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Left foot braking

4K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  Nose Nuggets 
#1 ·
It is possible to use left foot braking for certain turns. This is a specialized technique.left foot braking offers the possibility of slow down the car just slighty, without all the unsettle happens if you also lift your foot from the throttle. left foot braking can also be very useful if you are driving a car with the turbocharge. It can be very important to keep the turbo on boost. If you dont have to slow down very much it may be to your advantage simply to tap on the brake with the left foot, leaving the throttle on. You can actually do quite a bit of braking this way,thought there is a limit of course. Almost all car will brake better than accelrate, so the brake will over power the motor. since the brakes have to do more work (slowing the car and counteracting the power of the engine), they will get hotter.
 
#2 ·
If your car is automatic then yes it can be helpful but since most race cars and probably most of the people in here drive standard you would be better off useing the toe heel tecnique, heel on the brake, toe on the gas leaving your left foot for the clutch so you can down shift and have the power your looking for to get out of the turns faster
 
#3 ·
If the turn have to down shift then left foot braking will not be use. Left foot braking is only one of the technique and that is not good for all the turns. If you are applying the throttle when you depress the clutch, it will be easy to break lose the tire when you release the clutch. Unless you want to slide your car in some reason. But four wheels sliding is way less fun than rear wheels drifting.
 
#4 ·
You don't want to stay on the gas when shifting, but it is a good idea to blip the gas in between down shifting to match the RPM's with your motor, thats where the toe heel tecnique would be better, but if you stay on the gas then yes there is a chance you could slide. Sorry, but I don't really see where left foot braking would come in handy with a standard car.
 
#5 ·
Use heel and toe shifting to rev up the engine when downshifting so the car does not become unsettled by a sudden change in engine speed, that is absolutly correct.
This is an example for left foot brake. There is a easy left turn in front of you and you are driving around 5800 rpm in third gear and increaseing speed. Because most of the weight is in the rear of the car so if you turn in with full throttle, the car may understeer. In this case you can release the throttle for the turn in, but the boost may drop down. useing left foot brake is possible to save you some time on the release and depress throttle and you can keep the boost on every second in the process. Trial brake, left foot brake, release throttle, handbrake braking are able to make the car oversteer.
 
#7 ·
I did saw some drifter using lots of left loot brake in drifting. Some professional driver did use left foot brake in some turn, when they raceing in a track. But mostly will using with a front wheel drive car. On road course may able to use left foot brake but really depense on the driver because this technique is an option. you do not have to if you do not want to, and it take some time to practice. Usally left foot brake is just for a slighty of slow down or you are understeering but you still want to keep the boost on, then you can use that to make the car oversteer and chang the angle of the turn, but should be make sure that you will able to hit the apex. otherwise having a earily apex will effect the exit of the corner's angle to be smaller.
 
#8 ·
well it sure is nice to see people talking about driving technique and actually having a rough understanding of what they are talking about, this is a nice change of pace from some of the OTHER forums i have been on.

im not a big forum responder, but am an avid reader of this forum, and felt compelled to respond.

the style transmission a car is using has little bearing on the efectivenes of a left foot brake. although it would be advised to downshift into the apropriate gear given the next turn, the benafit of a left foot brake is, as someone said before me, you get far less weight movement then you would from a lift off the throttle. how the weight of your car sits on its 4 corners is where the core of your balance resides. if you lift while moving at race speeds, a lot of weight moves to the front, and you loose a lot of your gripping power in the rear. not to mention the amount of grip your giving your turning tires. a sudden lift mid-turn is what sends a lot of new racers spinning out.

i will sometimes use the the left foot brake if i enterd a turn a little too fast, as soon as i start to feel myself understeering to the outside, ill brish a little brake with my left foot to get just a tuch more grip up front, and to bring the speed down just a tad. in most cases, just bleeding off the throttle will be more then enough to get the understeer in check, but again as somoene else has said, in a turbo charged car, sometimes a lift off the throttle will be treterious to ones exit speed if i have to respool the turbo.
 
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