Or, more accurately, to un-learn decades of right-foot only between the throttle and the brake.
I’ve accomplished the braking technique on a track straightaway, but my brain struggles when it’s anything but a straight line brake.
I’m doing my first auto cross on Sunday and will get to practice left-ing. Any advice on what I could do in the next few days to practice for the event?
All I’ve got is find a large parking lot (fair grounds?) and set up a course (around the lamp posts or cones, or use lines in the lot), and practice. You don’t have to go fast, but practice. Use the car you’ll be using on the track, and keep at it. When you’ve got it down for one set up, tear it down, and set up something entirely new. Take breaks so you don’t go nuts, but keep practicing at different times of the day. Turn on music sometimes. Change things up as you get better at it, so your brain has to keep working. Practice, practice, practice.
If your other cars are stick and you can start using this method everywhere, do it - with the caveat that you should do that once you’re feeling more comfortable and will be safe.
I can only seem to make it work “right” when driving an auto. Difficult to switch clutch/brake in the heat of battle.
Only real advise is get good driving shoes.
I hate it when people use their left foot for the brake. They end up using their brake pedal as a footrest, so you never know if they’re actually braking or not. (Or their brake lights burn out.)
You aren’t kidding. I think I may have told this story before, a few years ago I was doing an Advanced Driving Course, as part of it the instructor was showing us the difference between anti-lock and regular brakes. I learned to drive on cars without anti-lock brakes and that was what I was used to.
The instructor had us drive at speed towards a line of traffic cones and told us to stand hard on the brakes to ‘lock up’, the idea being that because of the anti-lock brakes we wouldn’t slide and could drive around the cones even when braking hard.
Well I couldn’t do it, despite fully intending to do as the instructor said every time I hit the brakes and I felt the car begin to lock up my brain took over and lifted my foot off the brake. Once, twice, three times I took a run at it, but nope, every time my unconscious mind over-rode my conscious intentions and wouldn’t let me lock up the brakes. It was really a strange experience and made me realise we don’t perhaps have as much control over ourselves as we think we do.
The instructor was quite annoyed as well, he thought I was doing it on purpose…
And yes I’ve never got the hang of left-foot braking either, on the few occasions I’ve tried it.
It’s a racing technique. I suppose if people learned to drive with left foot braking it wouldn’t seem as difficult, but in normal driving you down push the brake and the gas at the same time, and with a stick you do push the clutch and the brake at the same time it seems to be impractical. If I had to do it I’d want a hand control for the gas. It’s pretty easy to manage the controls on a motorcyle.
Would it be easier on your brain to use heel/toe braking? Heel and Toe Downshift Technique How-To Video
I actually am pretty good at this method, but my instructors have encouraged me to try to learn left braking. It’s not a tragedy if I can’t, as I’ll never be a competitive driver who needs the split seconds left-braking provides. It’s amazing how entrenched driving habits can be – in fact, my left foot kept floating over to press a phantom clutch and I’ve not had a nanny tranny for 20 years. Brain: throttle, throttle. Okay, left foot, brake! Wait, where did my left foot go?
Atomic: god yes, big difference with ABS! In the same vein I did skid pad sessions last month and was terrified and bad at it. I was convinced I would flip my car/car couldn’t do the maneuvers. I asked to watch my instructor (from sidelines) do some driving. Holy cow, the car can do it! He even drifted it a few times (with my permission). Under “suggestions” on the post-event eval, my HPDE instructor gave three suggestions: 1. TRUST YOUR CAR! 2. TRUST YOUR CAR!! 3. TRUST YOUR CAR!!!
Gato: my dogs kidnapped my driving mocs and ate them in the backyard, I bought some flat-soled sneakers yesterday that will do for now.
In FUN news: I watched a bunch of AX YouTube vids yesterday. The driver POV footage was really, really helpful, especially those shot from the same car I drive. I was thinking “Self, wouldn’t it be cool to video my driving and do post-game critique?” Amazon to the rescue! My Go Pro cam and seat mount hardware are coming toooooday!
Damn, this is actually a really good idea.
On a car, your foot operates the clutch and your right hand operates the shifter. On a motorcycle, your left hand operates the clutch and your left foot operates the shifter by clicking it up or down with your toe. There are also heel/toe shifters.
Why has nobody come up with a car that has a hand throttle rather than a gas pedal?
Are there rules in the automobile industry or the traffic laws, forbidding such a thing?
Two hands on the wheel.
As a near national champion autocrosser (third in A modified) I never tried left foot braking. It doesn’t seem like there is enough to be gained in the sudden world of 4 second straightaways that is autocrossing. And I had a* very* fast car, a formula B Tojeiro. The nationals was the only race I lost that year, 31 FTDs.
I bet the use of left foot braking in autocrossing arose from this god awful fast car. It uses a constant velocity transmission and the driver can just leave the right foot down and jab the left foot while briefly lifting off the gas. My Tojeiro was a similar type of car but just a road racing formula car. The Acme Special is designed from scratch for autocrossing. Damn, I wish I still had my car to see how I compared to him. Be sure and watch the video.
