Advanced driving.

[paulca]

I find it an interesting topic how the term "advanced driving" is interpreted in different circles. It seems that the two popular definitions are almost polar opposites to each other.

On one hand you have the, lets call them, "Track day stars" or usually, "Track day wanna-bes". To them advanced driving is all about learning "race car" techniques. The more tricks and techniques from the track, past and present they can manage to get into their driving the more advanced they feel they are.

The other definition runs on the doctrine of simplifying control of the car, removing all fancy techniques, lowering the workload as much as possible and focusing the driver on the main hazards of the real roads. Things like other cars, pedestrians, cyclists, horses, general hazards. It focuses on observation, planning, systematic approach to hazards etc. http://www.iam.org.uk/drivers

To try and dispel confusion lets name them, "Sport driving" and "Advanced driving"

In my opinion there is a clear winner. Both of them. The "Track day star" sports driving for THE TRACK or at very least quiet out of the way roads! Advanced driving for the real roads with other road users around.

The trouble I see, particularly on this forum is the prevalence towards "Sports driving" for the real road as a matter of normality or default. This is, in my opinion dangerous.

Lets put this as a simple outright fact, right here. Fancy gear shifting techniques are NOT required. You do NOT need to blip, rev match, double clutch or anything of the sort in a modern road going car driven at normal road pace and in a sensible manner. Your gearbox will not fall out and your clutch will not disintegrate, most definitely your warranty will not be invalidated. Most of the world consider this to be the normal way of driving.

It is ONLY when you open the car up, explore the higher rev range and start putting the car closer to it's limit that these techniques even start to come into play. Even then some of them are just not required at all today, unless you are doing something else equally as redundant or simply stupid.

So many of these techniques originate in olden times and have been replaced with technology or have been factored out by robustness and life expectancy of the effected parts in road going cars.

In race cars usually "weight on track" is much more costly to a team than "hours in the workshop swapping worn parts", so clutches are tiny, gearboxes are lightweight with lightweight synchros etc. Therefore some of these techniques persist today in race driving.

Lets take a few:

Double clutching. Required when gearboxes did not have syncros. So the idle shaft needed to be spun up to road speed for the next gear when downshifting. Modern synchros are more than capable of taking care of this IF you are driving sensibly. If you are tracking your car and spend all day going from 2nd to 6th and back to 2nd for every corner you might do some adverse wear. Driving at normal safe road speeds in appropriate gears you will never need to double clutch.

Rev matching began as a component of the above double clutching which requires you match the rev for your choosen gear to the road speed while the clutch is up in neutral. When synchros arrived making double clutching redundant it was then an issue that allowing the engine rpm to fall during a shift meant there would be a lurch as the clutch was released and the momentum of spinning the engine up to road speed would cause a braking action at the drive wheels causing instability.

On the real road however there are a few factors that make rev matching redundant. 1. You shouldn't really be at a high enough rpm and close enough to the limit to make the lurch relevant. 2. You can always lift the clutch slower, you shouldn't be in a hurry, road clutches have massive life expectancy compared to race clutches. 3. Modern road cars make gear changes fairly rapid, not allowing the engine revs to fall very far. 4. Modern road cars have throttle release delay to make life easier for the synros during changes that maintain a small amount of throttle after you lift off preventing a sudden drop in revs for a sensible enough time for you to complete the shift. 5. You should be changing gear way, way down in the rpm range, like 2k or below. It is difficult to get a bad lurch down there as the rpm difference between gears is so small and the engine braking so light.

Blipping on the downshift. I add this a a different technique to rev matching as it was the lazy style version for syncro-less boxes. If you have ever had to drive a car with the clutch not working, you will know that upshifts are easy without a clutch. Wait on the revs falling through the correct speed to select the gear and it will pop in. The same applies with a clutch in a synchro-less box. Downshifts however the revs are already lower than they need to be, so you either have to rev match fairly accurately or blip the throttle, flick the revs up above the correct rev for the gear and it will pop into gear as the revs drop past the correct point again.

In a sychro'd car it can only serve the same purpose as rev matching. In fact, due to the throttle release delay in most modern ECUs, blipping and rev matching can both result in a forward lurch with acceleration applied as the clutch is released as the ECU is still supplying some throttle even though you lifted your foot the instant you lifted the clutch.

So while all of these techniques have merit, in their place, their place is not on the public road at sensible safe speeds and safe driving style.

So why care?

Because ALL of them have risks associated with them. Not least of which is brain bandwidth and workload required. This workload is taking away brain cycles that could be used for observation, planning and anticipation which may avoid an accident when something unexpected happens. While you are concentrating on rev matching a 4th to 2nd downshift you will be using all 3 pedals, one hand on the gear shifter, one of the wheel and you have virtually zero capacity to react to a surprise hazard because you are doing doing so many things at once.

The "advanced driving" doctrine would suggest you separate out all those things. Brake on it's own before the hazard. Once you have the speed sorted out, select the appropriate gear (no rev match, no double clutch, no blip required). Now you are only using 1 pedal at a time, doing one thing at a time and for most of the time have both hands on the wheel. Everything is simple, leaving you time to focus on observation to spot and avoid accidents.

"How dare you, I can multitask you know!", Sure you can, but for every task you add onto the stack the efficiency of all of them suffers. The probability a juggler will drop a ball increases with the number of balls he is juggling. No?

