YellaFella

I'm working on heal/toe on the street, trying to be smooth enough to trust myself to apply this skill on the track and in combination with trail braking – which I assume to be the point and a skill I should develop to be a better track driver.

The gas pedal on my C5 seems too low in relation to the brake pedal. As I'm new at this perhaps it's my lack of proper technique/control, but it does seem the pedal location is designed to prevent a street driver from catching the wrong one more than would be optimal for heal/toe track application.

Has anyone moved the paddles and how? Anybody try a 1/4" rubber block on the gas pedal? Am I better served to simply improve my technique? Am I wrong regards my assumption of using heal toe to properly trail brake? Comments?

jackmott

I think you will find that when you are braking HARD under racing conditions, that the gas pedal will be at just the right height.

Jim 47

It's difficult to duplicate a hard braking heal/toe maneuver on the street unless you are alone on some deserted road or large paved area. If you try this hard braking maneuver in traffic you may find someone behind you parked in the rear of your car.

Most of the heal/toe applications made are under FULL braking with hot brakes, and will result in the brake pedal being in a lower position than during MILD braking. The full braking position of the brake pedal will be right at the height of the accelerator during most street driving (and when the brakes get real hot and the pads start to taper, the brake pedal will be below the height of the accelerator.)

I have found that for hard driving on the track an extension on the brake pedal (about 3/8") helps to keep the brake pedal surface close to the accelerator surface during hard braking heal/toe maneuvers. This is just to opposit to what you have described.
I have built up the surface of the brake pedal and moved it a bit closer to the accelerator. This addition to the brake pedal has made the heal/toe maneuver very easy to do. I regularly heal/toed with the standard, non-altered, pedals and did not experience the "low gas pedal" that you have described. I found that as the brakes got hot and the pads tapered the brake pedal got lower and lower and then I couldn't heal/toe because the brake pedal was below (too low) the gas pedal. If you add 1/4 " in height to the gas pedal, it will make the heal/toe maneuver more difficult on the track.

I hope this is of some help. :cool:

Jim

willi

If I'm understanding you correctly, trail braking isn't actually the point of heel and toeing. Heel and toe is to match engine RPM with the rear wheels so you can downshift without locking the rear wheels and spinning the car. Most of the time practicing on the street is only good for getting familiar with the motions. You want them to be second nature, because there won't be time to think about it on the track. As for the difference in height, where is your brake pedal when you brake hard enough to activate the ABS? This is about where it will be on the track when you start. It will get lower as you use up the pads. My brake pedal was a little higher than the throttle until after my first track day. Afterwards it was about even or a little lower.

Trail braking isn't so much braking as balancing the car into the corner, maybe giving the front tires a little more weight to turn in, and transitioning smoothly to the throttle. The vast majority of the braking is done in the braking zone. When learning, it's best to try for good smooth transitions from brake to throttle and not worry too much about trail braking. In fact, most schools will teach to be done with braking by turn in time.

THENAKEDi

I find the pedal arrangement in the C5 to be quite comfortable for heel/toe downshifts on both the track and the street. I position my foot from left to right diagonally, with the ball of my foot on the brake and blipping the gas with the outside edge of my foot. Sometimes, I do the "old school" method and put toes on the brake and blip with the heel or back of foot. This is much less comfortable for me and I only do it in the rare instance when I drive without shoes; however, without shoes, this method gives me a bit more feel and control. Anyway, the real key is to practice until the whole technique is second nature. I know some people have smaller feet and that pedal extenders are available to bridge the gap between the gas and brake; however if you look at the gap between the pedals, you can see that there really is not much gap to bridge in the factory set up. I remember, about 20 years ago, sitting in the driveway in my first ride and just practicing foot position and running through the double clutch heel/toe downshift procedure. Double clutching is not entirely necessary; however, it is the way I learned and it is instinctual now. I have a heel/toe instruction pamphlet on my web site if you would like to download. There are many far more explicit descriptions of both heel/toe downshifting and trail braking in performance driving literature. Check out Skip Barber's "Going Faster". Great resource manual and fun read for racer in us all!

Steve-o

sffish

I agree with THENAKEDi. I find the Corvette's pedal placement quite conducive to heal-toe down shifting even on the street. In my old 944 I had to have an attachment to the pedals to facilitate heal-toe.

YellaFella

willi,

I'm comfortable with your comments here....however - are you then saying it is more correct to Heal/Toe at brake point w/down shift and on the flat; possibly to the micro-second of turn in (to allow weight to the front wheels at turn in), but then transition to left foot braking in the turn when trail braking?

I’m concerned this process (on brake/off brake/on brake) would not be smooth and taking place while in the turn – hence the ability to heal/toe through the turn to modulate both gas and brake would in the end yield a better smoother result.

