I don't know what the 944S pedals are like compared to a 968. My guess would be that they're identical. I don't have a problem using my heel to hit the accelerator. I use the top half of my foot on the brake and turn my foot at an angle to use the heel on the accelerator. I used the same technique in the MR2 video I posted earlier. The MR2 actually had more room around the pedals than the 968, but the same technique works for the Porsche.

If you can fit your heel on the brake and toes on the accelerator, you must have an awfully short foot, because the brake pedal doesn't reach to the floor like the accelerator does.

Clayton

 

mpw,

I assume you're driving an Audi S4 (the previous model with the twin turbos)? Sounds pretty muscular! My friend has a late model Audi 1.8T. All 110kW and 1450kgs of it. As soon as I show him your video he'll be hitting wesbites looking for go-faster kits for his car. I told him he should have bought an S4!

Anyway, here's my comments. The general flow of the lines you're taking is good. You seem to take care not to upset the balance of the car too much, and on the occasions where you make mistakes, you correct them by removing speed in mostly a straight line and then moving onto a different line before getting back into it. This is a good approach, and will keep you out of trouble as you try out new things. It seems to me that you're looking ahead quite well, and are planning your corners as a group rather than one by one. Definitely the key to smooth and fast driving.

I sense that the car is getting bogged down a little sometimes. I don't know where the car makes it's most torque, but I assume it's quite early in the rev range, and you seem to be able to drive it out of low speed corners without worrying too much about how low the revs fall. It seems to be a long way between gears to me, and this gives me the feeling that you need to be one gear lower on corner entry. Perhaps after more heel-toe practice you'll be able to grab one more gear easily, and then have a lot more torque under your foot when you accelerate. It might also be because you're accelerating more slowly (since you're new to this caper), or maybe because you've got so much torque in that thing that you only need one or two gears.

My 968 is a little different in that the gears are very evenly spaced and get used up very quickly when accelerating. My MR2 was probably the opposite of your car in that it had nothing under about 6000 rpm. After preparing it for production racing, I set the redline at 8000 rpm. If you didn't take it right to the redline before shifting, the revs would fall below 6000 and you'd have to wait around for the induction to get its act together and get the engine "back on the cam". The Porsche has no such troubles, and pulls strongly and smoothly from down low right to the redline. But I digress.

I noticed at the beginning that you were having some problems getting the revs matched to the engine speed as you braked for the right hander. Practice of heel-toe technique will sort that out, if it hasn't already. I also think the gear shifts are too slow, but from what I know about the utterly gigantic flywheel on my friend's 1.8T, you probably have to wait around for the revs to drop sufficiently to select the next gear. Audi should sort that out. Their flywheels are way too big, even for lazy street driving.

Apart from those comments, it looks like you're doing nicely. I got the feel that it wouldn't be too scary sitting beside you, and that's a good indicator that you're positioning the car mostly in places that I would position it. It's only when someone takes really strange (to me) lines that I get a bit freaked out.

Having said that, there is one thing I would be doing differently in terms of lines into corners. I'd be trying to straighten out the entry more. What I mean is to position the car so the braking area before the turn can be done mostly with the car going in an exact straight line. At least for the initial stages of braking. This lets you get much more heavily on the brakes without having to worry about unsettling the car too much and causing a spin on the way into the corner. This will work better when approaching some corners than others, but where you find you can use it, you'll get the impression that you are charging much deeper into the corners. I wish I had some video to show an example of what I mean, but I don't. Feel free to ask questions and I'll try to explain better if it's not clear.

Oh, and your hands are in a good position on the wheel, but please tell your mum to stop pointing at the scenery while you're trying to drive!

Clayton

 

Here's another example of heel-toe braking and steering wheel use. This video is of me driving in the Targa Tasmania, Australia's premier tarmac rally event. The car is yet again a Toyota MR2, but a different one to the earlier video. It was actually my road car before I saw the light and bought a Porsche

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~clay...g/targa_tv.asf

As you can see, the hairpin bend required going back to first gear. This isn't something you'd achieve without heel-toe technique. The poor synchros wouldn't like it at all.

