I was chatting to one of the more experienced guys at my last autocross events and he recommended reading Going Faster by Skip Barber. So after reading the first 2 chapters I am ready to try out what I have read the two main things that I want to master (or at least not crash whilst attempting) are Heel toe breaking or blipping the throttle whilst changing down a gear and left foot braking.

Heal toe braking,
I noticed when I changed down to second from third that I was locking the wheel for a split second. So wanted to stop this by blipping the throttle. Not the easyiest thing to do whist braking as you need either three feet or to break with your toe and blip the throttle with your heel. Any know of good instructional videos or blogs to help learn this technique.

Left Foot braking,
I watched a great video of the late Colin McRae where he discusses the benefits of left foot braking during an interview whilst driving a rally car faster then most people ever could. So would also like to learn this technique. I have been practicing but do have a tendency to brake to hard, with my left foot. Any advice?

 

Practice, practice, practice

 

i think left foot braking is mostly for front wheel drive. you ever see the drift bible i know your doing Auto cross but its still very informative for racing.

 

I know the wife is getting frustrated when I keep nearly putting her through the windscreen on the way home, by squeezing the brake like I'm pressing the clutch

 

With the 8, at least with mine, and size 9.5 feet, you can brake with the ball of your right foot, then roll you foot a little to the right and blip the gas with the outside of your right foot.

The hardest part I had was with the timing. Team nailed that one. I ended up timing the blip, in my mind, with releasing the clutch release process, not with the shift.

Good luck.

 

Heel and toeing is not a difficult thing to do just requires practice (like Team said) and often the right shoes.

Left foot braking requires time to develop the sensitivity and even once you have that sensitivity it is often difficult to switch your mind in a three pedal car. You also have to decide if you are left foot braking all the time or just some times and then there is the danger of confusing what you are doing and hitting the middle paddle instead of the clutch.

I can left-foot brake but I can't quite rotate the car on the brakes with the left foot as I just don't have the level of feel that I have in my right foot. I have been working on developing the feel by left footbraking on the street on the 8. If you have another car that's an auto it makes the process easier.

In a two pedal car all things being equal left foot braking will be an advantage and it can be used in any application (road racing or rally) for a variety of benefits.

Good luck, I am sure you will nail heel and toeing. Here is a good vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAwJsOECGBU

While the pedal are set up differently than the 8, watching his driving is beneficial (and no he is not throttle steering, just trying to get on the gas as soon as possible always nibbling the pedal - searching)

 

lol

Heel-toe in loafers. I love it.

 

Being able to switch back and forth between the two is key ....

 

Do auto-crosses [edit: autocrossers] left foot brake in the rx8? I assume that you are probably in the same gear for allot of the time.

Do you then have your leftfoot hang over the middle paddle 100% or still return to the dead pedal and brake with your left foot when you can?

 

people dont believe me until they ride with me, but on most turns i do not have to blip the throttle at all--do not have to rev match or heel toe. I time downshift through the gears. As I am braking i row through the gears at the right time when i know the rpms are right. You can sense it.
The synchro saver gave me the confidence in the trans to start doing this.
For some turns things are happening too fast--autocross probably has a lot like that? But I road race and most turns will allow this.
Its also much easier on the trans. A little harder on the clutch.
OD

 

^^^^That explains a lot ....

 

and lots of spare gearboxs eh team ?

 

I have a hard time with heel toe because I usually wear 13" DC skating shoes which are obviously long but pretty wide also. Someone else mentioned having the right shoes and that can be a big part of it. I can actually "heel toe" by just having the left part of my right foot on the brake and the right side on the gas and it works, more like toe toe though.

 

So you are engine braking?
Why don't you just run a more aggressive pad in the rear and do it right?

 

Some helpful hints:

-Get driving shoes, get drivng shoes, get driving shoes
-Bend your brake pedal (not the plastic accel) to bring it closer to the throttle. Just get down in your footwell and push on that sucker.
-Look at the stock data: On and Off throttle time, Rear wheel speeds as you can tell if you are briefly locking up the rear wheel.
-A lightweight flywheel and clutchpack has a higher rate of DECEL and it's easier to over rev the motor. A big, heavy stock flywheel is easier to rev match as it slows down more slowly.
-Practicing Heel/Toe from 6th to 5th, 5th to 4th and 4th to 3rd is less abrubt than trying to force a 3rd to 2nd.
-You can skip a few gears (5th to 3rd as an example)
-A louder exhaust will allow your audible senses to help you hear how high your reving your engine
-You need only get close to or match the rpms of the gear you are shifting too. There is no need to rev the motor to 9,000
-Realize where the power in your engine resides so you are downshifting to the correct gear that puts you in your power band. I like to play in the 6,400 to 8,600 range. Look at a dyno sheet and you can figure out why.

