Quote:
Originally Posted by Porsche Chick
Hey, don't Formula 1 cars use a transmission very similar to PDK?
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F1 cars are also automatic. That's why the races have become stunningly boring since the golden years of Senna/Prost/Piquet/Mansell when there was an actual gear lever. Do a Google search of Senna doing a lap around Monaco with one hand on the steering wheel at insane speeds. Getting past backmarkers without so much as a twitch or loss a sliver of a second on his pole time. Insane skill.
Today it's another story. 19 year olds like Vettel with barely any experience are winning races. By 21 they are World Champions. I remember an interview with Williams BMW F1 technical director Patrick Head where he stated that then driver Ralf Schumacher did none of his shifting (because of the paddles), fully automatic F1 car, where the other driver Juan Pablo Montoya did his own downshifts. Montoya was generally quicker, had at least 1 podium finish for every three races he started, stealing nearly 8 pole positions in a single season from Michael Schumacher in the faster Ferrari. But now the story is probably different since the software has improved so much that the driver is always slower than the computer. Even as recently as the first PDK Cayman there was noticeable lag in shfits that's entirely gone now.