And, please know that while what I’ve just said seem to make a certain amount of logical sense to me, I’m have concerns that I could ever learn to manage both pedals with the finesse called for with my one right foot!

larryfs

I too could NOT learn to heal toe on the street, even though that is where you are suppose to learn it.

The only way to learn is to brake early on the track, and keep trying it. eventually you'll get it. It took me a while, and I still blow it many times.
still not 100% at it.

On the track, the pedal heights are much "closer" than on the street.

Jim 47

Yes, YellaFella, practicing the technique of the heal/toe process is a good idea. :D

Yes, you are wrong regarding your assumption of using heal/toe to properly trail brake. The two things (heal/toe) and (trail braking) are two distinctly different things, and are not related in any way. They can be done seperately or they can be done in sequence with the trail braking following the heal and toe process.

You can use the heal and toe process while approaching a corner in order to slow the car and at the same time sellect the gear that you want to be in going through the corner. After this gear is sellected you can release the brake, turn in, and proceed through the corner with your right foot on the accelerator while slowly increasing the amount of acceleration through the corner untill you are at max acceleration exiting the corner. Where you reach this MAX acceleration will depend on lots of factors.

Or, you could use the same heal and toe process before the turn-in point and then CONTINUE to apply the brake into the corner. The purpose of using trail braking is to load the front tires, unload the rear tires, and using the momentum of the car, cause the car to rotate (the rear to step out) which will actually turn the car through the corner. You will still be in the gear that you selected during the heal and toe process you used prior to reaching the turn in point. And, as soon as you feel the car rotate, you will smoothly release the brake and smoothly begin the acceleration process. You DO NOT use the heal/toe process "through the turn" as you stated.

As someone stated, driving schools teach novices to do all their braking in a straight line approaching a corner. The is the basic and safest way to enter a corner for the inexperienced driver. If you can learn how to heal and toe in the straight line braking zone, then this will be a step in the right direction and you will now start reducing the length of your braking zone, be much smoother, and also have the correct gear selected prior to turn-in.

Trail braking into a turn is something most beginning track drivers should approach with caution. This technique is used to purposely upset the balance of the car (break the rear end loose) in order to rotate the car through the turn, and it takes a good sensitive feel of what the car is doing in order to be successful and achieve the intended purpose rather that spinning the car off the track.

There are some unique situations and/or corners on most tracks where the use of trail braking can be beneficial to lap times, but for the most part it's not going to be useful through most corners, so at this point in your learning curve don't get all wraped up with the art of trail braking.

The art of "trailing throttle oversteer" is much more useful on the track and a lot more fun.

Jim Helm

Bill Dearborn

Yeah, that old Trailing Throttle Oversteer. It can be a lot of fun. My 86 had so much understeer that it was hard to get it to do this but there were places where it would. Nice way to set up for a pass coming through a turn. A Ferrari Club racer who was my instructor showed me a few places to use it around the Watkins Glen Course.
Bill

YellaFella

Look guys, I appreciate the fine input and all, but I think most of you are missing my point. Seems to me if your foot is on the brake and accelerator at the same time – that’s the heal/toe position.

I don’t have a problem blipping the accelerator to select a gear using the heal/toe method. I also don’t struggle with using a mild lift to rotate the car- which I presume is: "trailing throttle oversteer" – and yes IT”S FUN with my favorite location being the Mid-Ohio Carrousel. To be honest, while driving smooth is a never-ending challenge, neither of these techniques has come all the difficult to me, in and of themselves.

If I’m going to trail brake, should it generally be left foot, right foot or “it depends”? Left foot braking seems the easier to do, but is it short sighted to learn trail braking this way - would it be better to use the right foot in the heal/toe position right from the start...?

0to60

For me in my car, I ALWAYS apply brake with the part of the ball of my foot that would be my big toe bone. Does that make sense? The big toe side of the ball of my right foot. When I do this, the pinky toe side of my foot is placed right where it needs to be on the gas in case I wanna blip. I RARELY hit the brake with my whole foot. I always just use the big toe side of the ball of my foot.

If you're gonna trail brake, I'd still go ahead and do it with my right foot. I've never learned left foot braking, so I'm no authority on it (what's it good for anyway?) You can still trail brake with your right foot after you heel and toe. Its not like you ever wanna be on both the brake and gas at the same time (unless you're trying to counter understeer in some hopelessly plow-happy BMW 3 series...) so I don't see why you'd wanna left foot brake.

Jim 47

It's amazing how much you have improved in the past 8 hours! Just 8 hours ago you said, "I'm working on heal/toe on the street, trying to be smooth enough to trust myself to apply this skill on the track and in combination with trail braking" and now you say, "I don't have a problem blipping the accelerator to select a gear using the heal/toe method". Which is it?

