Crows Pix

[Mark Mervich]

Barry,
Is there any easy way you can hook up a shift light? My dash flashes at me at the top of each gear so I have less to worry about. I don’t know how wide your power band is, but 3rd may drop down quite a way into 2nd. Down shifting for the sweepers is how I did it too, right after the braking.
Mark

[Barry Twycross]

The laptimer already flashes at me when it thinks its time to shift (which is at the limiter). Though I don’t notice that, I do notice the engine sound and the tach which is right in front of me. Knowing it may be advantagous to change up isn’t the problem, when to change down is what concerns me.

For the most part I’m happy to hit the limiter for brief periods, that limits my top speed, its a soft limiter so its not disruptive. But I’ll probably lose more time shifting up then down again (i have some data to support that, theory). If I don’t shift down I’ll lose power. The MINI has very little power, so I need to be making most use of what I’ve got. The gearing difference from 2->3 is substantial (1.5x), so being in the wrong gear here is very bad. I did try the whole thing in third for my third run, to avoid the change downs, but it was half a second slower overall and only faster on track during the last slalom (the negative offset one).

The big problem is knowing changing down is an expensive operation and I’m not practiced at it, to make it even less palatable as an option.

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