I have been tracking my car for about three years now and haven’t heel toed ever on a track day. My car wasn’t set up for it last year or the years before. (Gas was so far down off the brake it was literally impossible for me to reach with normal pedals.) This year I have bought the autovation pedals and have adjusted them for heel toe. I have heel toed in my daily for years now and I just about have it down in the Viper. (With my new pedal setup)
The reason I haven’t been to keen on using the heel toe method on the Viper (on the track) is that I have done fine without it. I feel the heel toeing is a bit over rated. (Especially to the non-track guys) I find my car downshifts pretty smooth if I use the right friction point on the clutch and if I shift at the right time. I am not sure I would gain much using the heel toe method.
As you can see in this video it’s pretty smooth shifting:
It really doesn’t seem like I will be gaining much thru heel toe shifting. What gains can I expect on a track like Heartland Park Topeka where I downshift three times a lap? A ¼ of a second maybe?
My biggest problem on the track is threshold braking. One of the reasons I haven’t heel toed in the past is I have a hard enough time threshold braking perfectly I didn’t want to throw in an extra step. Would I be better focusing more on threshold braking then to put an extra step into the mix with heel toeing?
I realize that heel toeing is also going to be easier on my transmission. Is there a measurable mechanical benefit my car will have using the heel toe method?
OK... I'm gonna throw something out here, that may or may not have ever been suggested to you... it might hurt a little:
Get a slower car
I think driving a car like a viper early in your tracking experience is/was a bad idea (can't remember if you've driven anything else on track... my guess is if so, only for a very short period.)
Until you are able/willing to drive that car on the ragged edge (emphasis on able) you're right: heel-toeing won't net you any noticeable improvement because the car is a point & shoot car. Slow-in, fast-out. Period. And you're also right, that not being able to threshold brake properly also negates most advantages of H-T.
So... back to my statement above: get a slower car. You need to learn/experience the benefits of a momentum car, then apply those experiences where needed to your viper. The main point of H-T as I know it is to help get everything you need to do for a turn done quickly and efficiently. Brake-downshift-grab the right gear-back on the gas. All without upsetting the balance of the car while it's already working with the slimmest traction thresholds.
In lieu of doing that... I think you need to think of the mechanism of H-T a little differently. When you don't heel-toe, your "turn setup" is a series of events, one after the other. Brake, clutch in, grab gear, clutch out, wait for the tranny to catch up, back on the gas.
Basically you're over slowing the car to compensate for the tranny.
If you treated the braking, and the gear change as two separate and distinct actions that need to be performed simultaneously, then I think you'll see where H-T will be beneficial. Here's how I do it and why:
Brake - Clutch in
(just before my turn-in point, still braking) select gear/roll foot to blip throttle
(still braking) Clutch out
Progressively, but quickly getting off the brake
Back on throttle
If I've done it right, 2 thru 5 are completed in a span of maybe 100 feet, right at the end of my braking, even encroaching on my turn-in if I'm trail braking any. Without heel-toe, I'd have to start this process much sooner, over-slowing the car to let the revs of the motor bring the tranny up to speed (slowing the car even more) and if the car isn't slow enough, that in itself will at best increase wear on my
clutch
flywheel
valve train
brakes (having to work against the momentum of the motor)
and tires
At worst, could upset the car and induce a spin.
Having said all that... watching your video it looks to me (and I've said this to you before) that you're leaving a lot on the pavement out there in terms of corner speed. I think you'd be better off right now concentrating on smoothness, and using all the track to your advantage. With the amount of power and torque available to you, I'd suggest leaving the car in 4th gear for a session. This might teach you how to use more of the track to utilize the higher gear (essentially transforming the car into a momentum car.)
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Stacy (Stack) King "I honestly believe, that in certain parts of America now, people have started to mate with vegetables"... J. Clarkson
...The reason I haven’t been to keen on using the heel toe method on the Viper (on the track) is that I have done fine without it. I feel the heel toeing is a bit over rated...
It really doesn’t seem like I will be gaining much thru heel toe shifting. What gains can I expect on a track like Heartland Park Topeka where I downshift three times a lap? A ¼ of a second maybe?