Other risks. Rev matching and blipping while braking can cause you to over brake and lock up or lurch forward. So if you are following a car in front or being followed this could be an issue. You can also mistakenly slip off the brake entirely, hell you can even get your foot wedged between the brake and accelerator. (Don't ask!). Sure if you have years of experience this is less likely, but newbies (to manual) are coming in here for advice and a lot of people are advising rev matching and blip shifting. So off they go on the public roads, barely able to drive "stick" smoothly or well and now they are trying to incorporate 3 pedal dancing as well. Fine if there really was a need, but there simply isn't.

Now for the record, I am no angel and I am not "Hollier than though" either. I am guilty of experimenting with things while driving. I like the noise the GT makes on a blip shift and I have gone into corners fast enough to warrant a rev match downshift. I have been on all three pedals, one hand on the gear shifter, one on the wheel, with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth in a bend on public roads. However I am glad it was quiet road and nothing surprising happened.

My point isn't that we shouldn't play "race car" where it's safe. My point is too many people on this forum speak from a doctrine that race track driving is the "correct" way to drive all manual cars on public roads as a matter of course. This is dangerous. Particularly for new comers to the manual world.

I think the "Advanced driving" style should be learnt first and treated as your default style. Once you can drive that way, then identify places where you can experiment which limits the risk to you and others. A lot of people would suggest the track and only the track, like for example the police. I would include empty back roads with precautions and remaining under the limit.

Sure you can play race car driver and rev match for something to amuse you, but please don't sell it to newbies as "You must rev match or your clutch will burn out" or "You'll wreck your syncro's" as this simply isn't true today. If you are raking the shit out of your car at the red line, then it's up to you if you feel you actually need these techniques, but technically you shouldn't be doing this on public roads and I would hope that most of your time is spent NOT driving like this so relax, let the syncro and clutch do the work for you and pay more attention to the road and maybe save a life or two.

[Andrew025]

I have nothing valuable to contribute, so I'm just here for the impending comments.

[paulca]

Originally Posted by Andrew025

I have nothing valuable to contribute, so I'm just here for the impending comments.

Yep. It should be fun. Now where did I leave my virtual flack jacket....

[TylerLieberman]

And then what happened?

[dem00n]

I just want more class instruction in the US.

When i was Greece, talking to fellow gearheads, they didn't believe me that you could pay around $400 flat out and go on a track without an instructor. Also the abundance of techniques doesn't help either. Rally stages are pretty big in Greece and if I'm correct even those require a nice amount of hours in class before you're going sideways on the dirt.

It's like learning guitar, you start off with basic chords, E minor, G, etc. You don't go right into jazz improv trying to play Autumn Leaves.

I'd also like to add that the Miata is still to this day one of the worst first day track cars. Though that might be my personal experience with them.

[Thrustin]

I rev match because it is the right thing to do.

[Teseo]

So op suggest we must drag out the clutch? I thought blip throttle for rev match put less stress on the entire drivetrain. Dont judge me initial d was my "school".

[ZionsWrath]

This car is so fucking slow I have to drop 3 gears on the highway to make a pass. I sure as hell am not going to make it slower by dragging my clutch up on a 6-3 downshift.

I get what you are saying but if that is the case, why not just make us drive Prius'. Also enforce 2 hands on the steering wheel. Then we have a lot more brain cells available for "advanced driving" our Prius.

[Luis_GT]

Just because you suck at heel toe downshifting doesn't mean it's unsafe on public roads. In fact it helps slow down the car in a more linear fasion and helps conserve brake pads.

You don't even need to have revs above 3K to use heel toe downshifts, or have to blast through corners. I use it to come to stops at red lights (6 to 3rd gear) which with your "advance driving" would cause wheel lock up or a nice burnt clutch.

[carbonBLUE]

I dont see how using all 3 pedals can distract someone from avoiding a wreck. You can use all 3 pedals and the gear selector without looking down. The more agressive you drive, the more it becomes second nature. I personally believe that all manual cars should come with racing clutches. I dont see how bending your knee entirely to find engagement where as on a racing clutch you basically lift your big toe to find engagement.

"Where does your clutch engage,sir?"

"1cm off the floor board, just like a true race car!"

"Very good old chap! Very good indeed!"

[Luis_GT]

Originally Posted by ZionsWrath

This car is so fucking slow I have to drop 3 gears on the highway to make a pass. I sure as hell am not going to make it slower by dragging my clutch up on a 6-3 downshift.

I get what you are saying but if that is the case, why not just make us drive Prius'. Also enforce 2 hands on the steering wheel. Then we have a lot more brain cells available for "advanced driving" our Prius.

It's actually slower when you to drag the clutch, so your using your brain cells a lot longer waiting for the engine revs to climb up to clutch speed.

if going from 6th to 3rd where theres about a 3-4K difference... dragging the clutch would take a few seconds, other than the fact that it'll be slowing you down, where rev matching would make the downshit take less than a second and have no loss in speed.

But I'm sure OP's technique is safer

[sklimo]

Somebody give me the cliffs notes. That shit WAYYYY to long to read

[Andrew025]

Originally Posted by sklimo

Somebody give me the cliffs notes. That shit WAYYYY to long to read

"I don't agree with what you do. I'm right and you're wrong"

Rev matching, heel toe, basically any driving technique other than the basics to operate a vehicle are bad m'kay?

[Luis_GT]

Originally Posted by sklimo

Somebody give me the cliffs notes. That shit WAYYYY to long to read

Cliffs, You shouldn't rev match, heel toe, or double clutch ever on the streets because it uses more brain cells and distracts you from looking at the road.

In other words, OP is saying dragging out the clutch is better since it uses less brain cells (this is true, cause only an idiot with no brain cells does this) which makes slowing down much slower or jerky... but it's safer