position. i hope this works out if it becomes reality.

of course i already plan on buying your book as well.

 

This sounds like an excellent idea. I would be willing to help out whenever I could. You may want to try contacting some of the national and/or regional directors of some of the various organizations as well to see if they can offer their support as well. I don't know why they wouldn't seeing as this idea can only send more business their direction.

 

If it’s about road racing in the US, I can tell you first hand it’s quite a challenge. Oh, writing it is time consuming but that’s only a small percentage of the deal. (A few years into this, I still have a nice loan related to it even with it being well received and supported from places such as SCCA, Road & Track, Motortrend.) I think road racing represents what, about 18% or racing in the U.S.? Might be smaller than that – can’t remember for sure. Not saying it can’t or shouldn't be done, but just do it for the right reasons then it’ll be worth it!

If you (or others) decide not to do the book thing and are interested in writing some articles to help others, I’d be happy to include them on my new site. Unfortunately I don’t have the means to provide any financial compensation.

Not that I don’t want you to buy a copy, but I’ll be honest here in saying that part of my new project is getting all of contents online for free. Although, some people like me prefer to have a hard copy and reference the site for other information. I attempted something vaguely similar before, but it wasn’t done right. During this lengthy process, I figured it would be a good time to develop a mentor program. (I had pitched the mentor idea to a couple clubs before but they didn’t have the time or motivation to do it.)

The intent of the mentor program won’t be as in-depth as suspension set-up, engine building, or driving techniques. Not saying it couldn’t go there depending upon the mentor, but that’s not what a student should expect going into this. The “mentor page” is still a work in progress, but this might give you a better about it.

For the student portion:
For the mentor portion:
Thanks for the support guys. I came very close to just scrapping the idea. Joe and others, I absolutely could use help with this! I will contact various organizations once the program is up and running, but it's much more effective when they hear from others who participate with their club.

Once I get further into this, I’ll also post an announcement where people can either sign-up to obtain a mentor or become a mentor.

 

Dave, you may also want to cross-post on some of the smaller organization boards, like TrackDaze and so on.

 

I will be dead serious.... i just got into the game of cars and i thought my self how to drive stick and i would love to get some feed back and stuff on things like this

 

This is a great idea.

 

I definitely think that the idea of mentor programs is good, but most of the people that you would see at the track and could talk to at the track are available and willing to help via forums online and end up wanting to meet you anyways. What else would mentoring include?

 

To Dave the OP...

I'm sure I'll see it here or on one of the other places you post, but I'd definitely be interested in mentoring. At this point, I can at least educate others about what NOT to do, since I have already been down those paths... LOL. I'm already pretty much already crewing/coaching/mentoring 2 NASA drivers, and since the same sorts of discussions are popping up over and over again with them and a few other new folks, I'm thinking of maybe writing a few articles and setting them up on a website somewhere. Gears are whirring...

You're right, you will meet a lot of people at the track, and on this very forum and others like it who will generally tend to be very helpful. The benefit with this "mentoring" is that via phone or instant message, you can have a lot of 'give and take' so to speak between parties. This helps quickly establish the knowledge base and personality of the student. I find that it works really well to know a little bit about the person so I can tailor what I'm teaching to make it more effective. That, and if you have direct contact... at a minimum, I can tell you what I've found doesn't work, and pass that along immediately. I see you're in the Richmond VA area as I am... hypothetically, if you were looking for some particular piece of information from DC SCCA, I could probably point you to the right person rapidly to get that information if I didn't have it myself already. Or if you wanted to discuss racecraft, the interaction is really helpful to help convey the "why" behind a certain move and how you can apply that elsewhere. That sort of stuff would take up a jillion pages a lot of people would not have the patience to wade through...

 

I just moved back to Massachusetts, from RVA, so I just updated my location. Overall I think a mentor program in any aspect would be good, especially pertaining to your reference to the SCCA. For example, in my case I know alot about how NASA works, but if I wanted to sign up for an SCCA event, I wouldn't know where to start. (obviously a search on HT and the SCCA NER Website would be my first look)