stooga

Hey guys, I just did my first track day at Lime Rock with TNIA yesterday. I've been practicing my heel-toe around town and a bit in iRacing, but have never done it on track. Even in iRacing, I had problems downshifting for turn 1 at Lime Rock. Both in iRacing and in real life, I was either downshifting from 4 to 3 too soon, or not revving high enough on the heel-toe. When that happened, I'd hear my rear tires squeal a bit. My assumption is this is a Bad Thing, and I might blow up my diff. I wasn't doing it so bad that I was over revving, so I'm not too worried about the motor. What can I expect to break if I don't improve this skill?

HawkeyeGeoff

You can expect to spin out eventually is all because you're unsettling the car so much. Try to just do it in a straight line for now until you can get it down.

Keep working on it, it's an acquired skill you do not get overnight.

-Your Friendly Neighborhood Manual Trans Engineer.

gtracer

It depends how rough you are with the car. You could kill you clutch over time, diff, trans is if your super unlucky or over-rev it. Heck, you could even crash if you mess things up real bad and lock up the rear end and go for a spin.

Take your time, be smooth. If your tires are squealing its because you let off the clutch to abruptly and did not match the revs properly. Maybe your timing is off. Try blipping the throttle when your gear lever is in N position, not right when you take it out of the gate/gear.

I found it a tad difficult on this car (space constraints). I added a pedal extender which made it a lot easier to heel-toe with this car.

HawkeyeGeoff

+1 I got this guy and helped out a ton with being able to reach with my size 9 shoes:

SRP Honda S2000 Racing Pedals

stooga

Good to hear it's not as bad as I thought it might be. The back did wiggle a bit when I did this, but luckily I crashed enough times in iRacing to know to only downshift in a straight line IRL. I probably will end up getting myself pedals like that.

roddyc

I installed the SRP accelerator pedal mentioned above and it definitely helps. I had an instructor who suggested sitting in the car while its parked and practicing the footwork while you watch Netflix or something; its hard to get enough practice on the street to really get the muscle memory ingrained, especially since you're rarely ever going to be on the brake pedal as hard as you would be at the track.

rbtz

Sounds similar to me honestly, my first track day I had issues with this as well, and especially after getting laps down in iracing I was getting too ahead of myself and trying to get close to those times instead of focusing on the basics first. Best advice was ditching the lap timer and focusing on the basics more, and of course using an instructor who luckily also had an s2000.

The other big thing was, although I had tons of practice already rev matching and heel-toeing during daily driving, it's a lot different coming off a fast straight into a turn where you're braking a lot harder and your car car is slowing down a lot faster, so that impacted my timing too. Practice on track helped, but I also had an empty back road by my house between some farmland that I practiced on afterwards, just practiced rev matching during much heavier braking and that helped a lot. Obviously if you don't have somewhere safe and empty that you can do this, that's not an option though.

Also regarding iracing, I don't know what setup you have, but I haven't experienced a setup that does a decent job of replicating real-life pedal feel and engagement points. It's fine for giving you an idea of how its done, and getting the very basics right, but the details and "feel" are a big part of getting it right, and practice in your car is the only real way to get it figured out.

gtracer

x3 on the SRP gas pedal. That`s the one I got. See pic - a bit blurry, sorry

ISADE

When practicing on the street, you don't really even have to "heel-toe", if you don't need to brake, just engine brake and go down through the gears, this will just help you get a feel for how much gas to give it when you do heel-toe, every little bit of practice helps. Also, if you're practicing on the track BRAKE EARLY and brake lighter, this way even if you do mess it up, it's not catastrophic, also this helps you slow down and you'll have more time to focus on the heel-toe you're doing. Work on one thing at a time, if all at once you're trying to hit a corner at perfect speed while trying to figure out your late braking point while trying to hit the apex, while trying to learn when to feed in the gas, this is just too much to absorb all at once and you'll end up taking a lot longer to learn each aspect.

Midnightdennis

I purchased the autovation pedal set. It's cheaper by the set and buyer can customize the pedals to their liking (e.g. material, thickness, grip pattern). Great customer service too. Highly recommend. Wider pedals, in general, should help improve heel-toe.

Honda S2000