You are losing way more than a 1/4 sec. Guaranteed. The point of H/T is to be able to maximize you braking and minimize the transition time back to the accelerator. If you brake, then coast while shifting before getting back to the throttle, even if you do it absolutely perfectly, you have to brake earlier (lost time at speed) to account for the transition time when the car is twiddling its thumbs (more lost time) while you shift. Whats fooling into thinking not HTing isnt that big of a deal is that your driving a Viper. In a car as powerful and as torquey as this, dropping revs might SEEM like less of an issue as comparatively you've got brutal acceleration at virtually any RPM. Do this in a Miata, for example, and the losses will be far more easily discerned.
If anything is overated, IMO, its threshold braking. Corner entry speed is far more important than maximizing braking. Decelling perfectly at maximum is meaningless unless you brake at precisely the right moment, which of course changes from lap to lap. Discerning how much speed you can carry into a corner is about modulating braking, not maximizing it. Yes, you need to be able to understand how to threshold brake (or at least I do, dont Vipers have ABS?!?) to understand just how far you can go, not because your going to do it into every corner. I'll add that in most instances H/T is an integral piece of being able to trail brake.
Personally, I simply cant imagine driving on track without being able to H/T, let alone being able to do it well. From watching some of your video, by being able to brake a little later into the tight stuff, possibly trail braking a bit
(probably a challenge in your car) and getting to the throttle before the apex rather than after it, the next time you'll go around that Vette in a corner or two.
OK... I'm gonna throw something out here, that may or may not have ever been suggested to you... it might hurt a little:
Get a slower car
I think driving a car like a viper early in your tracking experience is/was a bad idea (can't remember if you've driven anything else on track... my guess is if so, only for a very short period.)
+10. I was trying to be polite with my Miata reference. (See outside of dealing with Lobo, I'm really quite the shy sensitive type ).
Well I appreciate the responses. And I understand that I would learn better if I was in a slower car and then moved up. The reality is that I am just in it for the fun of the track day. Although I love tracking my car I also love going on cruises, car shows and just driving my viper. It's a fun weekend car that gets a lot of fun miles on it. I realize I am not the next schumi and I would bet dollars to donuts that no one will ever pay me a dime for flogging my car around a track. I am obviously in it for the fun of it. And although I want to get better it is fun I am looking for more than anything.
I think some of you think I am a novice and I just want to make clear I have been tracking my car for 3 years now. I have attended over 15 track days. And while there is PLENTY of room for improvement I seem to always more than hold my own at the track.
That said I am always looking to improve. And am interested in what Stack said that I am leaving a lot of pavement out there in terms of corner speed. I just don't see that. Maybe you could be more specific? Although I do take turn one a bit differently than most just because I feel it's banked a bit on the inside. I feel (and trust me I am the only one) that you can get a bit more traction on the track when you hug the inside more.
As for tailwagger thank you for your insight. You have gotten me thinking about h/t and how it could shave off more than a 1/4 of a second. Maybe it's worth all this work (getting the pedals right, practicing the method) that I am doing. This is really my question. I guess I will find soon this april.
And No I do not have ABS. And I think my pedal feel on the brakes is the hardest thing to get used to in my Viper. (At the track)
Last edited by early93viper; 02-16-2008 at 11:11 AM.
If you read my footwork.pdf, you may see that H/T is just part of the whole thing. Don't know if you do any wet driving, but if you want to "cook" under those conditions, you'll want the RPM Matching that good H/T allows.
I see you have attended over 15 track days, but how many track schools have you taken?
I agree with everyones comments. Getting lots of seat time with good coaches in both the passenger seat and the drivers seat, should improve improve your lap times by more then 1 second. And mastering H/T would be an essential part of that step.
Almost all of us do this stuff just for fun, and it's even more fun when we get better at doing what we enjoy.
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1993 Civic hatchback competition car
2000 Honda Insight daily driver
Autoslalom/Solosprint/Ice racing
In-car performance driving instructor since 2001
I think some of you think I am a novice and I just want to make clear I have been tracking my car for 3 years now. I have attended over 15 track days...
As for tailwagger thank you for your insight...
You're welcome... I'm gonna beat you up a little more, but understand I'm really trying to get you to see a bit more what Stack was talking about and to get you think about all this objectively, so you can figure some strategies on how to improve. It may sound a little preachy, but hell, we're fighting to save your soul here...
