First track day and heel toe questions
 

Hello everyone! Had my first track day at Streets of Willow Springs this past Sunday and had a very good time. My best time that I got back after the event was pretty disappointing though at a 1.43.39. Or at least I think its disappointing because its at the bottom of the results page.

I think I do know what the issue was and that was being in the right gear coming out of turns. I never really did any heel toeing before the track day so not very good at it. I tried heel toeing in the first 2 sessions but found it very awkward to do the whole foot maneuver, and found myself losing focus on the track trying to do it. So the rest of the day I just stuck in third and went in 2nd in the middle of a turn in the last couple of turns.

I have a couple of questions.
1. Am I overreacting and just need some time to get used to it?
2. Will a verus throttle pedal spacer help with this?
3. Is the autoblip feature that comes with the ecutek racerom a suitable substitute while track driving?
4. Did any of you guys find it hard to heel toe in this car when you first got in and how long did it take you to become accustomed to it.

Heres a video of some of my last session. It doesnt look good because I forgot to fix a setting in the gopro. https://youtu.be/8rS5W407ZDM

You just need practice.

1. Make sure you are in a proper seating position to have control over both pedals. Not so close, not too far. Experiment and practice in your daily driving. The key is good brake pedal control. Start with that, then add the accelerator.

From personal experience, you will find out that even when you think you have it down, there will be more that you need to tweak next time you're on the track since daily driving isn't exactly like HPDE driving (RPM levels, deceleration rates, etc.). Just be open to that.

2. Really up to you and what you feel like you need out of the setup. The Verus spacer moves the accelerator closer both toward you and the brake pedal. I think it will cause the accelerator pedal to be too high under heavy braking. I use a Cusco pedal overlay, which only extends the accelerator pedal so that it's closer to the brake pedal

3. The autoblip on my tune feels pretty natural on the street and would probably work fine on the track. Personally, I've never used it on track

4. I've been doing heel-toe since I started tracking 3 years ago, and I'm still working to improve it

There's no need to feel disappointed. It's nice to have but I don't even know why there is timing/results for a track day. Your goal first and foremost is to stay safe and be able to drive home at the end of the day.

You made the right call to stop attempting to heel-toe if it was distracting you but shifting mid-corner is a no-no as you can unsettle the car if you're carrying speed. I always minimize shifting whenever I'm learning a new track.

You can try practicing heel-toe through foot placement and getting used to the motion with the car parked/off. Not that I've driven that many cars but I've yet to find one that was impossible to heel-toe even if it's my first time driving that vehicle.

Good job for your first time out! If you can, find a good instructor (not necessarily the guy that can put down the fastest lap) and your learning will progress much quicker.

My advice is to practice all the techniques you would use on the track while daily driving. If they aren’t second nature then they will always distract in the track. Also as others pointed out is to find the correct seating position but don’t just do this at the track, leave it this way all the time. You need to get used to it.

Personally the pedals are fine on this car. Even barefoot. I think a lot of people don’t actually do it correctly. They attempt to press the brake with the left side of their foot and the gas with the right side of their foot so to pull that off the pedals need to be really close. The proper way is for your toe to be on the brake and your heel to be in the gas. I’ve seen people gas with their toe and brake with their heel which is also incorrect.

If you practice while daily driving for just a few weeks it will become a lot easier on the track. It will become something you just do without thinking. Same goes for shuffle steering and any other techniques you use at the track.

Practice on the street. The technique will vary between side to side keeping your heel on the floor and picking your heel up and hitting the gas with it. They both work and in some cases it comes down to ankle flexibility. One big mistake is downshifting too early in the brake zone. The longer you can wait before turning in the better as the revs are lower.

There is a lot to uNpack on your first few track days so things like heel toe are not a priority. Too many other more important things to focus on

I recall my first time out on track somewhat overwhelming. New car(8000km) bone stock.
A different environment to wrap your head around, figure out lines, braking zones and monitor traffic/point bys etc.
If you can get an instructor that would help you advance greatly in a shorter period of time.


Having confidence in the brakes was big for me when I was trying to heel toe on track.
On my first ever session once I felt brake fade I abandoned trying to do it and made a plan to upgrade pads and fluid before returning again.

Just practice it on the street, you came home in one piece and hopefully had fun, that's what matters, lap time will come with time.

None of that extra stuff will beat just doing it and finding your own rhythm, clear your head and enjoy your car.

