Originally Posted by Trackaction-Online

I should start by saying the following comments are very general and not based on any individual driver .

In my experience, there's a tendency for drivers to overwork the gears when they first start track driving and generally they choose too low a gear and slow down too much for the corner. My rule of thumb is that if there is a choice of two gears to use for a particular corner I would go for the higher one for a number of reasons -

1 If the driver is not up to speed yet then as their pace increases they are likely to need to higher choice anyway and it's sensible to start off in the gear that will continue to work.

2 Changing to a lower gear whilst braking can often slow the car excessively and reduce stability unless the driver can toe/heel properly, the extra gear shift while braking is also an added distraction that often tends to cause over braking and poor judgement of entry speed and line - getting these right is much more important than gear choice.

3 The high revs on entry can make the car seem more nervous, again restricting entry speed and delaying the point at which acceleration can start during the corner.

4 Very often, full throttle would not be used in the lower gear until the car is almost at peak revs and ready to change anyway, if that's the case, why bother changing down?


Sometimes, the lower gear may be the faster one if everything works correctly but if it doesn't then everything ends up slower and the lower gear makes it very hard to progress as well as more likely to have an off . Speaking as a regular trackday instructor I'd say that once I've got line, entry speed and throttle control where I want it, then I'll see if there's anything else to gain from a few more revs.

HTH explain why you were guided towards the higher gears on the day

Steve H

Originally Posted by WinFreak

This is what mark and I were talking about too, I did the chicanes in 2nd in the morning but the instructor told me to take them in 3rd. You can really see how it bogs down in 3rd on the videos.

This lap is one of the few I filmed without traffic and is 2:20, I did do some faster ones later on the day but didn't film them so don't know what times they were...