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Old 08-16-2008, 11:16 PM   #9 (permalink)
Martian
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Location: Canada
Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel View Post
This is interesting. Often times when I come out of an apex heading uphill I find downshifting can be very useful. That'd be shifting while turning.
Well, now we're getting into cornering technique.

Accelerating and decelerating both take traction, which is a finite resource. You can think of it as you have a certain amount of traction available to you at any given time. Anything that changes the car's momentum uses up some of that, so in order to corner as fast as possible you should be going at a constant speed, which is ideally the fastest speed you can go without losing grip. Once you're past the apex and coming out of the turn, you can accelerate, and that's reallocating the traction that's being freed up as you straighten your wheels. The acceleration should properly be controlled to reflect that change.

So I guess coming out of the turn you might find yourself in a position to shift. It'll depend on the course. But of course, in that case you can also reposition your hand to downshift as necessary; naturally, you should be steering out of the corner as well.

This is all race technique and not applicable to everyday driving anyway, so they're still useless on street cars. The steering ratio is also a key feature. Stock cars do not use paddle shifters, because they're against the rules. But even if they weren't, they still wouldn't because the steering ratio on a stock car is much closer to that on a real car and so the drivers have to reposition their hands more than a formula one or champ driver does (neither one should ever have to reposition their hands under normal circumstances). In fact,a formula one steering 'wheel' isn't even a wheel at all; it's more of a rounded rectangle. So it makes sense for them, but for the rest of us it's really more to evoke that F1 feel than anything else.

Tiptronic and other so called 'manumatic' transmissions are not true sequential manuals, because they use a torque converter rather than an electronically controlled clutch. In theory the electronic clutch is the better option, since the fluid coupling is inherently less efficient, but they're also much more complicated and expensive.
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