Built in the garage
Over-engineering a hobby, one subsystem at a time.
- The Race That Never Happened: My Coach, His Mini, and 1.142 Seconds
Jul 12, 2026
A 2,350-lb race-prepped Mini against my bone-stock Z4 coupe at Road Atlanta, called corner by corner like an F1 broadcast — built entirely from real GPS data. Six lead changes. And one twist: the race never actually happened.
- The Heavier Car Went Faster: VIR, No Coach, and the Weekend the Loop Flew Solo
Jun 28, 2026
A heavy, speed-capped M440i beat my lighter Z4's VIR best by 3.47 seconds and came within 0.22s of my all-time M5 lap — with no coach in my car. What the AI half of the loop can do alone, the one fix that beat the math, and the near-incident at 130 mph where the data took the other guy's side.
- The Tie, Then the PB: Road Atlanta to the Millisecond
Jun 5, 2026
A lap identical to my two-year-old personal best — to the millisecond — followed an hour later by the real thing. What a tied PB teaches you that a new one can't, and the true story of the 2022 crash I'd been driving around ever since.
- Two Great Coaches (Rich & Claude) Found Me 2.57 Seconds
May 31, 2026
An AI read four years of my Barber data and pointed at three corners. A coach in the passenger seat taught me how to actually take them. Neither got me to a personal best alone — and that's the point. First of a series on my AI-coached track weekends.
- My Track Day Checklist Is Now a Schema in AWS
May 15, 2026
What happens when a data engineer decides the night-before-a-track-day spreadsheet isn't good enough.