Cheerio,

E

 

Lastly, heel/toe is absolutely the fastest way to get around the track.

Left foot braking is a grreeeeat skill set to posess in your bag of tricks. Most people will OVER use this effort and over brake their car. Practice, practice, practice. Street driving for this is easier to do than heel/toe as you can practice this in automatic cars too. My big trusty Chevy Suburban/Dog Hauler does it quite easily. Be careful when you start doing this in traffic as errors will find you right on the rear bumper of quick stopping traffic.

 

I just practice heel-n-toe downshifts all the time. (about three years now) I do it the same way 04Green described.
The slower repetition at lower RPM leads to better and better timing which allows more and more aggressive heel-n-toe.
If you try this in snow you really see how much difference smoothness makes to rear end traction.

 

no --no engine braking. rpms only jump approx 200-400 rpm on the downshift and i do wait until high rpms have dropped some before i start. I am downshifting while I am still braking
I will post a vid tonight when i was at road atlanta coming down the back straight and you can see and hear (somewhat) me downshifting from 6th to 3nd. From approx 140mph to about 70mph. Never blip the throttle.
I do have the 09 trans so the ratios are a little different.
Like I said people didnt understand this until they ride with me. Then they get it. Its a very smooth way of getting to the right gear.
It's easier on the synchros etc to go 6-5-4-3, than to go 6-3--rev matching or not.
I wouldnt do it from 3-2--i would rev match those. But the tracks I drive do not require any 2nd gear action.
And I repeat --if I didnt have the synchro saver-- i wouldnt do it as the gears have to be changed pretty solid.
OD

 

Loads of great replies guys thanks.

When Auto crossing on a lot of the slower courses the whole lap can be done in second gear (68 MPH in my car) so I think left foot braking will help. I watched a video about controlling the brake bias of the car using left foot braking, I think I would really need to do a racing school to really learn/try this out.

Ft Myers has a great autocross location so they make quite a fast laps so I have to go into 3rd the last event was the first time I had to down shift whilst racing. To be honest I didn't really know how to do it properly. I always drove fast on the street (especially when I lived in Germany and went 140mph to work and back every day :-)) and like to think I am a good driver. But autocrossing is just so intense. Hopefully once I have more seat time it will feel less like a boxing match. Hopefully I will be able to master heel toe during general driving then try it at the track.

 

this +1

 

heel toe dosey doe

couldnt help myself

 

just one more reason i'm not Senna.

heel-toeing in the RX-8 is pretty easy IMO compared to other cars I've driven...the gas/brake are close enough that you can cover both without really angling your foot...brake with the ball of your foot and as the brake comes down, roll onto the gas a little. you just need to get the revs close, not perfect. it's also easier in my experience to do it when you're driving harder than when you're just driving normally on the street...i had a hell of a time getting it right in my protege on the street, but it got much easier when i took the car to the tail of the dragon and was harder onto the brakes.

3-2 in the 8 took some practice as compared to the miata i had previously, b/c the RX-8 gearing is much shorter, so the engine needed more revs to match than i was used to.

i don't left foot brake the RX-8 during autoX. my co-driver does. plenty of national champions left-foot brake; plenty do not. if you're really good at it, you can potentially save a few tenths (maybe), but there are a lot of toher things that have a bigger effect on your times. it is more useful in turbo cars where you need to keep from falling off boost.

 

A lot of good advice here. I've been learning to heel-toe on the street and while I know the mechanics of it, getting it just right takes a lot of practice.

A quick search of youtube will turn up tons of videos showing how it ought to be done.

 

The main thing is to remember that the braking part is the important part, so modulating the toe pressure correctly and simply getting your heel over to the gas and sorta stabbing it is where you should start.

 

My RX-8 came with the factory "metal pedals", which are actually just covers over the rubber pedals. I unscrewed the one from the accelerator and moved it over a half-hole closer to the brake pedal and screwed it back down, and this made heel-toe much easier. Probably easier to do than bending the brake pedal, and more room for "tweaking" the adjustment if you don't like it later.

++ on driving shoes