There has been a lot of input in here, and I will try to add a little more. Most of these guys are much older than me, with much more experience. I rely on my own experience and what the 'older' guys have taught me. I used to have a Mazda Protege for my daily driver, and I did track it. It was an Auto 1.6L. Rather funny to watch, but you would be suprised at the times I could run. The thing about a non-setup FWD car is that its going to understeer/plow like nothing ever before it. If I followed a slow in-fast out scenario, I would be in the grass with understeer. The cool thing about FWD is you can disrupt it about as much as you want, and engage a little throttle and it straightens back up. So essentially FWD is a lot faster for sloppier drivers IMO. So on just about any turn, I started to left foot brake. I would brake about 90% into the turn, then the last 10% all the way up to the apex. This shifted my cars back end to a much more neutral position. If I really tried hard, I could even induce a little slide at speed. Needless to say, I got about 3500 miles out of a set of pads, and about 7000 out of a set of rotors.
Step forward to my 968. I don't have to do this on many turns in my 968 because its already so neutral from the getgo. Where I do find I understeer/loose balance is on corner exits. I struggle to keep the car steady when at lower gears. Thus, of late I have been trying to rotate the car even more going into a turn, using an altered form of trail braking. Its helped because when I hit my apex I am more at a drift, but the second I apply throttle I straighten it back out with intense accelleration leaving. The downside is that I am at about a 35% success rate, the other 65% being me doing smokey donuts on $300/piece tires. I can see how much more experienced drivers can use this with incredible speed, but as an amateur its taking a lot of practice, and even more tires.
I started rev matching/heel toeing when I turned 16. I learned from my friends father who was a DE Instructor for BMWCCA. All of us were over discussing ideas, and he asked if we wanted to learn so we went for a ride. I was addicted from the first time I heard that WOT blip, then engage the gear...just like the pro's. I have been doing it ever since, not as a means of noise, skill, or necessity, but out of just habit. Really helps me setup so I am not fumbling with gears when I need to accellerate, even on the road. I made a video of it a couple years back that I need to find. There are two ways to heel toe, the real way 'heeling and toeing' which I have to do in spaced pedals, and the rolling toe downshifting. In an RSX TypeS that I raced a while back at an Auto-X, the pedals were too far spaced for 'rolling toe', so I had to learn to heel and toe. Interesting, and very hard when I started. When I finally got it, its so precise and accurate that I almost want to space all my pedals out. I learned by rolling my toes on BMW's, then now my Porsche. The downside all DE instructors have told me is that there is going to be a time when my foot is going to slip off the brake, or gas, and my car is goign to get utterally disrupted at very high speeds. Just something to think about...I haven't really thought about it yet because the rolling toe is so second nature.
One instructor told me this about downshifting though - What is more expensive to replace, clutch or pads? The answer will always be clutch, so he said leave the downshifting off the street, and perfect it when you don't mind paying for a new clutch. He also said what is going to disrupt the car more going into a turn - sloppying braking or a bad downshift? I said sloppy braking, which of course was wrong. On the next lap on a lower speed (35-45mph) hair pin he had me brake hard, then he actually grabbed the steering wheel. I recovered fine, was off line, but got back up to pace. The next turn he said to enter it at speed (55mph or so), brake, but don't rev match. Just let the transmission do the work. I did, and ended up in one of my smokey donuts. I perfected my downshift for weeks after that. Just something to think about before doing a canyon run!
Wes
