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Can you drive a manual transmission?
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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honestly i don't understand what makes them better for racing. can the auto not be tuned differently to prioritize speed and acceleration over fuel efficiency?
Automatic gearboxes can’t predict the road ahead, they can only react to the current RPM and speed.
Edit: just realised this posted on a completely different comment to the one I was replying to
It's not just about speed and acceleration. It's also about control. Racing drivers face an infinite number of different conditions out on the track and it would be impossible to tune the transmission in such a way that it does exactly what the driver wants 100% of the time. And it really has to be perfect. 99.9% isn't good enough because the other 0.1% can wreck the car if it does something unexpected while driving at the limit.
Modern, high end race cars are automatics. Low end or lighter cars will be manual.
No, they're sequential manuals*. Unless you're talking about drag racing, where automatics are common.
*Edit: Or they can also be sequential semi-automatics if you want to be extra pedantic. But personally I'd classify a transmission based on whether the driver has to select the desired gear, or if the computer selects the appropriate gear without driver input, because that's the thing that matters in the end.
Okay that makes some sense to me.
Follow-up question: why don't modern commuter cars use the paddle shifters? Why keep the cumbersome clutch-and-stick system?
It's cheap and reliable.