OK it’s a slow day down here in the 30c endless days and I tuned up the bike because the gears were grungy and while doing that I got to thinking about the old days of racing and gear shifts. My first recollection of that was at Zaanvoort in 67 and the GP race. I was amazed at how fast the drivers made the shifts, not at alike my Pops shifts. It was as though they didn’t use the clutch at all. hint:: they didn’t. In later years while driving a truck I learned how to shift up and down without clutching and with some practice got pretty good at it.

Back in the day many race cars used Hewland gearboxes and I only recently discovered that his business got started by a request from a racing team that was looking for a light easy to change ratio gearbox. The choice for that was the VW magnesium box which was fitted with non synchro square cut gears with four locking dogs. It’s those dogs that allows up shifts with only a slight and momentary lift on the throttle without clutching similar are downshifts and rev matching in neutral. That how the drivers made those blindingly fast shifts.

It’s not as easy in a modern road car because of the synchros but still simple enough and can be done smoothly. I don’t do it in the Boxster but shift the Jeep without clutching all the time. Here’s a link to a discussion on the subject and I wonder about others experiences.





https://www.apexspeed.com/forums/sho...t-Foot-braking