First, it should be said that 15 days is not a lot, I do 20-25 track days a year, plus another 20 or so AXing (a lot less than some guys I know who do 50+ track days). Nevertheless, its got nothing to do with being a novice or an intermediate. There are many sad cases I know of. Guys with similar cars; being a Porsche guy, mostly GT-3s and 911 Turbos. A handful of these owners are truly fast. Most, particularly those who started tracking in a car of this performance level are frankly, plain old slow. Several of them are instructors with 100+ days. The may be safe, they may be great at driving a DE line, but if their goal was to be fast, they stink. They've wasted any number years and learned very little about that subject and a lot of it can be blamed on their car. Why?
Well, beyond the fear of destroying an expensive car, the obvious reason is that if you have a lot of power, a lot of tire, a lot of chassis, you can over slow, under corner, be late on the throttle and still pass guys, particularly in DE environment where their are a lot of folks doing the same thing. So, at your experience level, which I'd characterize as having enough days under your belt to have begun to get comfortable with the notion of a race track, the question becomes how do you learn to exploit ALL a car has on offer without killing yourself? The difficulty is that the more potent the car, the bigger, taller and more dangerous the mountain is to climb. A tough set of skills to obtain now becomes nearly impossible to acquire.
Lets just look at one of them. You've said you have difficulties braking. You know why? ITS BECAUSE YOUR CAR IS TOO F$%K#N@ POWERFUL. Huh? Well, lets imagine a theoretical track. A well driven Miata hits 97MPH on the front straight and its ideal corner #1 entry speed is 71. In a Viper, you can hit 129MPH but as the car develops about the same lateral G, the corner #1 entry speed is the same. In which car do you have a better shot at hitting the ideal speed for the corner? Obviously its a lot easier to both perceive and execute scrubbing off 25 MPH than it is to scrub off 60MPH. And as its a big heavy expensive car with enough power to pull you out the other side, you're not going to go in at 72 MPH, you're far more likely to way over brake and go in at 62. Most people think that its EASIER to drive fast cars fast. BS. They may be easier to drive faster down the straight, but not into the corners, because the higher the differential between the max speed on a straight and the corner entry speed, the greater the skill necessary (and the higher the risk).
And thats without a shadow of a doubt why you having difficulty with braking. You are going too fast down the straights to learn in a mere 15 days how to properly judge corner entry speeds. With that much more speed, you have to be more precise, you have to have more experience and you have to have more talent. Now, if you're truly disciplined you don't need to buy a different car, though it is an easier path. You can over come your handicap, by finding at every event, well driven low power cars that are clearly faster than you in the corners. Trail 'em, watch them walk away and the use your power to catch back up on the straight. Waive off every pass until you can enter and exit with them such that they are holding you up through every phase of the corner. Once you can do that, then your allowed to use your throttle again to go find the next guy who's faster than you entering and exiting the corners. Repeat until you can corner with the best of them. Then slowly start upping you straight line speeds, trying to catch these guys as they enter the corner, staying right on their butts and then using you power to get past and catch the next guy.
I know about all this subject all too well, because I too started in a car that was too potent. Then I built one that was even more potent. This set me back several years in terms of betting better. Then on oneday, I missed a shift, blew a motor, and made a fateful decision to go with less power. In less than two years, I'm averaging 4-12 seconds faster a lap everywhere I go, despite being down 40 some odd HP and having nowhere near the torque I used to have. I just plain learned how to driver faster.
Heres some video. I make plenty of errors in it. Its not about proving that I'm any good, cause I'm not. It's simply to show you how average looking most people in ultra fast cars both under braking and cornering. I've got 211 Dyno'd RWHP (100 at 3500RPM!) so lets say the motor is producing 255HP. I weigh 2250#, have a busted, useless 5th gear and I'm on 225/245 Toyos. These guys (all GT-3s) have 390-430HP and 8K rev limits. They have 6 gears, ABS, power steering, much wider MS Cups or Hoosier etc. The one big negative for them is that they weigh 3100#s or so. Perhaps its a fair fight, IMO, they should simply kill me. They dont. Note where I catch them. Yep...mostly under braking and on corner entry where they over slowed.
Heel/Toe questions
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