Full manual driving, effects on setup and lap times?
Hi just wanted to ask what experience you´ve made with heel and toe driving (in combination with manual gearing on a shifter box) in terms of setup and lap times. Does it slow you down? Does it make a difference in setting up you car? Is there anyone driving as fast with paddles as with manual box?
Please share your experiences and opinions.
Nothing should change, u just gotta get used with the new driving method. For example, i did my best on keyboard & mouse. I moved on mouse only (up/down = accelerate/brake, left/right = left/right) and for now im driving even better than before because i can use less acceleration than before. Driving GTR cars in corners, u could lose pretty much time if ur driving with keyboard and using full/no gas. I hope u get me
G25 shifter kills my laptimes as it drops off the desk after a few laps (the 3rd bolt does not fit due to support thickness and configuration, so the balance is precarious).
As I scramble under the desk to retrieve and install it back it my control of the car is somewhat altered getting me to lose a few 1/10th.
Driving with a clutch vs left foot braking makes the bigger difference for me. The ability to have a foot on the brakes to balance the car mid corner is something that gain some time for me. But I like the immersion and realism of three pedals and a shifter.
Atledeier, you can still use your left foot for braking even with a three pedal setup I mean, it's unlikely you'll shift during a corner (or at least not when you'd need your left foot on the brake).
If it's the case, you should try to heel-toe with the left foot (toe on the brake, heel on the clutch)
Braking is probably the biggest compromise you'll make when moving from 2 pedal to 3 pedal driving. When you heel and toe it's almost impossible to keep the same amount of brake pedal pressure when you roll your foot onto the accelerator to blip. You can mitigate this by decreasing the number of downshifts you make (6-4-2 or 6-3-2 or 6-2 rather than 6-5-4-3-2) but it'll still be there. With the brake pressure varying beyond your braking efficiency will decrease, leading to longer braking distance, more lockups (potentially causing hotspots or flatspots) and breaks in rhythm. In cars which produce downforce (and therefore demand a reduction in braking pressure throughout the stop) the effect will be increased, as you have to try and maintain a smaller window of ideal pressure throughout the stop trying to keep the wheels from locking as the downforce decays.
Zen: I'd rather just go a little slower and last a few more laps. The 'one the ragged edge' techniques is fine for the short LFS races, but for longer races I'd rather be safe and live to fight another lap.
In plain english that means I can't H&T worth S**t, so I'd rather be slow...
Setup - no difference.
Does it slow you down - quite a bit.
Anyone driving as fast with manual - no.
Several reasons including, brake pedal modulation, throttle-to-brake transition, clutch timing, misshifts, gearchange timing, inability to keep the concentration on keeping the car at the limit of grip while trying to move your hands and feet off the wheel/pedals.. Basically, if u wanna be slow and keep it "real" in some nubraces/cruise/whaeva then use the shifter and clutch (that's what it's there for), if you want to be competitive and push the limit down to the last possible hundreth of a lap time then paddles are the way to go. The biggest reason for that being that you can minimize unncessary movements and brain time that's otherwise lost on manual work.
Ok so in terms of serious competition you never will use fully manual driving, no matter how well trained you are in h&t. Thank you guys for your approachs to this matter.
In RWD cars you need to do it sometimes to stop the back locking up. Doesn't always happen and after a few laps in a car you can tell where and when.
In the XFG (what I normally race) I never bother unless, as said, it would lock up by braking normally, this normally occurs on downhill/bumpy braking sections.
Besides it's not like if you DID lockup the driven wheels on an XFG you'd end up with a huge, uncontrollable slide.
Besides discarding the shi(f)ter I use the G25 full range (rotation degrees set to what the car specifies in LFS, clutch) and use cockpit view for racing. I also try not to use locked diffs and unbelievably stiff setups but rather build my own.
I used to race with a mouse and was probably more competitive at that time, but would not go back there even for 1s/minute laptimes.
It is all about having fun, and the immersion brought by "manual driving" floats my boat
Don't get me wrong.. the point of heel'n'toe is to keep the car balanced under heavy braking and downshifting it's just that you need to brake and blip the throttle all with the right foot. With left foot braking you just brake with the left one but the throtle should still be blipped on downshifts (with the right foot) depending on how your car is set up i.e. brake bias, tendency toward oversteer, diff locking on coast and diff preload.
Example: on SO4 with FZR you want a very responsive car that will turn in easily so you mostly go for the bigger wing distribution on front, less preload (around 500-600 instead of 700-800 used on most fast tracks), lower locking factor on coast (like 60ish %) and then you have a car that will turn in quite well BUT since the track is very bumpy and some important braking zones are on downhills and over curbs, your brake bias has to be set 1-2 % more towards the rear than it would usually be. The cost of which is that during hard braking and quick downshifts, the rear will want to snatch out and that's where blipping comes in.. you blip (as you would with heel'n'toe) so that the clutch meets the engine flywheel at a more similar rotational speed.
On the other hand, track like KY3: you would use a much more preloaded diff and higher locking factors to stabilise the rear (because the car will have about 34 % downforce on front, usually it's between 30-32 for most other tracks) and then you will blip the throttle less on downshifts (or not at all) to intentionally distabilise the rear in order to help the car to turn in quicker for fast turns. Distabilised rear means front has more grip and the car turns in, because of huge downforce the rear will regain grip almost immediatley after the turn in is done and you drive off into the sunset.
scipy has an exceptional knowledge of setups building but you can grab the basics and use them:
The more your diff is locked, the less your can will turn.
Downhill: weight transfer is increased, so the "standard - flat braking zone" balance between rear and front is no more valid, You can compensate (for RWD cars), using engine braking -BUT make sure the downshift is executed correctly to prevent lockups (rev the engine enough so that when the clutch is released it does not cause a jolt).
Use the opposite of above to force the rear end of the car to lose grip, and get the car to turn.
I mean, it's unlikely you'll shift during a corner (or at least not when you'd need your left foot on the brake).
