Heel-toe Downshift
The heel – toe downshift is a fundamental technique to driving fast through corners. During a heel-toe downshift, you'll be steering with the right hand, shifting with the left hand, clutching with the left foot, and working both the brake and gas pedals with the right foot – all at exactly the same time.

Why is “Heel – toe” important? Remember, as you approach the traction limit of your tires, anything that takes traction can cause the car to slide. Have you ever downshifted and released the clutch too quickly, felt the car jump as the engine RPM were forced up to match the cars speed? Kind of like tapping the brakes. Think of this, if you are driving at 70 mph in 4th gear, at 4000 rpm’s and shift down to 3rd, your engine RPM will go up, to say 5200 rpm’s. You can accomplish this by easing out the clutch, until the engine is forced up in rpm’s by the car. This works, but it is slow, hard on the clutch and transmission synchros, and uses up some of your traction to force the RPM up. The alternative is to match the engine speed to the transmission speed (in the lower gear). This can be done by pushing in the clutch, blipping the throttle, selecting the lower gear and releasing the clutch. The problem is downshifting is done at the same time we are braking. Guess what? We have two feet and three pedals to operate simultaneously! The Heel Toe technique solves this problem.

So let's look at the the steps involved in:

• Lift the right foot from the gas pedal and press the brake pedal
• Just before the braking is done, the left foot depresses the clutch pedal
• The right hand downshifts (the left is still on the steering wheel)
• The right foot is still applying, but easing up on the brake pressure, then rotates so the heel is above the corner of the gas pedal
• The right heel gives a quick push of the gas pedal to rev the engine quickly (the ball of the foot is still on the brake easing up even more)
• The left foot releases the clutch, the right foot rotate off the gas
• The right foot completes the braking
• The right foot slides over to the gas pedal to assume the normal position only to maintain some pressure to sustain the vehicle speed through the first part of the corner. Then accelerating out of the turn.

The whole sequence above from the second bullet to the last takes less about half a second. This takes quite a bit of practice to get right. The whole idea is to transition between braking and accelerating with absolutely no delay, and with perfect smoothness. Done correctly, there should be no jerking of the car during the downshift and transition back to acceleration.

One other note about the above description. We have assumed the use of a street car, and a street transmission with synchros. If you're using a true race transmission without synchros, then you need to modify the above shifting with a double-clutch procedure.


Additional information taken from
www.turnfast.com