I love watching CART races on road courses because of the cameras that they have mounted on cars. The different views from inside various cars at speed is tremendous. I just finished watching the road races in Tornonto and Cleveland (the airport track) and the amount of work that those guys do is incredible. What I can't figure out is the shift pattern for those cars? Is it just down to shift up and up to shift down? Does anybody know?

 

ya, they pull the level toward them to shift up, and away to shift down..

 

It's a sequential gearbox, so you have to go through all the gears on the way up as well as on the way down. I think the shifting is also very much like the tiptronic type that you see on some of the cars now. No need to push the clutch in anymore.

I remember one CART race when Jimmy Vasser lost his tiptronic clutch and he had to shift manually. You could definitely see him losing some time on the downshifts and around the corners.

 

They only use the clutch when they start from a stop. After that it's kinda like power shifting, only there is so much going on in the background, I won't proport to tell you...Cuz I don't know

 

Check out this site for a picture of the gearshift and a short explanation.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/champ-car10.htm

Enjoy,