Yes Automatic shifting can be slower. It has slightly slower shift times, and also it acts funny when braking and downshifting. Normally if you have manual gearing, you can master braking and gear selection a lot better, to make you faster overall.
Try to use manual somehow, but if you can only use Automatic, oh well
with manual gears you can use them to aid the braking giving shorter brake distances and also get the best gear for accelerating, aiding power away from a corner and also helping with the cars turning ability if it is rwd and your driving style is suited.
An automatic gearbox will never normally (short of several million pounds worth of electronic F1 wizardry) be quicker than a manual box as they offer a longer change, change up earlier and most importantly you loose on the fineness in car control.
there was one car recently review on best motoring internationall. it was either the new gti or maybe the meganne. one of them had a considerably faster automatic transmission than the manual. even on the quarter mile the manual was slower.
Mate, you will never in LFS get close to the fast guys using an Auto Box. The control just isn't there. Try getting used to the mouse/KB method and using a manual box. It might take some getting used to but if you want to be fast, you will need too.
Manual gears are an absolute requirement for racing imo. Deciding yourself what gear you're in and when you shift plays a big role in keeping the car balanced through a lap.
I get almost as pissed of from auto gears than from the ISI physics engine
meh if you arent manually shifting, then its an automatic. infact i think either Hattori or Keiichi described the auto tranny of the new GTi as "an automatic with a clutch". you dont have to do anywhere near as much work as with a manual tranny so it counts as an automatic.
it is okay for technology to advance and make life easier for us you know its not always an evil thing we should abhor.
Technologies like DSG are referred to by the SAE and professionals as AMTs, or automated manual transmissions.
An automatic transmission uses an internal mechanical design of various sort to shift internally without intervention from shift rods hooked to humans or computers. Slushboxes have more and more intervention in their shifting process from the outside world, and in fact begin to look more and more like manual transmissions as time marches on.
SMG, DSG, etc are AMTs.
If you'd ever driven a AMT vehicle for any length of time, you'd understand they have limits. DSG is a phenomenal technology that sidesteps many of these limits, but not all of them. Nor is the consumer-ready form of DSG anywhere close to proven in continued high performance use.
Also, you make the contention that a AMT equipped vehicle can be quicker around a track than a MT counterpart. I've seen very little evidence of this being true in road cars. It is undoubtedly true in race designs where the AMTs can shift an order of magnitude faster than the street legal counterparts, but thats an entirely different kettle of fish.