Now when I was full road racing the topic did come up. That was in the 1970s and trailing braking was a new technique. I tried it a few times but it is tough to learn unless you have the track to yourself. My gut feeling is that it is a way to pick up those last few tenths of a second at best. Wait until you can’t go any faster before you even think about doing it.
Dennis
I’m too late to offer advice for your autocross session today. But here are my thoughts about left-foot braking in autocross and HPDE.
In my 11-year HPDE career, 8 years as an instructor, I never taught left-foot braking to a beginning student, and almost never even to intermediate students. I’m curious as to where your autocross instructors think it will be useful, since on road courses I mostly used it for fast fast corners where you might want to moderate your speed slightly while not lifting off the accelerator. I practiced this out on the street in similar turns, although in those situations braking was not really necessary. (I did it when no other cars were behind me to be spooked by my brake lights coming on in an unusual situation.) ISTM that there wouldn’t be many opportunities for this in your average autocross course.
But I don’t have much autocross experience. I found in my few autocross events that the ratio between waiting around and time on track was not good enough to make autocrossing worth the effort, even though it was much less expensive than HPDE. I preferred to spend the whole day at a road course event where I’d have an hour or more on track to a half-day event where I only spent 15 minutes driving.
So let us know how it went.
The trick to learning to stomp the brake is to drive a manual for decades, then get into an automatic with a large brake pedal. At some point, you will forget that you are driving an auto, and go to press the clutch in, and instead slam the brakes on. Without anti-lock, you just skid to a stop. With anti-lock, they usually engage.
I wonder if I’m missing something here about the fine points of specialized motorsport driving. Left-foot braking in itself doesn’t seem hard to get used to. This is how I brake all the time, in all the years I’ve been driving an automatic, yet I learned to drive on a manual and owned one for years, so I must have used right-foot braking then. I have no recollection of the transition being any kind of issue. In an automatic, I much prefer left-foot braking because I can usually respond more quickly, and much more quickly if I’m anticipating the possibility of having to brake so that the left foot is already over the pedal.
They allow it for handicapped people who cannot use the pedals.
It was fun! Points-wise, I came in dead last (drove a very, very leisurely first run, hit a few cones and missed a slalom twist on following runs, but I was happy with the last run). The organization runs on volunteer work, so everyone who drove had to work as well – I was a cone replacement queen for almost two hours, which was not an enchanting job after hour one.
I’m hearing you on the wait time, It’s definitely longer down time than a road course and I missed the elegant speed of and emphasis on technique of the BMW HPDEs I’ve done. I was quite surprised that some of the experienced drivers I spoke to today have never done an HPDE/road course – I thought this was how people got a foot into the track door.
Despite my turtle times and killing a few cones, I do think my driving fundamentals are pretty good thanks to the BMW HPDEs. I got an extremely close look at some breathtakingly sloppy driving whilst I was Queen of Cones (almost literally breathtaking: a Miata guy driving fast 'n shitty spun off the track toward me and for a moment I thought I was a goner. This dick was out of control on every run, I’ve no idea why he wasn’t chucked off the track).
There were many excellent, talented drivers. I met a Facebook friend in person today and she kicks serious ass. She rode with me after my first dismal run and helped with the course. I then rode a few times with her . . . OMG, that girl drives her Mini like a freakin rocket.
Today was under the general umbrella of SCCA, I’m doing a BMW-sponsored AX next Sunday.
Congrats, Jenn! You did well, had fun, and now you’re the cone replacement queen!
Yeah, don’t sweat this – I’ve got friends who’ve raced and they’ve discussed it, but none of them thought seriously of actually doing it in a race.
Maybe if they were faster…
(oh, crap, what if they read this? Better not reveal my SDMB handle at my funeral, as I’d planned).
It used to be a fairly common mod on Land Rovers in the UK. I think some tractors have hand throttles and farmers were just used to it.
I remember driving out of Boston airport in a hired Lincoln towncar. Jet lagged after the flight and 10 years since I last drove an auto transmission. For some reason I was left foot braking, but my left leg was used to heavy clutches. Sorry to anyone who was following behind me!
Thx, Digs! I’m with you and others- nopes on lefty braking. My driving is too impressive as is (smiley here).
I’m happy you let us know how it went. That Miata driver seems like one of those guys who think drifting is racing. Generally, the fastest cars in autocrossing are so smooth that their run isn’t exciting to watch until you know what to look for.
I remember one lady who was driving a Lotus Elan. It backfired and started burning under the bonnet. She panicked and although she did slow down, she jumped out without stopping the car. We were all chasing the damn Lotus as it slowly cruised through the course, knocking down all the cones and headed for the spectators.
One thing I forgot to mention before your race, and hopefully your instructors are saying, is walk the course. Picture yourself in the car and how each turn is going to look as you approach. Check your line through each corner - do you just go fast or do you need to be setting up for the next turn? We called them type A and type B turns. One is a turn leading to another turn, and the other is a turn leading to a straight. I’m sure this comes up in your road course training. You should know the course before you drive it so there are no surprises.
I was looking up the SCCA Solo II rules last year and was shocked to see my Scion xB is banned. What the heck? I love tossing it around but maybe it does turn over too easy. Sure doesn’t feel like it would.
Dennis