Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Small Car recommendations...

Rick, I'm digging it every day.

Well, these guys are left-foot braking on purpose. That is to say being on the throttle and brake at the same time. It can make a huge difference in a front-wheel drive car, as you can help tame the understeer by braking the rear end. I'm not sure of the dynamics of what happens in an F1 car when the brakes are applied while still under throttle, but these drivers really know their cars, if there is something that'll get another 1/10 of a second out of a lap, they'll find it.

Oh, absolutely.

All of the "three pedal" racing I've seen through the years, involves the right foot toe on the brake and the heel blipping the throttle to match the speeds of the engine and trans on downshifting...hence the term heel-and-toe. I'm sure there are a couple of race car drivers out there with their own unique style, maybe like Paul Tracey was when he was younger...right AND left foot on the accelerator pedal.

Can't see his feet, but cool video of the 2011 GT500. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR7PIZhFUdc&feature=player_embedded

Here's a video that shows a kind of side foot technique on a Carrera GT. Placement of the pedals would be key to this type of shifting.

Shoes help too.

That pedal layout is pretty typical in race cars. In cars like my RX-7 where the brake pedal is wide rather than tall, the heel is involved more to cover the space between the two.

I wish I could see the track for the drive. At the start he double-clutches instead of heel/toe during a two gear down-shift.

I'm far, far from a professional driver but I used to do some ice track racing on the river where I grew up. It was a just for fun, organized event a few weekends every winter when the ice conditions were good. I think I started to Heel and Toe as a natural reaction to the conditions. Nobody told me to do it, it just seemed to develop on it's own as you desperately tried to learn how to control the car on ice.

It was a lot of fun as the ice leveled the playing field as far as fast cars vs. the regular cars. The only traction aid allowed/required were road legal, studded tires. A good driver could trade cars with anyone and still win the race.

However, I don't do it in my daily driving but I have found myself resorting to it in offroad situations. Although as far as rock crawling goes, my old Jeep was geared pretty low so I could literally sit on a steep incline, leave my foot on the brake while I engaged the clutch and the engine would actually overcome the brake and start moving forward without any risk of rollback without any fancy brake feathering.

According to the description, it sounds like Porsche's test track but a picture-in-picture would have been nice to see the shifting points.

Well, I wanted to keep my car story in one place and I do enjoy recycling threads.

It has been unseasonably clear and cold here recently, so I've had the opportunity to drive quite a bit with the top down. Just awesome. Butt warmers, FTW!

This one is on Tacoma's glorious waterfront. That is Commencement Bay (part of Puget Sound aka the Salish Sea) in the background.


On New Year's Day, my son and I went for a ride towards Mt. Rainier. We only went about 20 minutes from home to get great sunset views from Orting (which will probably be buried by a lahar someday).


Better shot of The Mountain. Crappy camera phone. Foreground disstractions uncropped to retain scale.


Me likey.

But, I don't fly an airplane for a living or have a boat, and sunset is at about 5:00 pm.