Wmcmanus
President treasurer secretary and sole member of the Cayman Islands Head-Fi Club.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2002
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Safer to learn the heel-toe technique to downshift while keeping your revs up.
Left foot braking can cause all kinds of car control issues if not done properly, and it takes enormous skill and concentration to do it properly at speed, which is precisely when you ought to be concentrating on other things! At least if you're not a pro or a highly practiced (on this technique) everyday Joe.
About the only time it makes sense (to me) to left foot brake is if you're doing a 0-100-0 type of run in a straight line and thus need to get on the brakes hard (threshold braking) while knowing full well that you won't have to get back on the throttle. It just saves you a split second as you take the car out of gear and into neutral.
It's totally different, of course, if you're just playing around at moderate speeds and are not attempting anything drastic at speed that is intended to enhance your performance/time in a track environment. In that case (just farting around), I don't see any problem with left foot braking.
I used to play around with left foot braking with my automatic Trans Am which didn't really have room to allow heel-toe. It's actually a lot easier if you don't have a clutch to be dealing with.
Left foot braking can be quite useful on the track to help you avoid understeer. Essentially, left-foot braking is a technique used to help pro drivers to correct their racing lines and/or to brake while having the right foot on the throttle without upsetting the car's balance (as opposed to taking the right foot off the gas pedal and using it on the brake pedal).
Heel-toe downshifting is used when braking into a corner, allowing you to match revs as you shift gears and thus come out of corners more smoothly and with greater acceleration. Unless you have three feet, I doubt you could do this while left foot braking!
Left foot breaking takes a bit longer and thus is generally less effective. For drifting a race car on the track, heal-toe downshifting definitely allows you to be smother in your drifts. For a fat old fart like me, however, it's pretty hard on the right hip joint!
Left foot braking can cause all kinds of car control issues if not done properly, and it takes enormous skill and concentration to do it properly at speed, which is precisely when you ought to be concentrating on other things! At least if you're not a pro or a highly practiced (on this technique) everyday Joe.
About the only time it makes sense (to me) to left foot brake is if you're doing a 0-100-0 type of run in a straight line and thus need to get on the brakes hard (threshold braking) while knowing full well that you won't have to get back on the throttle. It just saves you a split second as you take the car out of gear and into neutral.
It's totally different, of course, if you're just playing around at moderate speeds and are not attempting anything drastic at speed that is intended to enhance your performance/time in a track environment. In that case (just farting around), I don't see any problem with left foot braking.
I used to play around with left foot braking with my automatic Trans Am which didn't really have room to allow heel-toe. It's actually a lot easier if you don't have a clutch to be dealing with.
Left foot braking can be quite useful on the track to help you avoid understeer. Essentially, left-foot braking is a technique used to help pro drivers to correct their racing lines and/or to brake while having the right foot on the throttle without upsetting the car's balance (as opposed to taking the right foot off the gas pedal and using it on the brake pedal).
Heel-toe downshifting is used when braking into a corner, allowing you to match revs as you shift gears and thus come out of corners more smoothly and with greater acceleration. Unless you have three feet, I doubt you could do this while left foot braking!
Left foot breaking takes a bit longer and thus is generally less effective. For drifting a race car on the track, heal-toe downshifting definitely allows you to be smother in your drifts. For a fat old fart like me, however, it's pretty hard on the right hip joint!