Master the heel toe on the street. Your lap times will fall quite a bit at first as you get better. But once you get quite good it will be harder to shave off time and then you look for consistent lap times

I found the 86 extremely comfortable and easy to heel toe in, but I was coming from an SVT Focus which is known for having somewhat awkward pedal placement for it. I've always believed pretty strongly in first doing everything I can to adapt myself to my equipment rather than jumping straight to altering it. Like everyone else has said, start making yourself heel toe constantly in normal street driving and you'll find it becoming natural pretty quickly.

In my experience heel toe is much easier on the track since you're putting so much more pressure on the brakes. If you can develop a feel for heel toe during gentle street driving while keeping the car smooth you'll be more than equipped to apply it on the track.

I would never use auto rev matching personally, but I don't know have any first hand experience with it so I can't really point to a specific reason why it would be worse.

I cant heel-toe worth a damn on the street. I can perfectly do it on the track. Its impossible for me without having any semblance of pressure on the brake pedal. The height is just not right on the brake pedal and it just feels awkward. I wouldnt try to learn on the street, but rather go to the track more often and focus on learning things rather than looking at fantasies time sheets that mean absolutely nothing.

I am still learning, but the best advice I got from instructors was to stop paying attention to lap times and pay attention to proper braking, proper line through corners etc.

I am the same, heel-toe on the street is difficult for me since so little brake pressure, at the track is has become very natural but it takes time to get to that point.

There are a thousand thing to practice and improve on the track. Heel toe is only one of them . As said it is a task you can practice on the street. Every down shift to a stop sign or light. When it comes naturally, it will happen naturally on the track.

Street is fine for practice. Not every heel toe downshift is under threshold braking at the track. Also, The action is a lot more than just the gas and brake. The clutch action is just as important whether it's at threshold or not. The rhythm of all 3 pedals is important. Many guys get the clutch release wrong and the whole thing just goes out the window

You have just discovered the difference between driving fast and driving as fast as possible.

Don't let it get you down. No one turns up and owns the track first time out. Someone has to come last and it stands to reason it's the least experienced guy out there.

Now for the good news: you will get better.

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Were you actually the worst time, or were there others far below you? 1:43 isn't actually a bad time starting out. My friends have done 1:41 and 1:50. Sounds about right for a first-timer.

Some people (including myself) find the stock pedals a bit far apart to make heel-toe easy.

You can consider getting the SRP wide gas pedal, which I did. Makes it SO much easier to heel-toe and looks OEM. Also much cheaper than the Verus spacer:

https://www.srpracing.com/pd-brz-fr-...pedal-only.cfm

Highly recommend.


https://www.srpracing.com/prod_image...RZgas008BU.JPG

Was this your first track day ever? Was there an Instructor riding right seat? If not, can you get one? That is going to help you farrrr more than H/T.

1. Yes
2. Probably, I use the cusco pedal.
3. No, learn to do it on your own.
4. Not really once I had the wider pedal. I have small feet.

Footwork is something you need to develop. You don't need to be able to heel and toe to turn some quick laps in early groups. Brake, blip, downshift, turn. Eventually those start to overlap each other to the point they seem like one action. In the beginning, be deliberate. Straight line brake. clutch in, rev. downshift. turn.

I've got big clown feet. I toe-toe and keep my heel planted. Find what works for you, there's no perfect solution.

Don't feel bad about the time... SOW is all tire. I am only at a 1:37 there atm. I also can't heel and toe so I use ecutek auto blip plus me trying to blip it to simulate. Focus on line, breaking zones, apex's, etc... Are all other things you need to master. It takes alot of practice to get comfortable at the track. Sounds like you had fun, your car came back in one peice, and you want to go again I would say that was about the perfect first track day.

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I liked the cusco pedal.
I found the easiest way to practice was 3-2 down shifts on exit ramps.

A big part of heel toeing is getting your legs straight so you can rotate your foot. A bent knee will not be conducive to this and will result in you trying to heel toe by using the side of your foot, which is difficult in these cars as the pedals are too far apart.

Straight leg, rotate your foot and use your heel. Practice all the time. It's like wheelies on a bike. You don't need to buy anything to enable you to do it. Just practice.

Question on autoblip: a 3-1 shift requires a much bigger blip to match revs than a 4-3. Autoblip doesn't compensate for this does it?

