Heel-toe struggles

[luc]

Only when the people making the excuses get to decide what a "fast and smooth driver" is.

It's amateurish not to downshift properly, and at the correct time. The correct time is not mid-corner. Do it while braking, in a straight line if possible. Be in the correct gear ahead of time to roll on the power through and out of the corner.

If you're able to use the wheels to spin the engine up via the clutch, either your F/R brake bias is off or you are being too casual and not braking hard enough. Spinning the engine up via the wheels will result in a lockup when you actually find out how aggressive you need to be. I've done it even WHILE doing heel-toe, and not blipping quite enough.

Absolutely wild, the tales people will tell themselves.

“Fast and smooth driver” as many race win and fastest laps will attest..
A couple of my race cars
Have you ever raced a car with a straight gears box where you can’t use the clutch for down or up shift?
You learn pretty fast to be smooth
And if you’re wondering why the clutch can’t be used it’s because it’s only 5” in diameter ( for lower center of gravity) and you would burn it in a few laps

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[NightmareMoon]

H&T has got to be pretty far down the list of techniques you must use to turn a decently quick lap, but I do fail to see how you’re going to execute a downshift smoothly to be in a good position to take up the throttle on corner exit w/o it. At least on some corners.

Personally I’ve found it very rewarding to learn to do and I’ve even gone so far as to invest in practicing double clutching. No not for every braking zone, but I find its very fun to get good at skills like that.

If somebody has never really done it, sure they can still be a very fast driver overall, but lap times are the sum of a lot of little parts and it all adds up.

 

[luc]

H&T has got to be pretty far down the list of techniques you must use to turn a decently quick lap, but I do fail to see how you’re going to execute a downshift smoothly to be in a good position to take up the throttle on corner exit w/o it. At least on some corners.

Personally I’ve found it very rewarding to learn to do and I’ve even gone so far as to invest in practicing double clutching. No not for every braking zone, but I find its very fun to get good at skills like that.

If somebody has never really done it, sure they can still be a very fast driver overall, but lap times are the sum of a lot of little parts and it all adds up.

Ok, so how do you think that you drive a car that has a Hewland or Jerico tranny where you can’t use the clutch?
You learn to match the speed and engine rpm’s to downshift when braking at the same time
Maybe i never felt the need to learn/do h&t because i raced for so many years on straight gears box

 

[SHOdaddy68]

Ok, so how do you think that you drive a car that has a Hewland or Jerico tranny where you can’t use the clutch?
You learn to match the speed and engine rpm’s to downshift when braking at the same time

Precisely the concept of heel-toe shifting. I assume in your situation you are left-foot-braking while rev-matching with the right foot?

I've never driven a car with straight gears and can totally admire the skill involved in operating one.

 

[luc]

Precisely the concept of heel-toe shifting. I assume in your situation you are left-foot-braking while rev-matching with the right foot?

I've never driven a car with straight gears and can totally admire the skill involved in operating one.

No, you can’t do that, since not using the clutch, would be like braking and accelerating at the same time

 

[Spart]

“Fast and smooth driver” as many race win and fastest laps will attest..
A couple of my race cars
Have you ever raced a car with a straight gears box where you can’t use the clutch for down or up shift?

OP: asks question on an S550 forum about difficulties with driving an S550 with an S550 transmission.

You, an intellectual: huh well how about this completely different other car where you don't have to use the clutch to shift? HUR HUR HUR CHECKMATE, CHUDS!

Do you even realize how catastrophically bad this argument is going for you?

 

[luc]

OP: asks question on an S550 forum about difficulties with driving an S550 with an S550 transmission.

You, an intellectual: huh well how about this completely different other car where you don't have to use the clutch to shift? HUR HUR HUR CHECKMATE, CHUDS!

Do you even realize how catastrophically bad this argument is going for you?

Obviously you never drove a car with a straight gears box and you are confusing it with a sequential
Done replying to you. Have a nice day

 

[Spart]

You’re dumb, if you can do a smooth downshifting without using the clutch on a straight gear box, you can obviously do it with the clutch on a regular box
Have a nice day

But that's not the argument you're making. The argument you're making, in your own words, is this:

My point was simply that contrary to what some would like you to believe, h&t is not mandatory to be a fast and smooth driver

This is objectively false. While we may differ in matters of taste (at least I would certainly hope we have little in common) you cannot write your own laws of physics.

I will break this down Barney-style, so that even someone who shifts a car without the effort of operating three pedals with two feet can understand:

• If you are threshold braking, the tires are at their limit in terms of how much force they can generate opposite of the direction of travel via the ground. Any more force and the static friction saturates, transitioning into less-desirable kinetic friction. In simpler terms, you slide or lock up the wheels.
• If you downshift and use the clutch to speed up the engine rather than rev-matching, what actually speeds up the engine is torque from the drivetrain. This torque isn't free, it comes from the tire's contact with the ground.
• The force that the tire generates with respect to the ground when executing a downshift without rev-matching is in the same direction as force generated by braking. In simpler terms, downshifting without rev-matching sends a braking force through the driven axles.

