Homework from the SCCA Pro Racer coach I had in the car last week - learn to properly heel & toe as the current pedal dance is impeding progress. I managed to do a passable job driving the ND but I currently look like someone who's never driven a car with a manual transmission when I try it in the RX8.
The main issue seems to be that the brakes grab pretty hard even on light application, so I have a hard time getting the movement right without standing the car up on its bumper.
Any tips/tricks/ideas? "Minor" blips - revs up to about 2500-3000 go OK, if I have to blip the throttle harder I also inadvertently brake harder.
Robbie
SuperDork
6/23/16 11:19 a.m.
Try blip-ing the throttle as you come to a complete stop at a stop sign or red light. When the car is going under 5 or 10mph or so you will really feel any change in brake force. Also, you can slow the movement down such that you brake with you big toe, and across a span of 5-10 seconds you can slowly roll the right side of your foot onto the gas, rev a little, rev more, rev most, then back off.
This will help you learn the feel, and how to keep brake pressure even when the right side of your foot is moving, but keep in mind that on track at much higher brake pressures, the relationship of brake pedal to gas will be different.
Also, people WILL look at you funny while you are revving your engine at a stop light. oh well.
Get your braking initiated before you blip. And like Robbie said, you won't be worried about light application on the track. I've never noticed that the ND was particularly difficult to heel-toe, but ours only had stock brakes for about 48 hours 
Of course, most of those 48 hours were on the track...
The Fiesta is like that too. It took some getting used to, but putting your foot part way on the brake pedal and rotating your ankle so you hit the gas with the side of your foot works pretty well. I had to learn to rotate more than in the Sentra because the brake pedal is higher.
It's much, much easier at race speed with the resulting higher brake application force.
Practice practice practice. Doesnt hurt to do it in traffic just make sure no ones behind you at first
Keith Tanner wrote:
This might help as well 
Extended gas pedal for ND Miata
He said he could do it in the ND, but it was his RX8 giving him problems.
That's how I read his post anyway.
Well I think the big answer is the point about really needing the heal toe during hard braking. I wouldn't be surprised if the RX-8 heel toe felt perfect during a track autocross session.
Never driven a RX-8 but in my Merkur XR4Ti I had to Toe-Heel instead of Heel-toe. Reversed my foot so that the heel was on the brakes and the toe on the throttle pedal.
z31maniac wrote:
Keith Tanner wrote:
This might help as well
Extended gas pedal for ND Miata
He said he could do it in the ND, but it was his RX8 giving him problems.
That's how I read his post anyway.
We have one for the NC as well, which will probably fit the RX8
+1 on all the comments about it being easier when braking harder, I couldn't do it worth squat on the street but I figured it out during hard braking on the track and worked backward from there.
You can adjust that brake and gas pedal to get the right height. I did this on my 240sx and it was magic. Both pedals, depressed as far as the brakes needed to be, and the rpms would rise toward redline.
Are they only grabby when cold? Get the brakes HOT first.
Lots of good info here.
Let me ask: Are we talking about double-clutching, or has that gone the way of all old things? I worked hard as a youngster to learn to double-clutch but I think it's now a road-only affectation. Fun when you get it right, and why not learn it, but limited usefulness.
I never shift my Cobalt on a track day at Hallett, just run it in 3rd, which frees me to think about the driving, but in a race, when you need to downshift how is it done?
Finish braking, turn in, roll onto the gas, grab lower gear, engine revs are matched. Is that what they teach in racing schools these days? Because, I got to confess, braking really hard and heel-toeing down through the gears while double-clutching, is beyond my capabilities.
Knurled wrote:
Are they only grabby when cold? Get the brakes HOT first.
No, not only when they are cold, the pads have a lot of initial bite at any time. They're more like nothing-nothing-nothing-why is there a pickup truck in my trunk? when you slowly depress the brake pedal. Great pads otherwise.
In reply to Keith Tanner:
Thanks for the links, but it's not an issue with the size of the pedal. As z31maniac mentioned, it's not really an issue in the ND with its stock brakes, and the pedal spacing and position suits me very well in the RX8.
The main issue really is that the brakes go into brick wall mode on rather light pedal pressure and Clumsy here has trouble getting the brake pressure right. Although I do seem to get better at it as I keep practising.
In reply to chuckles:
I'm just talking about rev-matched single clutched downshifts so I don't end up upsetting the car with additional engine braking in corners. A bunch of the tracks out here (Laguna Seca, for example) really are easier to navigate with some additional trail braking and later overall braking than you can achieve if you have finish your braking before turning in.
On my ZX2SR I bent the gas pedal arm to move the pedal closer to the brake pedal. Easy to roll my ankle/foot to hit the gas pedal.
I found that braking hard to near corner entry speed, as I started to trail brake I would then down shift.
Worked for me.
BoxheadTim wrote:
In reply to Keith Tanner:
Thanks for the links, but it's not an issue with the size of the pedal. As z31maniac mentioned, it's not really an issue in the ND with its stock brakes, and the pedal spacing and position suits me very well in the RX8.
The main issue really is that the brakes go into brick wall mode on rather light pedal pressure and Clumsy here has trouble getting the brake pressure right. Although I do seem to get better at it as I keep practising.
yeah, that was mostly tongue in cheek - my first post was a little more intended to help.
Overboosted brakes feel powerful on a test drive, but they're a pain in the butt. My Golf was the same way, hard to left foot brake because of the amount of assist. A set of less aggressive pads or a different booster might help, or just more practice.
I rev-match every downshift on the street and the track, and double-clutch fairly often even on track. One of my track cars had a dodgy 2nd gear synchro so I got in the habit - once you get used to it, it's actually kind of difficult to go back. Even the 2010 Dodge truck appreciates a double clutch downshift with the mass of the transmission internals.
You will almost assuredly get a feel for it pretty fast, since it's just a different brake thing and you already know the moves.
What I was taught is this: Until you get it down to muscle memory, get the braking and shifting done a little earlier than you regularly would.
That frees up my brain to get back to judging the turn-in. I lose less lap time that way than I do if I'm missing the apex because I'm focused on getting the shift done, or overbrakeing because I'm focused on judging the turn-in and I don't have enough brain left to manage the shift.
I'm pretty sure your brain will move the shift to muscle memory in just a couple track days. It's always like that for me when I change track cars.
Been practising a lot over the last few weeks. I still look incompetent when doing it in the RX8 on the street with its grabby brakes (ND is nice and smooth).
Today it was the first time I used H&T on the track in anger and boy does it make a big difference. Just so much smoother and turn two at MRLS suddenly isn't a major panic point for me anymore because I don't have to tap dance across the pedals like Fred Astaire on LSD.
It also seems to have helped with consistency. I've always had issues with running consistent lap times - +/- 2s was something I'd consider good - but today I ran multiple consecutive laps within a couple of hundred milliseconds of each other. For me that's huge.
All that said, turn 11 at MRLS is not a good place to practise your H&T if it, err, needs more practice. Fortunately I mostly created a big dust cloud and got some well deserved sarcasm for my troubles 
.