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For me, biggest issue is that the knee touches the bottom of steering wheel when I try to rotate the ankle. So, fo heel and toe, I changed in a way that I rotated less and it is working fine (w/ cusco pedal extension). Practiced on street only so far, but it became natural.

after playing more in the car today, i suggest you get used to playing with only rev-matching the car first on the street, and then slowly add heel/toe to the mix after you can competently rev-match alone.

i find this car extremely easy to rev-match (i genuinely believe the factory tune has a 'coaxing mode' that any amount of throttle input engages just the right amount of rpm regardless of actual throttle input amount, and just leaves clutch engagement timing to the user--there's no way i'm as good at it as the car makes it out to be), so i had started heel-toe rev-matching a day after i started trying to rev-match only.

When finding my seat position in any car I rotate my foot like I’m heel toeing and then move the seat back until my knee isn’t on the wheel and gives my hands enough room to turn the wheel. You should also be able to rotate the wheel until your arms are locked without having to lift your shoulder off the seat.

I felt this car blipped inconsistently until I switched to E85. Before E85 it would randomly give me the middle finger when doing a quick stab.

One of the better instructional vids

https://youtu.be/K5Y2wb9ENR0

I tried to balance how quick I can press/release the clutch also. I am very comfortable in the current position having to rotate about 45degress for the heel and toe, I understand that this is not the std position, but it is working for me.
Turning has never been a problem, but because I do not track the car, this may change if I go to the track.
Also, probably I would remove the 2 car seats from the car :)

Senna heel toe vid

https://youtu.be/JUVkVB3SUf4

A couple of suggestions starting with a caveat. First - I don't track my BRZ. Haven't and don't have plans to start. That said, I roadraced motorcycles for a number of years and can lay claim to having been passed by both Doug Polen and Kevin Schwantz on the same lap in the same race.

OK. ON to suggestions. 1) Get instruction. There's nothing like having someone who knows what they are doing critique your work.

2) Work on your lines. Study a diagram of the track and identify potentially good lines through the corners. Identify what seem to be reasonable apexes, turn in points and where you want to be on track as you exit. When you get to the track test those lines and see if they still make sense. Often, what looks good on paper doesn't work in the real world. There may be big gross bumps on the ideal line that upset the bike/car so you alter the line to compensate. Once you find what seems like a good line, find the braking points, turn in points, and exit points and burn those into your memory.

3) Get more instruction. A good driving coach can help correct errors and spot things you didn't see. Racing a car makes this easy - the instructor can ride with you. IN my bike racing days, one of my very good friends was an expert level multi-class champion. Every practice session he'd spend a few laps following me and the make suggestions when we got back to the pits. It helped, but not like having thee person in the seat next to you.

4) Learn to visualize. When I started racing bikes I was working 1500 miles away from home. I'd fly in on alternate weekends and when there was a race, I'd head to the track on Saturday and fly out on Sunday. I was SLOW. Painfully slow. Sitting in my hotel room I analyzed my laps and thought about mistakes I thought I was making. Then, I'd close my eyes and run lap after lap in my mind - picturing myself hold the throttle pinned for that second longer, or apexing this corner later, or earlier, or double apexing that hair pin. It was a profound revelation. My first time at the track after that, the track felt much more familiar. I picked up two seconds a lap.

More visualization - more seconds off the lap times.

5) This is big. Learn to control your visual focus. One of the best life lessons racing taught me is - You Go Where You Look. Focus on where you want the car to be. Look through, not at the corner. If you overcook a corner, don't panic, don't focus on the edge of the track or the guard rail, because if you do, that's where you'll wind up.

The beauty of tracking cars is they are soooo much more forgiving than motorcycles. You fuck up on a bike and they will bite you - often very hard. Cars are less likely to try to kill you and less likely to be successful when they do.

Just look where you want to go. If your body knows how to maneuver the car you'll find that will get you out of a lot of scary situations.

Throttle Blipping - The problems with throttle blipping are several. First, as you are approaching a corner there is a lot going on. You're looking for your braking marker and thinking about your turn in point. Once you're on brakes the car's wiggling around and you're doing that delicate balance with friction as you try to get the car rotated and release the brakes. And, on top of this, you need to be in a lower gear.

Back to bikes for a second. On a bike you face a similar problem with a wrinkle. Every part of your body has to do something. Left hand - clutch; right hand has two things - front brake and throttle; left foot - shifter; right foot - rear brake (unless you're riding a buddy's old Triumph in which the brake and shifter are reversed - as is the shift pattern). Lots of things to balance - braking pressure at both front and back, engine braking, gear selection are just the start. Ham fist a downshift and the rear end goes who knows where and the bike's very put out with you. Oh, and you have to steer. To make that even more complicated - on a bike you turn the bars to the right to make the bike turn to the left.