You might also notice the occasional grab of opposite lock. That's MR2s for you! Touchy little mid-engined cars. I'm sure any of you who've driven an early 911 will know what I mean. All that weight up the back can make it rather keen to swap ends as soon as load comes off the rear wheels. Many Australian journalists wrote horrible things about MR2s when they were released here because they couldn't stop spinning them during testing. They're not that bad, but I developed a driving style where if the rear of the car stepped out even the slightest, my highest priority was to bring it back into line. An instant amount of opposite lock and a very tiny lift of the throttle followed by an increase in throttle to get the rear planted again always got things under control.

In the 968, you'd just let the tail slide a little with a little opposite lock and keep your foot down!

Oh, by the way. I had no idea where the next corner went. My navigator was my 68 year old dad, and he was just there for the ride. His pace notes were supplied by the rally organisation, and warned of really dangerous obstables, but didn't tell me what was coming up all that much. So I basically drove by sight. Good fun :-)

Clayton

 

It's daytime man! Get those headlights down! Aerodynamic advantage!

Nice vid!

 

Just want to add a quick comment about a specific application of LFB.
When used on a turbocharged car, left foot braking is a good way to keep the boost on while still slowing down. LFB allows the driver to keep on the throttle, and thus keep the rpm's in the sweet spot where the turbo likes to spool.

I've seen in in practise, but since I don't have one of them turbos in my car, I don't have any first hand experience on how effective it is. Seemed to work for Eugene Hahn, NNJR PCA instructor who sometimes frequents this board!

-Z

 

Clayton: cool video of the rally.

BTW: I started my involvement with autox with a '91 MR2 MKII N/A. Fun little car, if you can keep the back end from snapping around! Are you familiar with the IMOC web board? http://board.mr2faq.com.

-Z.

 

Z-man, that car just happens to be a '91 MR2 MKII N/A The only time I ever spun one was on seriously flat spotted tyres. As you can see by the scenery in the video, spinning your car in that event is definitely a no-no. Lots do it, and lots meet the trees.

I'm not familiar with that board, but my MR2 days are over, I think. You never know when you'll end up getting back into one for nostalgic reasons, though, do you?

Clayton

 

The rules stated that the headlights were required to be on for safety reasons. Otherwise they would have been down!

Clayton

 

Haha! My brother also has a 91 MR2 NA. Fun car to drive, so far as I know, he's never spun it and he pushes it pretty hard sometimes (parents taught him how to drive up to the speed limit, I taught him everything else He's one of only about 5 people on this planet that I'm comfortable enough to ride with in their car pushing it on a little backroad or anything). Anyway, they changed the suspension on those cars in 93 I think it was to help reduce the tendency towards oversteer. He's about to find out about what his car does. It got tapped in the snow a few weeks ago and he's trying to get the insurance company to fix it and he's going to try and supply the parts and get a turbo motor at the same time for it.

As to the steering technique, I use the keeping one hand in position as well rather than shuffling, except if maybe I'm in a parking lot somewhere. The 968CS wheel in my 951 does great for that. It's not too big and it has a very nice and meaty rim so you don't have a lot of finger overlap when you wrap your hand around it. Definitely 3/9 on the wheel and even the last driver's license book I saw had changed to that from the used to be recommended 10/2 position.

 

If it helps at all, I drive a tiptronic boxster. That doesn't allow much opportunity to do rev matching on the downshifts, so I get a bit of a lurch forward on every downshift.

I find that the engine braking does little to actually let me brake quicker, but the lurch forward is extremely annoying.

I guess it's possible that the engine braking might actually let me slow down quicker, but I think the balance transfer might be more than offsetting that gain.

Then again, I've decided that trying to slam on the brakes has been counter productive on the track. I now probably brake at about 75-85% maximum strength, and I've gotten MUCH faster as a result.

