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If you have ever ridden a motorcycle, you know that the manual
transmission in a motorcycle is nothing like a manual
transmission in a car. On a motorcycle, you shift gears by
clicking a lever up or down with your toe. It is a much faster
way to shift. This type of transmission is called a sequential
gearbox or a sequential manual transmission. It turns out that
most race cars use sequential gearboxes as well. A sequential
gearbox gives the driver several important advantages that are
very useful in a race car. With the sequential gearbox there is
still a set of gear selector forks that move collars that engage
gears. The only difference is the way the control rods are
manipulated. The "H" pattern is eliminated and replaced with a
different motion. In a race car, the motion of the shift lever
is either "push forward" to up-shift or "pull backward" to
downshift. If you are in a gear and you want to go to a higher
gear (e.g. from 2nd to 3rd), you push the shift lever forward.
To go from 3rd to 4th, you push the lever forward again. To go
from 4th to 5th, you press it forward again. It is the same
motion every time. To drop back down a gear, say from 5th to
4th, you pull the lever backward. In European mass-produced
automobiles, the shift lever moves forward and backward to shift
into higher and lower gears, respectively. In Formula One cars,
there are actually two paddles on the sides of the steering
wheel, instead of a shift lever. The left paddle up-shifts,
while the right paddle downshifts. |
