I’m not a professional driver, despite what the voices in my head have to say on the subject, but I do know how to run a manual transmission. Most of the lessons I’ve learned when it comes to doing it yourself involved dirt bikes, so if anything they reinforced what NOT to do when selecting gears the old fashioned way. One of my more memorable lessons had to be downshifting too swiftly…coming down a rutted washboard of a hill, I shifted my Yamaha YZ80 into second and hoped engine braking would save my hind end. Instead, I had gone one step too low, the rear tire broke traction and after a couple seconds of full-fledged fight, physics won and I went tumbling down a hill with a dirt bike on it’s side in hot pursuit.
Now, take a look at the wicked little Honda Civics that BigKleib34 caught on film. A lot of jokes involving Hondas and a drag strip involve missed shifts. We promise, they didn’t miss the shifts…at least, not in the classical sense. What they did do was miss the gear they chose and instead, performed a flat-footed downshift unintentionally. In a rear-driver, that would be a bunny-hopping rear end. In a front-wheel-drive drag car, that’s an instant “endo”, with the back end going skyward, even if for just a moment. We have no doubt that the driver’s heart rate went up exponentially, but imagine what the crew chief was doing when they heard that noise come from the strip. There’s gonna be some words in the pits later…
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