Double clutching

[san rensho]

I have an alternate point of view. I am fairly proficient at double clutch downshifting, having owned several Italian cars that have synchros that seem to fail a couple of weeks after you drive the car out of the show room.

That being said, if you rev match properly, you really don't need to double clutch. If you make sure that you are blipping the throttle as you are shifting through neutral on the downshift, it has almost the same effect as double clutching. Even though you have your foot on the clutch, there is still some drag in the clutch which will transfer some of the engine power to the input shaft and spin it up so that it more closely matches the speed of the output shaft in the transmission. If you put it in the lower gear first, then blip the throttle, then of course there is no advantage and you are putting the most wear on the synchros.

But these cars have fairly robust synchro's, so usually its not an issue. I found out mine will downshift from 2nd at 6500 rpm very easily into first on the track when I missed an upshift to 3rd. Luckily I was was able to catch the "money shift" and get the clutch back in without even an over-rev in the first zone.