Reviews of "Garmin Catalyst" for Lemon's Racing?

It does work, and helps a lot. Specially during practice. During the race the "suggestions" it provides are somewhat useless if there is any traffic. So its useful as in car video.

I bought one for use in time attack but I put it in our Lemons cars as well during races. We're the other way around... I actually turn off the lap timer display during races because I don't want my drivers fixated on lap times. We'll communicate pace to the driver over comms from our pit, but I'm fairly confident having lap timer displayed w/ a delta is going to land us more black flags. It's great for looking back at footage and reviewing data, and it's way easier to find footage since you can look it up based off time, lap #, and turn #.

I think it's better suited for HDPE/time attack/practice days... every race we end up with corrupted footage and data (not a huge amount, maybe less than 10%), and that corrupted data/footage always seems to be when something cool happens. The catalyst seems like it can handle endurance racing, but it doesn't seem like it was designed with endurance racing in mind. One annoyance is it's one more thing to deal with during pit stops. When you hit the kill switch, it turns off the camera (which is powered off the catalyst dock), after driver change/fuel, you turn the car back on but there's a delay between the camera turning back on+catalyst seeing the camera, once that's on you can start the session. Long story short, someone in your crew needs to be playing with the catalyst and you need to start the car earlier rather than it being the last thing you do during a pit stop. Finally, we've found that we end up with less corrupted footage if we stop the session, let the garmin save it, and then start a new session every driver change (rather than leaving it running as Bricoop mentioned). The coaching system also wasn't designed for use in a crowded field and with multiple different drivers. It's designed to work on an open track with one driver and to improve that drivers consistency and performance within their specific limits using their data.

It's been worth every penny since we'll use it between all cars (especially worth it for TA cars), but I personally wouldn't have spent the money on it for use only in endurance racing. The driving coach is the biggest selling point, and it's hard to apply w/ multiple drivers in a crowded field, we personally leave the lap timer display off, so during Lemons races we basically use it as a fancy dashcam. Resolution on the Garmin is also pretty good, but grainy when compared to a Hero 5. (we currently use both a hero 5 and catalyst).

No problem! Lookup "full ass racing" on youtube if you want to compare... i have videos from both the catalyst and a Hero 5 on there. Grainy may be a bit harsh, but you can definitely tell a difference in quality. If you decide to compare, the videos from the catalyst say catalyst on it and the Gopro footage will have an overlay on it... probably lookup pinata miata gopro footage since it's the only open top car throughout the videos.

The garmin coach talks to you. There are ways to do it, but it's a pain to get the catalyst AND comms to work with your helmet comms. The built in speaker is worthless in a racecar, you need a headset.

Hmm, maybe they've never noticed but we've run the catalyst in 3 races so far and they've never said anything. Perhaps it's because the catalyst is on our switch panel so it's hard to distinguish if I'm touching the catalyst or hitting switches with everyone huddled around that area. Oh, I've also had to pull my glove off once or twice when the catalyst didn't work through my glove which is definitely a no-no.

Sorry to hear you guys are having issues.  I'm pretty certain we do not touch the catalyst anymore.

Here is the quality of our videos:  https://youtu.be/kwL0AhJ7wL4?si=V13OGn2 … amp;t=4160 

Haven't had any corruption issues either.  Make sure to get a 512GB memory card.

I gave in to the urge and bought one. We will use it for the first time at Buttonwillow in a couple of weeks. We'll play with it on Friday but will turn off the coaching during the actual race. I have been in a best lap time rut at Buttonwillow for a while now, here's hoping this gadget can give me some useful pointers!

We tried one this past weekend at NCM, verdict is that it was good for practice, but sucks for the race itself. TrackAddict makes a much better lap timer for the actual race.

It's doesn't handle turning off and back on well. Resets sessions to eagerly, too many menus and dialogs to get to where you need (especially for driver changes).

Basically resets itself and forgets where it is after every off/on action (like I get it, I don't need to see the disclaimer every time I turn it on).

Not enough controllability for settings.

No video preview of recordings from the second card slot,

etc.. etc..

Hopefully they release a "lap timer only" mode in the future that will make it better than just something built for HPDE drivers with too much cash in their pocket.

What did you think of it?  Fun running around there with you.

Team CYBERFUKD

Thanks Delacruz.  Probably the best weekend we've had.  2-man team, no black flags, old mixed tires we took to the cords and boiled brake fluid.  C winner had a crate 350.  One of our drivers had immigration issues so we didn't run our comms, or radio.  I really wish I had an onboard for when the steering wheel came off exiting the bus stop!  This was the best field from a west coast perspective.  No full course cautions Saturday morning was an absolute dream (But probably cost us the win as we can 2 stop a 7.5 hour race, but not an eight hour).

Good work on the constant 12V, that's the move I didn't share as I wasn't sure of the legality.  We don't run the coach, just the delta display.  See you at Sonoma.