Correct me if I am wrong but I don't agree that the Porsche driver is heel/toe. I think he is saving wear and tear on a sequential gear box on the down shifts and I think his left foot braking is to rotate the car.

 

What I've been told and practice today is to be firmest on the brake pedal at the point of blipping the gas pedal. The idea being to progressively increase braking to the point of the down-shift and decrease it gradually once the downshift is complete. IIRC, Jackie Stewart also mentions something along those lines in his book. I dont have a data acquisition system though so have no proof of how effective I'm at it. My only measurement is the degree to which the car feels settled.

 

It looks like the Porsche guy is heel-and-toeing in a textbook manner-keeping his heel on the floor and blipping with the right side of his foot. I agree his left foot braking is simply to preposition the brake pads in contact with the rotor for the upcoming brake zone.

You want to take your brakes to just short of a skid--the skid threshold. If you're driving a formula car with lots of down force you will use more brake pressure at the beginning of the brake zone, while at high speed and high down force. As the car slows you'll have to reduce braking pressure as speed and down force decrease.

In the S2000, especially without a wing, the car is a little light near top speed so you have to start your braking a little easier and add some pressure as you slow and stabilize (rear end stops moving around so much).

To maximize the use of your tires' traction you want to stay at the braking threshold as much as possible, not vary the brake pressure for a down shift. A well rev-matched down shift will allow you to stay smooth and maximize braking.

 

From my experience with watching students... those who don't heel-and-toe have very abrupt downshifts or are slow to exit corners cause they are trying to rev-match.

 

This is very interesting. with all the benefits that heel toe confers, how then do the drivers who don't use heel toe manage to get such good times? They must be compensating somewhere else.

I also use the side foot method as its the most comfortable for me. I use a Performance Box and the data line has shown that I have comparatively less braking G variation than quite a few drivers during the blipping process which is some of the positive take away I got. Of course the rest of how I screwed up the rest of the apexes suddenly became painfully evident as well

 

I learned to heal toe in the s2k and now I do it without thinking, even when I'm DDing, it's almost natural. This is my fav heal toe (on video) even though the power of first gear up setted the tires.

watch at 1:51 black s2k, on stock shocks, 255 kooks and gendron solid bar on full stiff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jrftbjt3QQ

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oT9n...E9CEC&index=10
You don't HAVE to heel and toe to be fast. Just takes practice in different techniques

 

I'm still struggling to heel/toe in my s2k because I have hard time reaching the gas pedal with my foot on the brake. I just recently got a Sparco race pedal set so I'm hoping it'll help. In the meantime I drive just like Gilles Panizzi, I basically downshift and let the clutch up with my foot fully on the brake, so the ABS fights the engine a bit and sometimes I'll get a small chirp into corners (I can also feel it in the brake pedal).

 

Dog-ring sequential gearboxes aren't the best example of heel-toe downshifting. The clutch isn't needed on those downshifts, and the dog rings engage with a lot more differentiation in speed/slop than synchros do.

 

same here josh, I do this every day, feels natural.