The people answering your posts have been responding to the questions you have asked. We can't help it if you haven't asked the questions that you really wanted answered. It's really comical that you have now said:
MISSING YOUR POINT What is your point????
The truth is that no one has missed your point, we just couldn't figure out what it was from the questions you were asking.

So now you ask a NEW series of questions:
I sure hope that someone will answer your new set of questions. I've grown tired of trying. Good luck.

Jim Helm

bcstonic

I have placed a 1/4" block under a custom alum. gas pedal that is made to assist in heel/toe(has a tab on bottom of pedal to help catch your heel). With fresh brakes and little brake pedal travel I have found it to help as the gas pedal is as you described, lower than the brake pedal. Works for me. Brian

StArrow68

From an almost pure novice, but after working on it for two full days, in short mode:
Heel/Toe to set the down shift.
Brake to balance when trying to get the front end in quicker at turn in.

The pedal position on the Z06's we've been driving are the same as on my '02 Coupe and as you described originally, throttle lower than brake. But having had no luck trying it on the street either, I now get it, after two days of track work and this has given me ideas how to practice on the street even if it may sound funny, blipping, around town.
The brake to balance is as described by several others to transfer with fairly light right foot pressure additional traction to the front tires at turn in to keep traction beyond what would be possible if the car was set at 50/50.
Now it's just a matter of more practice, seems one solution is to find more track time. Pahrump ain't all bad.

YellaFella

Jim Helm,

If you read my first post it says: "I'm working on heal/toe on the street, trying to be smooth enough to trust myself to apply this skill on the track and in combination with trail braking". My intent was a question about trail braking.

I said: “look guys, I appreciate the fine input”. Because (here’s a shocker) I appreciate the effort that you and others have made. I'm not trying to be an a-hole. Your being kinda cynical aren’t you?

I'm learning from this thread and gained a few insights to improve my track skills. Trail braking is something I’d like to know more about. If you’d like to provide input it would be appreciated, but I don’t need or deserve a dressing down from you. I'm sorry you missed the point and apologize if I ruined your day. You may want to cut down on the coffee a little.

Richard Rolfes

[Modified by YellaFella, 8:51 AM 9/10/2003]


[Modified by YellaFella, 8:52 AM 9/10/2003]

willi

Jim Helm covered a lot of it. Shifting should be done when the car is going straight. So heal/toe/downshifting is done when going straight and usually towards the end of the braking zone so you aren't using the engine to slow the car down. (Brakes are cheaper to replace than the engine, clutch, etc.) But this depends on if you're downshifting one gear, more than one gear, or skipping gears. And the track. My local track has a hump in the middle of the long straight's braking zone and this isn't the best place to downshift.

Heal/Toe has nothing to do with trail braking and there are different things called trail braking. My definition doesn't have much to do with braking. It's just a smooth roll of my right foot onto the throttle as I enter a turn. I'm done with my braking and just giving the front tires a little help.

Left foot braking is something else again. It also isn't particularly connected with trail braking. I would think switching to left foot braking on turn in would be a bad thing. It can be used to balance a car through a turn usually with throttle being used. It's used more with front wheel drive and lower hp cars to maintain momentum through a turn. If you want to learn this, I'm told most people miss the brake and hit the clutch when learning this one. Myself, I didn't get the clutch. But then I didn't get the brake either. So, like heal/toe, your first time should not be when your barreling into that turn at the end of a 140 mph straight...

The thing to keep in mind is that all tracks, corners, cars, drivers, and circumstances are different. Acceleration, braking, and gear selection are the things you must do. The rest are all techniques applied to help you/your car improve track times. Heal/toe/downshifting is one that should be mastered. Trail and left foot braking are more specialties. For track days I wouldn't worry about them until you're completely comfortable with getting around the track. If the car needs them to stay balanced, use them. Otherwise don't bother. You're not there to drive the car 100%, or even 90%, and at least I tend to learn more going a little slower and having time to try to understand what the car is doing and how it feels.


[Modified by willi, 9:42 AM 9/10/2003]

Jim 47

:) Excellent response willi :)

Bill Dearborn

:iagree:

TedDBere

Alright, I'm learning from this thread so bear with me.

If you need to trailbrake to set the front tires into the turn, then I'm assuming that you feel that you don't have enough traction to prevent the understeer that is about to happen. So why wouldn't trailbraking spring your rear loose because you are obviously at the edge of the traction circle, or else you wouldn't have needed to trailbrake. Wouldn't trailbraking de-weight your rear tires and cause it to loose traction around the turn? How do you prevent the rear from ripping loose upon the trailbraking being initiated???

:steering: