in extremis, PDK in auto or manual?

so i'm having the pleasure of taking up some of Pedro's time on the phone the other day and he's telling me about this 130mph longish curve at Sebring that ends in a second gear hairpin...and if i heard him right his PDK is in auto and it's in 5th...he waits for his braking point and then STANDS on the brakes...much blipping/banging/farting later- all done by the gremlins- he arrives at the hairpin and exits in second...this he says is the way to do it and unsurprisingly i believe him.

i had called to tell him i was confused by my 981BS when hustling on our quiet back country roads here in southern Ohio, which mode was faster? a typical scenario would be a shortish straight at around 100 approaching a corner you know to be, say, 70...i'm in third and i'll need 2nd to get out...in manual mode it's an old, comfortable sequence...you dictate when to change down/brake...it blips and does so...out we go in second...an F1 driver would do that, wouldn't he, using his paddles, deciding when...or would he? Pedro wouldn't...and we read so much about PDK being the fastest, quickest change...and that adds up...

but...when i try this in auto on this same stretch i get into no mans land..my rpm falls well below the power band on braking which obviously is going to delay my exit...???

well, if i understood Pedro correctly , the whole problem is i am being too gentlemanly...PDK is highly intuitive - its greatest charm- to the extent it can say, you know, this old guy is not trying that hard...he applied the brakes progressively, for God's sake...maybe it's raining! in any event we don't need to take him too seriously...take your time...he's down to 4100, so what? At Sebring they would say - hey, it's PEDRO again!! man the pumps-everything at 7400...

anyone with PDK passion to comment/add anything to this? i love it, wouldn't have bought the car without it..to me i can drive it three ways...auto in town, manual when hustling, it's the third i'm stuck on, trying to sort out - in extremis.

and thanks again, Pedro...enjoy that corner for me!

... of a PDK at Sebring.
The guy is learning but the PDK is in full auto.
Happy Boxstering,
Pedro

[www.youtube.com]

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

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"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

pedro...

good morning and thanks for the video...illuminating but with the tach not working had to guess where he was on the low end round slow corners...point being if you exit a slow corner and are at that moment say 3500/4000 rpm your Box is not going to fly up the road...if you were in manual you'd have made sure to be around 5000+, right?

i think my problem here goes back to racing motorcycles in the sixties where you were playing with a very fragile power spread and learned the hard way never to drop down below it...two strokes of course were an extreme example of this but even the venerable Manx Norton could leave you looking silly on exit if you had dropped too low.

A wild 4 stroke example of this was the magnificent works 5 cylinder Honda 20 valve 125cc GP racer of the mid sixties performing around the 38 mile Isle of Man course...from memory its acknowledged power band was 19,000 to 20,800 rpm...to race that bike round that course you had to be very, very on top of your game and Luigi Taveri was...wish i could remember how many speeds in the box but certainly no PDK!

An unforgettable aesthetic experience for me was to be in the paddock at dawn for practice warm up (public roads obviously so all practicing during the first week was done at oddball times)...the Honda mechanics warming up that bike had to keep it above something like 18,000 or it literally stopped! Must have had flywheels the size of quarters!

Anyway as we all have said with PDK and Sports(+) mode you have to show the computer you're really trying and wait for it to catch on - short of that stay in manual and enjoy those glorious noisy changes...what a fabulous car, at 75 it provides the illusion life is eternal!

I think that is more aggressive about the downshifts.

Either way, I believe that it learns your driving style fairly quickly so maybe not on the first corner but a few corners in it should downshift.

yes, should have mentioned car in Sports mode, sometimes Sports Plus...

I thought PDK had more to do with how you treat the gas peddle then the brake pedal? I've had mine on auto and had to mash the gas a few times to get out of situations, and it takes about 30 seconds for PDK to go back into "normal" mode. Until then, I find it loves to rev. I had no issues with it on the track when I did a HPDE. It was just raring to go out of the turns, so much so, I even passed a Turbo, which my instructor got a huge kick out of at the time.

At VIR the ACNJ president and PCA chief instructor is a friend. Listening to me grouse about my S6's lethargy int he shifting department, he insisted that if i'm barreling down the striaght, i can downshift a couple of punches, and then do the usual stand-on thebrakes routine, and it will execute the downshifts when the rpms and speed are right.

And it did.

trepidation city when you downshift to 2nd at 120 mph.

Example #2. yestrerday, after my skiing was rianed out, i down home via family in Mass/VT and the scenic route down the Taconic parkway to the Saw Mill to 2787 etc. Lots of very curvey, narrow highway.

I basically moved through traffic, smoothly, for 4 hours. By the end, it was holding gears and i basically could not make it upshift. It decuided we were on a race track. So there is a bit of learning andhysteresis built in, yes.

Example #3: I've driven students' 991/981s with tips at AX and they will shift FAST ( and likely better than me). I do typically use sport or sport+, and early on they do get confused ( back to that learning).

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2014 02:52PM by grant. (view changes)

I have an 04 S with a Tiptronic, but only have driven the car for 500 miles before I parked it for the winter. Would my car have this kind of feature installed? I'm still trying to learn everything I can about the vehicle.

I still am very, very cautious about doing that. It just feels wrong. But yes, tiptronic is in fact control software developed by porsche and applied to ZF transmissions. Audi put it in some of their S-cars (maybe all of them, i don't know). Mine's pretty old (2002) from the days when an S was somewhat hard core, unlike today.

ANyway - yours being newer and being a honest to goodness por-sha, it should.

In any event, try it out in D, S (if you have it) and manual over-ride. Honestly, on the road i never shift manually. S is my go-to setting for brisk street driving. But i learned that on the track its just too lethargic, especially when i'm trying to keep up with advanced driven GT somethings in a big, fat pig of a car :-)

Which, by the way, can be a lot of fun!

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com