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Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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Skills 101: How to Heel-Toe Downshift

Posted April 25, 2013 8:00 AM by dstrohl
Pathfinder Tags: Shift skills 101 video

If you've never raced, but hung around racers or read about their exploits, you might be wondering what all that heel-toe business is about. Essentially, it's yet another trick racers use to get around the track just a little bit faster by matching the engine revs to the car's speed during a downshift. Doing so requires the use of all three pedals at once, though, so it takes a little fancy footwork and some good shoes to accomplish, and plenty of practice to accomplish well. There seems to be no end to the number of heel-toe instructional videos on YouTube, but this one by HookedonDriving seems to explain the skill best.

Watch the video on Hemmings Motor News.

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Guru

Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: CA (Central Arkansas, USA)
Posts: 599
Good Answers: 10
#1

Re: Skills 101: How to Heel-Toe Downshift

04/26/2013 5:30 PM

When I first heard all the hub-bub about driving schools teaching heel and toe breaking I could not figure out what the big deal is. I started doing that on my own in the late 50's in the hills above Los Angeles driving my '49 ford. Nothing to it! -- JHF

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Power-User

Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Sydney, Australia.
Posts: 126
Good Answers: 11
#2

Re: Skills 101: How to Heel-Toe Downshift

04/30/2013 3:19 AM

What's the current thinking on throwing in double de-clutching for the full experience as I was taught? i.e. on the downshift:

1 clutch in

2 shift to neutral

3 clutch out

4 blip throttle

5 clutch in

6 shift to gear

7 clutch out

On the upshift delete step 4

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