I am definitly going to consider buying a deticated set of "driving shoes" that I will wear when I go on spirited drives/auto-x/track days. Though in looking around I found that prices were insane for some things. Mostly due to the Nomex for fire protection.

I was wondering if anybody uses an alternative to a true racing shoe. I was thinking of getting a set of wrestling shoes or something with next to nothing as far as a sole thickness. I would have been very happy with a set of tight fitting dock siders.

Any suggestions / preferences / pictures?

 

I have been thinking about using wrestling shoes myself. I think they would work fine.

 

FWIW I bought a pair of track shoes(nomex etc) when I was racing my TT with the Audi Quattro Club in 2001. Since I learned to drive and heal toe etc with normal shoes on and because of the spacing of the pedals, I found with the narrow track shoes, I could no longer blip the gas with the right edge of my foot. The only way I could do it would to stab at it with my heal and this just doesn't work for me(or I am not experience enough at doing it this way). After a day at the track with the shoes I went back to my sneakers. In a car that is setup for racing(ie pedals are closer together than cars designed for the masses from the factory) I could see track shoes working.....

Maybe if I had a wider foot...

My point is you might want to try them out before you purchase them. I bought miine off ebay and they went right back up on ebay(at a lose of course).

YMMV

 

I bought a pair of ASICS wrestling shoes from Sports Authority for $40.00. They seem to be similar as far as a flat thin sole and really light. I did have to move the seat up a notch

Only one outing with them, so far so good, but my heel n toe ability sucks anyway.

At this point I don't think I need Nomex....

George

 

I am 6'2" with a size 11 shoe so my feet are pretty big! I am going to be working daily on my heel toe action. Only with my widest shoes can I accuratly roll my foot to the side and blip the throttle correctly.

Though in watching the professional drivers they all use their heals to hit the throttle. My biggest problem is I can't do that with any real accuracy if I have shoes with a sole on them. My knee strikes the steering wheel. Obviously a hazard heading into a corner!

I guess I will keep my eyes out in the paper now for a shoe sale at the stores.

Besides I have literally torn up the heel area on the inside of 2-3 pairs of my shoes. To much rolling back and forth between gas and brake.

Guess for ~40 bucks ya really can't go wrong.

I am still working on trying to get a hold of an auto-x site!

 

Try these old school Chinese Platforms.


DaRKCrow

 

I bought Asics Intensity wrestling shoes from SportsAuthority.com for about $70. They helped me a great deal. I was using a pair of soft leather, lace-up, Rockports, but the soles were a bit too thick. I could never feel the gas pedal, and a lot of times I'd totally miss it. I keep my heal under the gas, and rotate the toes to the brake, so I've never had a problem with my knees getting in the way.

With the Asics, I can feel the pedals much better, and I can tell exactly how far down I blip the gas. With the Nike or Rockports, I can only tell by the sound of the engine revs how far I blipped. Anyway, big improvement for me.

Now I'm going to look at getting a wider gas or brake pedal. It would help me a lot to have them an inch or so closer.

 

Pinky, I'm 6'2" size 11 also. I've just had to get used to rotating my knee under the wheel in preparation for heel-toeing. It was a bit of a pain at first, but it can be done effectively and safely with practice.

One thing that helped somewhat is lowering the driver's seat a bit. There's a how-to thread here somewhere but the new search isn't turning it up for me. Anyway, I still have to rotate my knee as before, but it's just a bit more comfortable.

 

As mentioned the last time we discussed driving shoes.. at many events you will be standing for many hours so don't get shoes that are not up to that duty unless you are ok with changing a lot.

 

I used to wear Minnetonka deerskin driving moccasins. Those were pretty nice, but due to my wide feet and tendency to run around a lot, the leather at the edges of the soles would wear through.

During my recent trip to France, I decided to drop in at a shoe store (shoes for wide feet are hard to find in the US, as are shoes that don't have an inch thickness of plastic glued to every side). Instantly I found some black leather shoes by "Tony Raff" which were comfortable and had thin rubber soles which wrapped around the little toe as well as the heel. At first it looks like a dress shoe, but if you look more closely it has features that make it a great driving shoe. They were $55 for the pair. Score!

I also found a pair of Puma athletic shoes -- maybe for indoor soccer? They also have a pretty thin sole although not quite as supple as the Tony Raff shoes. They are better suited for walking/standing around. Those were $70 for the pair.

I found a shoe on the Puma web site that's similar to the ones I got. Here are the ones on the web site. Mine are a grey suede version with slightly different patterning on the tops. But the soles are identical. I noticed that they have an entire "motorsports" section on the US web site. That will be nice for future reference...