Wow, when it rains it pours! Thanks everyone!

Thanks for the replies everybody! What I'm really looking for at this stage is learn a few tracks and get used to how the car feels at the limit. So like Toddshooter said, what would be nice is an easy setup and some yardstick to measure my driving against, that's why I asked about those replays. What I shoot for are good times, not record times. Good times are when they are fast *for that setup* and I can repeat them lap after lap, not just luck out not to spin one lap out of ten.

Anyways, FWIW what I did to get at least some ballpark data is let the AI (pro level) do ten laps around Blackwood. Best times were 1:38.60 in XFG and 1:37.21 in XRG. It seems that the AI always uses the default "hard track" setup, at least judging by the camber and tire pressure figures in the F12 screen.

The license says

3.1 You may install S1 or S2 on 2 computers for your own use or to race a friend on a Local Network.

So it's exactly like DrDrug said, it's actually OK to let a friend play it with you same as it's OK to watch a DVD together. But giving a key away is like copying a DVD for a friend, a totally different thing.

Is there such a thing?

What I'm looking for are replays in standard RACE_S setups, XFG and XRG, ideally BL or maybe SO. Not WRs, just nice clean laps close to the setup limit. The reason is I don't want to bother tweaking the car before I tweak myself, so it would be great to have an example to follow. Thanks!

Here is what you can do to see how you are doing. Get LFS Replay Analyzer, watch your replay and output the data. Then open the analyzer and set it up to see the throttle, gear, clutch, rpms and max slip like in the attached picture. What we see in it are 3 crappy downshifts with the throttle flat at 0. See how when the clutch goes from 100 to 0 the engine gets revved up by the wheels and the slip goes deeper into negative. If done properly, there would be a throttle blip while the clutch is at 100 so the rpms would go up before the clutch drops and the slip would be flatter. Of course, what counts is learning to just do it without thinking but this way you can be sure if it was right or not.

Heel-and-toe sometimes means different things to different people, because it actually involves several techniques. The key here is that we are often doing two things at once: braking and downshifting.

The first goal in downshifting is rev-matching the clutch plates on downshift vs abusing the clutch. Rev-matching the clutch is what you have to do, period.

The second goal is rev-matching the gears vs "that's what the synchros are for". Here opinions vary. Ross Bentley says it may depend on the car and the track whether it's worth doing.

Double-declutching is the declutch-neutral-clutch-blip-declutch-gear-clutch sequence that does both of the above (if done properly). Instead, you can also shift "straight" (declutch-shift-blip-clutch) to match the clutch revs and let the synchros do their job with the gears.

Now, all of the above is pure shifting action. But because you also have to brake at the same time and your left foot is busy with the clutch, you have to operate the brakes and the throttle with one foot. Which is where heel-and-toe comes in, though depending on the pedal setup it may be more like "side-and-side". (And in some street cars you'll twist your ankle before doing that without modifying the pedals first.)

And then when you downshift, no matter how you do it you can go through gears in sequence or skip. Which is best depends on the situation.

So the gist is, all of the above are separate things you can mix and match. You can heel-and-toe with either straight shifting or double-declutching. Or you can double-declutch without using heel-and-toe if you are not braking at the same time. That's probably not common in racing situations, but on a freeway you may want to go a gear or two down to pass someone. And in any case, you can skip gears (though I'd guess double-declutching is easier on the gearbox then).

Hi everybody!

Got a wheel (DFP) from a friend this weekend, decided to give LFS a try. Looks like I'm hooked. Help!

Just kidding. Glad to be here.