Ayrton Senna wringing out an Acura NSX on a track

Man I would love to try that. I just dont think I could get my right foot to do that though. Just seems so unnatural to brake with your right foot.

With a clutch I mean. I said it wrong, lol, my bad. Maybe it's the speed that threw me off. The feet just dont look right to me.

Classic video.

Senna was a BOSS. NSX was a helluva machine.

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With a clutch I mean

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It's rather natural and easy what he was doing. I don't necessarily mean the skilled driving around the course, but all the coordination of steering, Shifting, gas, and braking.

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It took me like, a week tops, to get used to left foot-braking.

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Is that what I was trying to say before I butchered the English language?

I knew there was something different.

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Heel and toe driving with loafers.

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Well, yeah, driving with loafers is actually great.

Gotta double clutch those down shifts.

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You regularly left foot brake??? lol

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With an auto or DCT over the years I have moved to exclusively left foot braking. It is now being taught more for track work than in the past. It allows quicker transitions, you left foot becomes much smoother at braking since it only performs one function and allows for much easier trail braking. Pretty much every race driver (save the few manual tranny series left) left foot brakes, I think the last F1 driver to right foot brake was Reubens Barrichello but IIRC he changed over in the early 2000s.

To the thread

To expand on heel-toe shifting one does it in order to match the revs on downshifts ideally having both plates of the clutch spinning at the exact same speed when they make contact. This is done by blipping the throttle with the right side of your foot (easier if you have a duck foot or in a performance-oriented car that tends to have the brake and throttle close together). Basically what you are doing is making sure the downshift is smooth. If the engagement is not rev-matched a quick release of the clutch (if you try to slip it in on all downshifts you will cause high clutch wear) with cause a quick weight shift in the car. If you are still braking in a straight line you will tend to wash out the front end, even with the increased forward weight transfer. This can lead to lockup and or understeering straight through the corner. If you do this when already turning or at the start of a turn the front quick front weight shift and resulting unweighting of the rear will cause snap oversteer and a nice but uncontrolled pirouette off into the gravel. The reason you don't just push the clutch, preselect the gear for the exit and release the clutch and roll onto the throttle after apex is you loose all your engine braking. It is also important with turbo cars because it keeps the turbo spun up and reduces lag on the transition to throttle.

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Those small touches of the throttle in the turns in not necessarily for speed, he has the clutch in on a lot of them. He is keeping the RPMs up in the power band to be able to recover from the turns (speed wise) faster.

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Actually, that is incorrect. On the downshifts as I explained he is rev-matching with the intent to get the input and output plates of the clutch at near the same speed at the bite point to prevent upsetting the chassis.

He is somewhat unusually stabby at the throttle past the apex of the turns. This is a result of driving F1. He doesn't roll smoothly into the throttle like an elite sports car driver would he take multiple stabs at the throttle keeping the back traction teetering on the knife-edge until he has enough traction to hammer it. An elite sports car driver would actually be faster in those turns but years of driving very high power to weight cars has developed a different technique, still fast but really the wrong style especially in a road car without the grunt he would have been used to. While Senna uses a more traditional sports car line in the video you will see a lot of F1 drivers when driving sports cars or production cars still use the "F1 line" which brakes to a lower speed and stays closer to the inside curb for longer this line works better for cars closer to the power to weight found in an F1 car as it isn't as important to carry speed through the corner because they accelerate so quickly. While I don't have links you may remember Clarkson talking about the F1 line when they put F1 drivers in the moderately priced car. They were certainly very quick but could have been faster if they adjusted their line.


BTW I simplified the explanation of the different approaches to line. If you care to you can read more about early apex vs traditional apex vs late apex turning.