So - you adapt and learn and adjust. You learn to maintain braking pressure at the front, roll your wrist just so while timing your left foot on the shifter and your left hand on the clutch. And pushing on the clipon to turn that way.

Compared to this a car is cake. Fewer things to do and the steering isn't wonky. Now, I suffer from the same physical gift as Soundman - fat clown feet. Like Soundman. I long ago adopted an approach to throttle blipping in the car I called "fat footing." Instead of wrist rolling it's done with the ankle. The beauty for me is my ankles are among the few joints and bones bikes didn't manage to mangle. Strangely enough the heel pays a very small part. Ross Bentley's video and the video of Senna in the NSX explain and illustrate it really well.

The three most important things are practice, practice, and practice. Do it in the car. Do it in your head. But do it. Don't get discouraged. It will come together. I never got fast enough to keep Polen or Schwantz in sight for more than a couple of corners, but some friends and I won a couple of open class club endurance championships and it was a lot of fun.

Oh, and did I mention - get some instruction.

Senna was such a great driver, haven't watched a video of him in awhile, but the video above really shows his skill. Hey jump in this car and see how you like it, and immediately he is at the absolute limit that car has.

Sorry to necro an aging thread, but I had a couple of thoughts that might be useful to someone trying to acquaint themselves with heel/toe - throttle blipping - rev matching.

Simply put, break down the process into discrete steps - master each - then combine them. One of the things that gives folks problems rev matching is there is too much going on and getting the timing right makes a lot of difference. Unlike most motorcycles cars have synchronized transmissions. Therefore, you don't need to blip the throttle to facilitate the shift, only to match engine speed with wheel speed. As a result the order of operations is important (and different from a constant mesh - sequential gearbox). On our cars you want to execute the gear change and the bump engine RPM to match the transmission input shaft speed just as the clutch is re-engaging. Unless you have lightspeed hands and a transmission that will tolerate that, the order of operations will ultimately be brake - clutch in - shift - blip - release clutch (as many times as needed). make the turn, release the brakes and add throttle. Eventually I suspect you'll be doing the last three simultaneously.

One can practice this on the street slowing down for situations where you don't need to brake. Ease off the throttle - press the clutch pedal - execute the shift - and (more or less simultaneously) blip the throttle and release the clutch. Notice the "more or less simultaneously" part. You'll eventually realize the blip needs to happen fractionally before the clutch release, but just fractionally. Do this over and over and pretty soon it becomes embedded in muscle memory. Then integrate that with braking and adding the ankle roll and look out Ayrton.

Transitioning from motorcycles this forced me to make a couple of adjustments. You can (and I think for a couple of reasons probably should) blip a bike throttle just as the clutch is disengaging and at the same time executing the shift and releasing the clutch. One movement leads directly into another. Cars take a bit longer so you'll need to time operations so that the engine revs peak as the clutch is re-engaging. Like so many things, it's all about timing and practice makes it reflexive

Hope this helps somebody.

Cars do have a constant mesh gearboxes with syncromesh (foreward gears)

Isn’t that what he just said?

Apologies. I wasn't clear enough with the explanation. Yes. As I noted, cars do have synchronized transmissions. As a result they don't need help shifting between gears. Most conventional motorcycles use constant mesh sequential transmissions. (to be honest I've never played with the internals of a automotive sequential grearbox). On these gear engagement is created by the engagement of "dogs and slots" creating different paths between the primary shaft and the countershaft. Gearchanges are done by sliding a gear down a shaft and either disengaging or engaging the dog/slot with an adjacent gear,

Sometimes the dogs/slots are slightly (to aggressively) undercut to enhance engagement under power. On these things proactively unloading the mechanism by blipping the throttle helps facilitate getting the previous mating pair disengaged making the shift smoother and easier on the hardware. It also brings the engine speed up to match the speed of the primary shaft in the tranny to maintain rear tire traction. Therefore it helps to blip as you make the gear change. One blip accomplishes both because of the speed at which the process happens.

On synchronized trannies the process changes. The reason for the blip is to match engine and tire speed. Since the process of moving the synchronizers and their spinning up or spinning down of the gears takes some time. if you blip as you shift, the engine has spooled down as you move the shifter and you're back in wheel hop city when you release the clutch. So, the blip should be timed to the clutch release.

I know. It's pretty long winded. Sorry.