 

I've been thinking about my steering wheel hand locations, and I don't think I described it accurately. If I need to turn a corner on the road, I will reach up to the top of the wheel and turn it while letting it slip through the other hand. To unwind this turn, I will often let the wheel slip through my fingers using the straightening effect of caster to return the wheel to straight ahead.

This isn't needed on a race track because you seldom have to turn the wheel more than half a turn.

Clayton

 

Try braking at 99% maximum strength (before locking a wheel). You'll brake 14-24% better

As for slamming them on, that's what's stopping you approaching 100%. Do it swiftly, firmly, but also carefully.

Clayton

 

hahaha... ehh I don't suck blood and live in the shadows Johnny, I don't think I could make it in the law profession... even with my seemingly misdirected verbosity

When i say I've autocrossed, I mean I adjusted camber, toe, spring preload, ride height and maybe most importantly, tire pressures. The only car I've had the pleasure to auto-x was a racecar, my school's FSAE car.

I don't think I ever said to use engine braking at every turn (though correct me if I accidentally did!).

And as for LFB, I won't go to far in depth with my opinions there, but there are an elite that (edit: SOMETIMES) downshift w/o the clutch in normal, modern day synchromesh gearboxes as well (edit: AT THE TRACK)... it's a frighteningly amazing talent, and I wouldn't say I advocate it... because, hell, I can't do it yet! LOL But if someone want's sources there, Carroll Smith talked about it in two of his books, I could post scans if this peaks anyones interest. The first time I noticed Bryan (boss) do this in his daily driver 535is (over 300hp from his mods, fun little car!) while on a "spirited drive," I almost blew my head gasket... I just looked at his feet and said "...what the hell are you doing?! is that even possible??" To this day, I don't know how you can learn a gearbox that well to be able to rev-match so perfectly and downshift without the clutch!

I think I'm going to add a comment in my signature to the effect of "WARNING: Reading this users posts is known to raise high blood pressure. If you are pregnant or think you are pregnant, please do not read. Stopping now will greatly reduce your chance of health problems."

What do you guys think?? Can someone grab a fire extinguisher? I think this place is about to go up in flames again... uh oh

 

I can only say this....I've heard this is VERY bad to do in a synchromesh gearbox by not shifting with the clutch. Unless you don't mind rebuilding your tranny every so often to put new synchros in it..... Maybe somebody can prove this wrong.... it is doable though and it would actually be harder to do in a racecar I would think as if you are off by XXX rpm, it won't go into gear at all, you just play a little song while the synchros would help you into gear in a regular street box.

That said, picking up heel and toe driving with and without the clutch wasn't a huge obstacle for me, even with a racebox. It's about getting some practice in and being able to threshold brake when you are learning it, something that often doesn't happen on the street unless you are pushing harder than you normally should be. Everyone in my Skip Barber Racing School class picked it up fairly quickly, except for one guy who had a supercharged C4 Vette with some serious, serious mods on it. Something like 550-600hp. He proceeded to wreck his racecar the second day.....not bad, but off turn 1 at Mid-Ohio....understeered right off.

I find it difficult to drive heel and toe much on the street if I'm not pushing the car very hard into the braking area and doing it zip-zip-zip quick. And I don't push the car like that but in very few corners where I have great visibility and runoff without the problems of hitting large and unyielding objects or falling off of a large bank or into water. I use the slow in-fast out method on the street most of the time. Get the car slowed, put it in the right gear with rev matching to smooth the engagement and pick a neutral throttle through the apex then accelerate (or accelerate all the way through if I was going too slow on corner entry).

Anyway, back to your regular broadcast....

 

It's gonna take years for Kevin to 'unlearn' what he knows...

Often people have given me advise about driving, since I too, tend to over-analyze and ponder and wonder, and get paranoid about things. May I offer this same advise to you, which is: Just shut up and DRIVE!

Have a nice day!
smilewavy
-Z-man.