Well, I thought I knew which I was going to vite for prior to reading through this great thread; however, I realized where I stand on this matter once I was educated on what the Shrifter Kit is. I am new to the forum and do not have true race experience, but I will add my 2 cents and experiences.
Lets start with my daily driver; 2005.5 Audi A4 Quattro with the 2.0T. The tranny is a six-speed Tiptronic. The tranny is an automatic which can be manually shifted by moving the shifter to the right from the Drive position. The manumatic tranny makes cornering very simple. Begin braking, manually downshift to the gear you want for coming out of the turn, and continue on by putting the tranny back in Drive for the small stuff. I personally really like the manually shifted automatic.
I took a defensive driving course about a year and a half ago while in a DoD training course. This course was taught by a contracted group of racing instructors (I'm not sure exactly what company they work for). I thought I knew about driving until we hit the road course... For everyday life with driving in the rain and whatnot ABS is awesome, but it does not come close to holding it's own with Thresh hold braking a non-ABS car. Maybe I'm just not skilled enough with a manual tranny, but I found it much easier to make significantly better lap times with the Auto over the Manual on the courses with tons of turns. (Plus it was much easier to control the car going through the turns while being able to maintain both hands on the wheel.) And the auto we were driving wasn't even a Manumatic.
Well, like I said, I am by know means an expert on this situation; just two pennies from a newbie. I know I would have never picked the automatic over the manual until I drove a Manumatic.
|