RH1300S wrote:Since when did Colin Chapman do anything to appease a driver's ego? The way I read that was he saw an area of performance benefit and given the technology he was working with came up with what could have been a practical solution. The fact that it vanished pretty soon tells me that for whatever reason the cars did not go any faster (or failed to do so reliably) - so he went back to what worked well enough.
There isn't a huge difference in flicking a bike gear-lever with your toe and flicking a paddle with your fingers - I don't see where ego comes into that one. In fact in an attempt to keep this slightly on-topic, if adding paddles was mainly driven by aero packaging requirements, then it made sense to use a drivers fingers as his feet were already fairly busy - on a motorbike the toe is less busy than the fingers so it makes some sense to keep it working the gears (direct mechanical linkage or not).
As for Clarkson - he is perfectly able to admit when a paddle type gearchange works well. As much as anything he was pointing out that when not executed well such a thing is not much more use than a toy/gimmick for a road based car. For road cars we can judge things differently to competition cars so he is quite right to question the point where a paddle gearchange becomes viable or not. No doubt we will all have paddle/button changes in the not too distant future - but not yet. In fact we will have paddles with layshaft gearboxes - despite the fact that these things might absorb a few percent more power, the manufacturers know how to build them reliably and fairly cheaply - and I bet that bigger efficiency gains will come from addressing road car aero and weight before ekeing out a few percent in the drivetrain.
Heading OT again............soz
Flicking a foot lever with your toe, forces the brake levers to be placed, one on the foot and the other on a hand lever. The need for a conventional clutch forces the need for yet another lever on the handle bars.
With a proper push button gearbox, both front and rear brakes can be on the foot pedals. There would be no need at all for hand levers and there would be an upshift button on the left thumb and a down shift button on the right thumb.
Proper 21st century ergonomic controls that we had available in 1976.
Good for at least 3 seconds a lap and better reliability.
Shame about macho bikers and the Japanese.
No need at all for paddle shift on road cars, buttons do the job fine, on full auto, or semi auto, no matter what the geartrain.
The paddles are just a marketing gimmick for the macho.
Of course the regulations and the computer game market has filled up the F1 steering wheel with buttons already, so there is no room left for gearshift buttons. In any case most drivers are to thick to be delicate enough just to use a button, they have to milk a cow so to speak just for the 'feel'.
) I think that Chapman's car had a normal gearbox, but the clutch was actuated by moving the gear lever.