Easy enough? Now the big one:

• If you are threshold braking AND you downshift without rev-matching, you will necessarily cause the wheels on the driven axles of your vehicle to transition from static friction to kinetic friction. In simpler terms, you do this in a Mustang and it's going to start Mustanging all over the place.
• If you are braking AND you downshift without rev-matching and you do NOT transition from static friction to kinetic friction, you are necessarily not threshold braking on that axle. Which means you either aren't threshold braking generally, or you have far too much front brake bias.

Now back to the point you're attempting to argue:

My point was simply that contrary to what some would like you to believe, h&t is not mandatory to be a fast and smooth driver

In order to be fast, you must brake as hard as you can. In order to be smooth, you must downshift without upsetting the car.

It follows that in order to be fast AND smooth, you must both brake as hard as you can and downshift without upsetting the car.

It's simply not possible to do this without a rev-matched downshift. A lot of S550's (such as the OPs 2016) do not have automatic rev match, therefore you must use heel and toe in order to be both fast and smooth in those cars.

This is the quality of argument that you thought you were making when you shifted the goalposts to a completely different car and drivetrain.

You’re dumb

I'll leave that for the reader to decide.

 

[petronix]

Use heel of foot on brake. Rotate foot clockwise and use toes to blip gas pedal. This has worked for every car I have owned (quite a few) or driven, including my 2019 Bullitt.

 

[Spart]

Use heel of foot on brake. Rotate foot clockwise and use toes to blip gas pedal. This has worked for every car I have owned (quite a few) or driven, including my 2019 Bullitt.

This is harder than you would think to learn (because we get used to modulating brake pressure with our calf muscles rather than the big muscles in your thigh) but very effective on a range of cars.

Guys' feet tend to pigeon toe out also, so the clockwise rotation works for most of us biomechanically.

 

[tj@steeda]

We did this video years ago ... maybe it will help with some of the heel-toe action in the car:

 

[Ninjak]

Is this Homestead? Good action.

 

[Spart]

We did this video years ago ... maybe it will help with some of the heel-toe action in the car:

I hate to keep being mean in this thread, but that's the method that OP specifically said he was having trouble with. He's trying to bridge the pedals instead of rotate his foot to use his heel.

This is a much better video to explain the style of heel-toe OP is trying to implement:



Also, in that Steeda video the driver's shifts are way too deliberate and slow. I wouldn't hold that up as an example of what to do. Holding the clutch pedal to the floor for like 0.25-0.5 seconds every shift isn't ideal. The heel-toe is diabolically slow for track work by someone in a head-to-toe race suit.

These cars shift better than that, you can do a full shift in the time that guy spends with the clutch pedal to the floor.

Here's @honeybadger doing it properly (pedal cam top-right)

 

[honeybadger]

interesting thread - LOTS of discussion ha

Couple meta thoughts:

1. I've never, ever met a professional racing driver that doesn't heel toe. I'm sure they exist, but heel/toe is 100% an extremely important skill to being fast. just look at SVG in Nascar - he's H/Ting those sequentials and killing everyone on road courses.

2. The brake and gas pedal depth is deliberately set. if you're not reaching the gas pedal under braking on track, you're most likely braking too softly. I'd go wider gas pedal before spacing it upwards.

3. Regardless of gear box, you need to rev match. it helps with engine braking going into the corner (no car is setup to only use brakes to slow down - engine braking is important to slowing down). Straight cut gears with dog rings rev match by blipping the throttle with no clutch. Standard gearboxes with synchros wont mesh easily that way, so you add the clutch. Same principle

4. The method seen in Danas video is serviceable, but its slow (sorry @Dana Pants - no attack intended). you'll never be able to optimize entry speed with that method. That said, when I was instructing I absolutely told students who needed to focus on less stuff to do that if downshifting was a problem.

5. Blip module is easiest fix for those that dont want to build the muscle memory. But its cheating @WItoTX

Here's an easier video you can see of how I learned. Ball of foot on corner of brake with a roll over to the gas pedal. If my size 9.5 foot can do it, anyone should be able to do it.

 

[Spart]

HB makes an excellent point about cars being deliberately setup for engine braking. Although the braking force it provides is small compared to the actual brakes, there's margin left in the rear axle in order to make sure the car is balanced front to rear while braking hard in gear with the engine high in the rev range as it should be on a track. And again it's not a lot of margin, if you try to add 3000RPM to the engine with that margin instead of doing a throttle blip, you will cause the rear axle to briefly lock up if you're braking as hard as you should be before corner entry.

That's another reason why I'm so bothered by the Steeda video, the guy is holding the clutch pedal completely to the floor for like half a second every time he downshifts. So he's just braking and coasting that whole time.

Just as a sanity check, I went out on my lunch break and heel-toed the truck to see how hard it is.

Yup, still works.

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!"

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