Pedal questions

[Toivonen]

Hi,

What is first F1 car, where is two pedal?
What is pedals weight?
Thank's

[Facts Only]

Would it have been the first Semi-Automatic Ferrari that Mansell drove? Was it 1990?

[ringo]

I have a question.
How is the weighting of the brake pedal?

If i try using my left foot in my car, the pressure of the left foot doesn't feel natural when applied to the pedal. Is the brake pedal in an F1 car made stiffer to give a more balance pressure with the left foot on the brake and the right foot on the throttle?

[bill shoe]

Yes, initially using your left foot for braking feels really really awkward. My experience is probably typical--

Your rate of progress with left-foot braking will be faster than you expect when you first try it.

If you try it on the street when there is no real need for left foot braking, it will take longer to feel good. If you jump in the deep end and begin trying it during a track day, then you will immediately and strongly feel the benefits to your vehicle dynamics control, and this will quickly outweigh any awkward feeling from an unfamiliar left foot. Even thought the left foot pedal modulation will be a bit awkward, you will start to feel more insecure at the thought of right foot braking with the resulting response lag as you switch from accel to brake.

When you start track driving with left-foot braking I suggest leaving the car in a single gear or using an auto transmission. After you're comfortable with that then transition back to normal gear changes which generally require at least some braking to be right-foot. You may quickly decide that right-foot braking and its work-arounds like heel-and-toe shifting feel much more awkward than left foot braking ever did.

To directly answer your question about pedal force/weight, I think an ideal left-foot brake pedal would be slightly heavier than a typical right-foot throttle pedal. Hard to put into words why, but it probably relates to actuating and feeling a hydraulic system. The throttle spring doesn't have the same nuance of feel, so nothing gained from heavier pedal force/weight there. I think current brake pedal effort on typical production cars is about right. The weak point of production cars for left foot braking is pedal position, not pedal effort.

Current F1 cars basically have brake pedal weighting forced on them by the combination of small diameter brakes, need for high braking torque, and ban on power assist for brakes. It's in no way an ideal weight for driver control or modulation.

Hope you find the ramblings of a left-foot braking enthusiast useful.

[J.A.W.]

I originally learned left foot braking by riding an old British motorcycle..

In an automatic car, it becomes 2nd nature.
I did have an old Mopar Charger that had un-powered Girlock front disc brakes.. they gave a solid linear feel to the pedal..
.. but sometimes needed both feet planted hard on the brake pedal, & I guess that's why it was so wide..

[ringo]

Thanks Bill, very informative.
If i remember Rubens Barichello spent years driving with his right foot alone. He could not fully get used to left foot braking.

I believe when i first drove a car, i was left foot braking and then was told to only use the right foot. Since then it's been very awkward performing left foot braking. But as you say it's advantageous in terms of precision and i think its also a good technique for rotating front wheel drive cars in a corner.

[3jawchuck]

Hi,
What is pedals weight?
Thank's

Not sure how relevant to your question, but Scarbs recently posted about F1 pedals, albeit quite old ones and things have changed a little since then.

http://scarbsf1.com/?p=4293

[wuzak]

Would it have been the first Semi-Automatic Ferrari that Mansell drove? Was it 1990?

I think it would have been 1989.

[Cold Fussion]

My experience with left foot braking is that on the road it feels really strange but driving on a track/karting/simulators is that it feels completely natural and very easy. I guess this is because when left foot braking while driving something fast you get used to to applying a lot of braking pressure where as normal road driving requires very little brake pressure and my leg isn't 'calibrated' for modulating the small brake pressure.

[DiogoBrand]

My experience with left foot braking is that on the road it feels really strange but driving on a track/karting/simulators is that it feels completely natural and very easy. I guess this is because when left foot braking while driving something fast you get used to to applying a lot of braking pressure where as normal road driving requires very little brake pressure and my leg isn't 'calibrated' for modulating the small brake pressure.

Agreed. I'm into simracing, and one thing I've learned is that there's a big difference between 'force memory' and 'travel memory'. For instance, when using the gas pedal you'll barely use any force, instead you rely on knowing the position the pedal needs to be. When braking, the more you press the pedal the heavier it gets, so instead of remembering it's position you need to remember the force you need to apply to get the desired result.
This 'Force memory' is a lot easier to get than 'travel memory', so for instance, on some simulator pedals where the brake weight isn't progressive, a lot of times you'll be 'guessing' how much you need to press the pedal, which may lead to a significant loss of time.
When driving on the road, you rarely need to apply a lot of force on the brakes, so it's pretty hard to brake with your left foot because you just don't have that good of a travel memory on it as you do on your right foot, but on competitive situations you'll be using way more strenght on the brakes, therefore relying on your 'force memory', which is way easier to get with your left foot.

I know I probably complicated things more than I needed, but hopefully someone will understand.

[autogyro]

Would it have been the first Semi-Automatic Ferrari that Mansell drove? Was it 1990?

I think it would have been 1989.

I spoke to Ferrari in Italy about auto and semi auto gearboxes for racing in 1989, the same year I met Tony Southgate in the Tom Walkinshaw Group C Jaguar pits at Le Mans.
These talks included electronic control of the selector mechanism on lay shaft gearboxes.
This method was used on the Mansell Ferrari.

For left foot braking the pedal forces were maintained as for right foot braking although Nigel did initially find it difficult to adapt and spun a number of times in testing.
This was also as a result of perfecting the shift mechanism.
I wanted to continue to develop the bevel epicyclic gear train in F1 that I had been developing and racing successfully since the mid 1970s but the costs and changes in F1 regulations prevented this.
A number of teams were interested.

Left foot braking originated in rally driving as a faster method of down shifting than double declutching with an H pattern lay shaft gearbox.
It allowed the left foot to be always over the brake pedal to give the fastest response when braking was required.
The foot was then rocket over the clutch pedal to allow shifting or more commonly the gearbox was skilfully shifted without use of the clutch but still with a blip of throttle to match the input and output shaft torque/speeds in the gearbox.
In early cars and ancient heavy lorries these and similar methods were common practice as the only methods to permit any gear change with little or no synchromesh and heavy gears.
Motor bike riders use similar methods but with very light gears it is kids stuff by comparison.
If it was not racing bikes would have been auto many years ago.
Sadly these 'what I call' basic driving skills are long gone.

[gambler]

The diameter of the brake mastercylinder can be changed for more or less "feel" . I think it is very difficult to have a 3 pedal set up that allows the driver to downshift by touching the clutch with the left , working the nose in with right foot on the brake and right toe on the throttle to bump the revs to mesh the gears in downshifting all at the same time. If the driver was not a fabricator I don't know how he or she could ever explain what they needed.