When they drive the car that they show, do they heel and toe to downshift? Do they? or do they just drive normally? Do you guys heel and toe when downshift?
I haven't seen any indication that they do, and I couldn't imagine that Clarkson or especially May does it. Also, yes I do it on a regular basis, it's just habit for me. I have racing/karting experience, but I tought myself how to do it from video a few years ago.
They drive cars for a living, I'm sure they all know how. Although I doubt they do it on the show because they arn't trying to get around the track quickly they're just tryin to do massive powerslides because they look cool. The only one that might is Hammond becasue he is (or used to be) a part-time racer.
Are you thinking of the time he drove the noble m12 and said he didnt know how to left foot brake, and it was just an electrical problem that the brake lights came on?
Are you thinking of the time he drove the noble m12 and said he didnt know how to left foot brake, and it was just an electrical problem that the brake lights came on?
It also saves clutch life quite a bit, as opposed to allowing clutch slip to raise the revs for engine braking.
Think of it this way- it is used during braking, so engine power can't play into it at all. It really probably only saves enough time to matter when you are driving a high power car, but it counts towards style/smoothness all the time.
Although the downsides are engine wear and worse fuel consumption. Heel and toeing is actually good for turbo diesel cars as it keeps the car in the power. Some diesels can be a bit peaky with delivery.
Heel and toeing is not really that usefull in everyday driving. It's more of a race technique to basically enabling the car to be in gear for maximum time.
I thought heel-toeing was used to prevent the wheels locking up when downshifting, because when you're braking as hard as you can, the resistance you get from the engine being forced to rev up when you released the clutch can be enough to lock up your driven wheels (especially nasty with rwd) causing you to spin off the track. And it can be used to prevent stress on the propshaft when downshifting in rwd cars.