Downshifting

[Giancarlo]

Anyone else do it? I'm an avid downshifter. It gives me the couple thousand extra RPMs i need to accelerate more quickly.

Does anyone know if it robs your horsepower, as bouncing off the rev limit does?

 

[Duke]

I'm not sure I understand your question.

You need to downshift as you approach every turn so that you're ready to accelerate in the appropriate gear when you accelerate again. Overall you want to keep the revs up a bit if the car is accelerating well and isn't running out of steam yet. You want to avoid downshifting too far; if the next gear is way up you may bounce off the rev limiter or you may at the very least unsettle the chassis since you're effectively biasing the brakes toward the drive wheels.

 

[Gabkicks]

lol....

The fastest way around the track is to shift as efficiently as possible. If your shifting down when you dont need to your just wasting precious time. You'd be suprized how much bad shifting can kill your time. Best shifting pts are different for every car.. blah blah, and blah bleblah its all been said a million times.

um here's an example of a situation where you wouldnt shift shift down even though at 1st it may appear you should. Your taking a turn in a 98 ITR and you enter the turn in 3rd gear. You can either stay in 3rd where 98% throttle would give you optimum cornering or 2nd gera where 50% throttle would. You'd go with the 1st option. 👍

 

[Bones Brigade]

i do it on the highway if im going like 60 or so and i need to get around someone quickly. and of course to slow down around corners. i dont use my brakes often.

 

[avenger]

Depends on what sort of car you're driving.

Something with huge torque (like the speed 12 or Zonda, for example) can get away without too much downshifting, because they'll accelerate just as well in their torque band as they will in their power band.

For a car that has high power but low torque, you'll basically have to "row" the gearshift (i.e. downshift often) to keep the engine in its power zone.

Another thing to consider when downshifting as well is the engine braking effect. As you go down gears, you are decreasing your engine to wheel gearing. This multiplies the power going out of the gearbox when accelerating, but it also increases the amount of force the wheels will have to generate to 'drive' the engine (back compression). So, the lower the gear you are in, the stronger your engine braking will be. That means you don't have to force the brakes as hard because your engine is taking some of the braking load.

So, for braking and cornering, I definitely recommend downshifting, and often. Get to as low a gear as practical and use the engine braking/acceleration. However, if you are in the torque band and the car is accelerating fine, then there's no need to change down gears.