Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Technology marches on. This is why really, really fast cars are auto's these days.
Except the 599XX isn't an automatic. It is an automated manual. The transmission still has a clutch and still has meshed cogs. Electro-mechanical actuators replace the driver's hands and feet.
I have to ask though, what is the benefit for circuit racing? Quicker shifts lead to lower lap times? In all but the highest echelons of GT racing, that's very doubtful. The sequential gearboxes that preceeded the automated manual are fast, cheap, simple, and reliable.
However, not everybody can step into a sequential gearbox car and knock off lighting quick upshifts and rev-matched downshifts and it would be utterly dreadful on a road going car. Ah-ha! We the real reason why manufacturers like Ferrari went to the automated manual (and later dual-clutch). The guy who spends $400,000 on a 599 shouldn't need a decade of competition experience to effectivly shift the transmission of his new car. Gosh, wouldn't that shatter some rich guy's ego?
A proper modern gearbox does exactly what an old, antique, fully dogged sequential gearbox has done for the past 50 years. Sure, it does it in .0001 second instead of .1 second, but, underneath it all, the doctor who can afford a 599 doesn't have to be Aryton Senna to drive it.
Tommy Milner working his C6.R. This is not an electronic gearbox. It is a regular mechanical sequential gearbox. Isn't it just so slow on the gear changes?!?!
Yes I know what kind of gear box the 599 has, its more closely related to a manual.
But it lacks a clutch pedal and a stick, you just get paddles, so it has about as much driver involvement as a regular put it in D and punch it auto.
The die hard manual guys should hate it since it lacks a clutch pedal.