Thoughts on the new Gearbox changes for stick-sequentials

Nope, not with the Calibra anyway.

Edit: Actually, not with any of the ’95/’02 DTM cars, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

This is a good video in that it does showcase that these gearboxes are still manuals, but the choice to use the clutch is a choice the driver is making for longevity and consistency.
That being said I have been trying to look at a bunch of period BTCC footage and there are a few drivers who are clutching these cars in period too, primarily Alain Menu seems to be doing it in his laguna in the 1998 season. I'm going to compile all of the instances I can find where the onboard cameras show the driver's feet (which is not a lot) to gain a further understanding of which techniques predominated. It is also very likely that it varied from car to car, which some cars having sturdier gearboxes that could take more abuse than others.

I still maintain that the original gearbox changes were still incorrect in that it too readily damaged the gearbox, and that flatshifts up were very much a thing in these cars. However I am not opposed to the idea of still punishing clutchless downshifts in super tourers, just mainly if there's a lot of torque in play, and have it be significantly more lenient than it's first iteration.

 

So I was sick and had a lot of time on my hands, and decided to go through each season review of the BTCC between 1994 and 1999 to see how these cars actually were driven in period, and my findings are interesting, with more drivers actually clutching these cars than I was expecting - but mixed in with some drivers which were not. I'll share some screenshots of my compilation below.



Conclusions:

Due to the majority footage not giving us an unobstructed view of the drivers feet a lot of these judgements are based on leg movement - this is unreliable as some drivers had significantly less leg movement than others while executing the same techniques. Thus the findings need to be taken with a grain of salt, and cases where I have noted things down as ‘no visible movement’ does not always guarantee such wasn’t done.
BMW seem to have featured a throttle cut on upshifts in earlier seasons than some of the other cars, with already in 1994 footage seemingly showing the lack of lifting on upshifts (though interestingly, both drivers seem to clutch them as they do this, perhaps they did not have a throttle cut?). This was officially made allowed in 1998, but evidently was already featured prior, as also already seen on the 1996 footage. I have stopped mentioning no-lift upshifts after 1996 because it seems all cars had them at this point.
Kelvin Burts pretty early preference for left foot braking in 1996 - a departure from Rydell and Harvey driving it in 1995 - already doesn’t strictly indicate that the Volvo in 1995 wasn’t capable of this. His background from driving single seaters likely had to do with it, but such a driving style no doubt would put slightly more stress on the gearbox and drivetrain of the car particularly if done incorrectly (more unstable through the corners), showcasing the varying ways people drove these cars in period.
It would seem that some of the late era super tourers (97-00) had refined their gearboxes to the point where manual throttle blipping is mainly done after braking from high speeds with a lot of torque, and not always on lower speed corners, where this suggests that they do not unsettle nearly as much as the earlier cars used to.

 

I can't speak for touring cars. But for GT1 cars from the mid-to-late-00's, every car transmission was a little different. I have pored over many YouTube videos trying to figure out how these cars were driven. The answer is, there's no one answer. Even the same car prepped by different teams driven by different guys are often driven differently.

So to say that RaceRoom has the wrong model or is inaccurate isn't really true. They had to choose one model and this is the one we got. It depends on the type of racing too. If you were doing a 24 hour race in one of these cars you had to be kind to the gearbox. But in a sprint race- beat the snot out of it. Unless you you on a team with limited money then you always have to be easy on the box. Also if you are doing an onboard video with a 20 year old car, you have to be easy on the gearbox. It's complicated.

I've seen videos of old GT1 cars being heel and toe shifted using the clutch every shift. I've seen power shifting up and down the box. Sometimes they manually blip down the box with no clutch and FFS up the box.

Watch some onboards.

 

The fact that there are several ways of driving them is exactly what is the interesting bit, as we end up with the question of why. Different driving styles are often present because of personal driver habit and preference - of course - but they are still tied to the specific capacities of the car being driven. There would be no reason to heel & toe a GT1 car if that action did not provide the driver with some benefit that they wish to extract by driving it that way. It is of course clear that if one wants to, a dogbox can be clutchless shifted both up and down and there are some people in period onboards which do this. Yet many drivers do use the clutch on them on downshifts (but virtually never on upshifts).

An accurate representation of such gearbox behaviour in a sim would be to provide advantages and disadvantages towards the various techniques. If the only way to drive them is to clutch on every upshift and downshift - then this is inaccurate. But likewise if there is no tangible benefit whatsoever to using the clutch - when there clearly is in reality - this is also inaccurate. The most accurate model would provide the player with the choice of either style, providing advantages and drawbacks to both.

And so the question becomes, what is the most reasonable behaviour for a gearbox in order to allow for both styles of driving. And in terms of dogboxes then I personally would suggest that the best behaviour for a sim is one in which clutchless downshifts can be preformed within a (moderately lenient) rev range, depending on the torque of the car, where the damage to the gearbox is very limited or not present at all. Attempts to clutchless downshift outside of this range should run the risk of more significantly damaging the gearbox and bouncing the gear. As for upshifts, if the car has a throttle cut then flatshifts should be allowed. And if the car doesn't have a throttle cut, then it should only require a very brief lift.

Some of the GT1 and GT2 cars of the 00s did have mechanical auto-blip, where the throttle pedal physically depressed on downshift. We still see drivers usually clutching when downshifting these, but they don't have to heel & toe. It is difficult to find information on which cars had these fitted, and it's likely also part of driver preference. I don't think I have seen this prior to 2004, and even in 2010 and 2011 there's cars without. The fact that the drivers still often prefer to clutch while having this system in place does suggest that longevity on the gearbox should be a problem if it's not done.