Miata Mailing List: August 1995, Message #101
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   From: Steve An 
Subject: Re: Skip shifting
   Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 10:06:54 -0400

I watched enough F1 races live with Le Professeur et the late Aye-air-ton
to know that they both skip gears on downshifts, no racers in their right
minds would skip gears on upshifts, since they always want to get max.
acceleration.

I agree with what Miq said on the track when you are mostly at 9/10 or
10/10, it is quite hard to smoothly match revs when you skip gears (for me
anyway), but on the street, I skip gears all the time on downshifts, I
can't imagine skipping gears on upshifts with a wimpy motor like the
Miata's, now if you are driving a Vette, 1->4 isn't out of the question,
this is how GM does it to get around the
CAFE problem.

Prost has said that he would always brake, then pick the proper gear, thus
saves time, minimize movement, every shift takes ~1/10 sec. I don't know
how many racers actually do it, it is fairly easy to tell since you can
hear them match revs on downshifts. So, it is possible to do it, should you
do it? it depends on how good you are at matching everything.

This reminds me of the time I saw the inaugural Porsche Super Cup race in 1986
at Nuerburgring, with the Porsche 956 equipped with the PDK (Porsche Doppel
Kupplung, or Porsche Double Clutch) tranny. At every corner, you can hear
every
one else matching revs and downshifting, but Hans Stueck would just go through
them and the engine revs would stay pretty constant, I have never seen nor heard
any human being does as well.

        - Steve "I can arm-chair race anybody" An

At 7:07 PM 8/1/95, Michael Simmons wrote:
>Miq Millman writes:
>
>> I don't ever remember professional racing
>> instructors telling me to skip gears while shifting.  I'm not condoning it.
>
>I recall reading a succesful Formula One driver's statement that he
>skipped gears rather than going through them all.  Sorry, I can't
>remember who it was, but it was a prominent driver, possibly former
>world champ, who had written a book on driving.  Of course, this may
>not apply at all to either us or the Miata.  He also said that some
>other F1 drivers hit all the gears.
>
>I'm no expert, just thought this might be of interest.  I hope someone
>else can help out on who said it.
>
>Mike Simmons