Heel Toe

[G-Slev]

Could anyone give me any suggestions on teaching myself to heel toe properly? I play with it now and again, but I find it very hard to control my braking and blip the throttle. I also seem to always mash the throttle and the clutch at exactly the same time, and the car just feels totally out of control.

I have seen a few videos on youtube, but they don't seem to help. Someone should develop and sell an app to train heel toe choreography - they would make a killing!

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Just watch Grand Tour Farmkhana a few times starting 1:50

 

[BillGuy]

You’re not alone. I’ve never been successful with it either no matter how many videos I’ve watched and how much I’ve adjusted my pedal spacing. It got to the point where it was more maddening than simply “challenging” so I gave up. I just use auto-clutch with manual blipping. That’s totally incorrect of course as I’m still left foot braking, but I play my games to be amused, not to be frustrated or angered.

 

[G-Slev]

Just watch Grand Tour Farmkhana a few times starting 1:50

Er, sorry - I may be misunderstanding here, but are you being serious?

 

[Salvatore Sirignano]

Could anyone give me any suggestions on teaching myself to heel toe properly? I play with it now and again, but I find it very hard to control my braking and blip the throttle. I also seem to always mash the throttle and the clutch at exactly the same time, and the car just feels totally out of control.

I have seen a few videos on youtube, but they don't seem to help. Someone should develop and sell an app to train heel toe choreography - they would make a killing!

I learnt in something slow, with long braking distances. Try the Camaro in AMS 1(if you have it) around Brands Hatch GP. (Can`t vouch for the AMS2 version being good to learn in as I haven't tried it.)
It is hard with lower end pedals like the G27 set because the travel on the brake is rather long, in a race car it tends to be a fairly short range of motion. A long range of travel means when you're braking fully your toes have gone past the height of the throttle, and physically turning moving your heel out and hitting the throttle is more difficult, and almost impossible without coming off the brake slightly.
If you can shorten your brake travel, or screw something (a metal plate) on top of it to make your foot sit higher, it'll help a lot.

 

[OurManInTangier]

Not wanting to derail but it’s in the same area, I use a CSL and it’s paddle shifters as I don’t have a separate shifter. I’m also currently using auto clutch, mainly as I’m assuming (probably incorrectly) that paddle shifters are auto clutch. I’m mainly using the MCR 2000 at the moment, it’s just a little joy.

I‘d like to improve my heel and toe, I use it in my RL car with the right side of my foot blipping the throttle and it’s fairly natural in my manual.

Should I be using the clutch on my pedals in game and heel/toeing?

 

[Cyteless]

Try the Unos at Londrina - slow cars on a track with high speed and long braking distances. They're FWD, so you need to heel-toe to avoid a lock up, but the FWD makes it easier to recover, so it'll be less daunting than a RWD car.

Brake -> clutch in -> throttle to rev match -> shift gear -> clutch out.

I use my heel proper, I can't use the side of my foot like the pros seem to do. It's a lot easier to control the brake with precision with the front of your foot, then use your heel to tap the throttle. My foot draws a 45 degree angle from the brake to the throttle.

 

[G-Slev]

Okay, so I found a bit of a way to improve. Drive the 1964 Abarth Fiat 500 in AC at Brands. It is so slow that you have the time to brake, think and perfect your technique.

I went from that to a BMW 2002 and then an Alfa GTA and have found I am massively more consistent,

 

[TShrimp]

Okay, so I found a bit of a way to improve. Drive the 1964 Abarth Fiat 500 in AC at Brands. It is so slow that you have the time to brake, think and perfect your technique.

I went from that to a BMW 2002 and then an Alfa GTA and have found I am massively more consistent,

I find some cars, such as the GT5, that almost require heal toe to control the car properly. I am by no means an expert, but something that can help is getting the brake pedal and gas pedal to a comfortable distance apart for you. I like mine wider than most, but you have some people like Barry (popular sim youtuber) who like his brake and gas almost touching. You could play with this a little to and see if this helps.

 

[BrightCandle]

The other thing that might be worth doing is trying to make the brake flush with the accelerator when it's pressed down. Reducing that gap in the distance can make reaching the accelerator to blip a lot easier and in the cars that used to use this and be raced it was a common way to have the brake setup. Most sim pedals have some limited amount this can be adjusted but it's worth doing as much as you can if getting to that accelerator consistently is proving difficult or causing discomfort.

 

[Gevatter]

I learned to Heel & Toe in AC, going around Hungaroring in the KTM X-Bow. This may not be of any help depending on how you train yourself currently, but the way I learned it was to just do downshifts using the technique on straights until I had a grasp of the pedal coordination, without the need to think about going through corners. That came later. It took me about 1-2 weeks until it went into muscle memory.

Currently I'm trying hard to learn double declutching on downshifts. I can do it IRL in old trucks no problem, but you can basically take forever in those. It's the speed of downshifts in race cars that gets me