When do you shift?

[KingSakery]

Usually I go just a little past the red line, between 5 - 15 MPH past (depending of the speed of the car and the gear I'm in) because the lower gear you're in, the more acceleration you will get, so it is a good idea to got past the reline slightly more me. With a slow car usually I only go to 2 - 6 MPH past the redline in gears 3+, and less than 3MPH with all cars in gears 1-3 or 4. With fast cars, especially the X1 on Indianapolis, I have its Final gear at 3.200 (313MPH max) and get the red light at 265, and the revs will go down if I stay in 6th gear at 279 for more than 8 secs. so I have to shift up at 279 usually. When I get to a corner in 7th gear, (280MPH+) I shift down just as I enter the corner unless I have been drafting, so I don't shift down until my speed in 7th gear is lower than 284.

Normally this is right (if a Car has its peak power near Redline).
But if your using a Cappucino RM for example the above shifting will not produce the fastest acceleration and Lap-Time.
The Cap revs up to 10k rpm (??) but the peak power is at 8300 rpm
=> you lose acc if you redline-rev

Try it.

=> each car has it´s own "perfect"-shift point => have a quick look at the power-curve in the setting section

 

[chuyler1]

Yup, all Keicars benefit from early shifting. Their little engines have no high end torque. Generally horsepower will get you top speed, but torque helps with acceleration. You need to experiment with each car in practice mode to see whether you can pull on your ghost by shifting early or late. The difference can sometimes mean seconds on your lap times but other times it makes very little difference.

 

[PureLogic]

i'm afraid of over-revving so i normally shift just before the red line.

 

[Exorcet]

As has been said, there is no one answer. The correct time to shift depends on the car. You want to shift at the moment when the next gear up will be producing the same power as the gear you're currently in.

So if your power band looks like

RPM ---- hp
5000 --- 500
5500 --- 510
6000 --- 500
6500 --- 300
7000 --- 100 (red line)

and the shift changes RPM by about 1000

You will never want to wait to red line to shift at the redline, because you will never make max power (510 hp).

You would shift at 6000 RPM to maximize your engine power. If you shifted at 5999 RPM, your engine would go from making 501 hp (for example's sake) to 500 hp. You would be giving up the extra 1 hp by not waiting until the power output of the two gears matched. And if you shifted at 6001 RPM, your engine would go from 499 hp to 500, meaning that for a short while, you were making 1 less hp than you could have been making, which would result in slower acceleration.

Now obviously, being off by 1 RPM isn't a big deal, but if you automatically wait until redline to shift, you could be off by thousands on RPM, and thus be off by 10's or 100's of hp.