can somebody tell me how the heel toe method works?

first off, i'm no drifter.. but by doing the heel-toe technique.. you're able to decrease your car's speed and at the same time keeping your engine rev'ed so that when you accelerate again, you accelerate taking advantage of the engine's higher-end/top-end power.

by using the heel-toe technique during a turn, you'd simply lift off the gas or push on the brake (both with the same foot) to decrease speed, and vice versa to increase speed. by adjusting your speed, you can correct your angle during the entry and exit of a turn. this doesn't work with FWDs however.
anyone please correct me if i'm wrong.

You're close... it does work on FWD cars... it's only used on downshifts to keep revs up for smooth engine braking and accel, the actual braking is actually very light... and the technique has nothing to do with drifting (although it's used by drifters)... and if you're driving normally on the street... chances are you're not going fast enough to utilize any advantage heel-toe braking/downshifting has to offer.

Thats a pretty good explanation, but the way I find it is that when your about to enter a corner do not use the brake pedals at all and do down shift to the next lowest gear that will make you car stay really close to redline, but not quite and at the same time gas it so that it does stay close to redline. 7A or 5S N/A engines, do not perform quite well in this catergory cause you will lose all HP figures near redline. Now, turbos are just way to fast and it becomes over kill, cause you won't complete that turn safely going 130 MPH.

I find that the 4age engine suited my taste the most around corners. The engine only has high revving power, so that when your near redline. You can still feel the grips on the tires, yet have enough power to go around corners at high speed. IN other words, its like the tires are not even gripping the road at all which allows easy turns. WHICH, is probbaly happenning. So far, if I redline around corners at a stop sign I can feel my back tires sliding around, which allows easy control over the car. On the old 7A engine, I felt a great power loss at high revs, cause the engine cuts off HP figures around 5.5K RPM I think, while the 4A seems like its just arrived at the steps to the High power band peak. Seriously tho, I think my engine could go easily to 8.2-8.4K RPM easily if rev, cut didn't kick in.

theres a japanese video on this....i downloaded it a few weeks back on bit torrent....i forget the name of it but i think i remember seaching "drifting" to find it...its like a 700mb file and its in japanese, but it shows visual explanations.

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If you're going 60-70mph and need to enter a corner at 20mph... you better hit the brakes. The idea of heel toe braking/downshifting is to keep the engine rpms high after the intial hard brake (for a corner entry), then after that you lighten off the brakes and heel-toe downshift.

Ok I did a report on this for one of my english classes lol, I actually called up the Bragg-Smith Advanced Driving School and talked to an instructor about it (was pretty cool, could hear the Corvette's roaring around in the background while I talked to him).

The explainantions on here are pretty good; you use your toe to lightly brake while you downshift (the car isn't in gear for this) and then before putting the car back in gear you blip the throttle with your heel and ease off the clutch so the engine very smoothly matches up to speed with the drivetrain as you enter the corner. As soon as the car is in gear you should not touch the brakes anymore, the speed should be maintained through the corner and then accelerate onto the straight. This is mostly a useful technique in more high speed track racing where the smoothness of the downshift is crucial in balancing the car's forward/backward motion. For example, if you dump the clutch and pitch the car forward, it will throw the weight distribution off in the corner and you will not be able to corner as fast. The idea is to keep the car level on a front to back basis. Also, to maintain the weight balance do not use the engine to slow down (i.e. shift to a gear lower and let the engine slow down the car).

As for drifting I don't think it's true heel-toe that they're using, but they have their foot like that to control the pedals.

Heel-toe isn't something you're going to use driving on the streets or in an AutoX (just aren't going fast enough that it would make a difference)...and unfortunately most of our Celicas won't be in any fast enough track applications to need this. But if you're ever road racing a Corvette or something you know how to now

Urm. I heel-toe all the time. I always have.

Matching revs on a downshift is just second nature, and prevents the car from becoming unbalanced under braking or cornering.

its an advanced technique not "essential" to be a very good autocrosser, but its a plus. most people (like me) do not downshift at all at most autocrosses, theres very few times its necessary because the time it takes to shift you can use to get back into the more adventagous powerband. However certain cars do require a downshift, keeping the car balanced is VERY VERY essential to being fast autocrossing. the whole meaning behind "slow is fast" is keeping the car balanced and on line. blu94gt is correct on how its used, i just wanted to add it "can" be used in autocrossing, but it depends on the car and driver combo wether its adventagous or not.

This post has been edited by boosted_K2: Jan 9, 2006 - 2:39 PM

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this is true, and some of it depends on the autox course setup, i personally have never used heel toe in autox but like you said, that's because in the time i spend shifting i would be in the powerband anyways