Heel-and-Toe

What is heel-and-toe?

Heel-and-toe is an advanced driving technique for cars with a manual gearbox. You brake with the ball of your right foot (the “toe”), declutch with your left and at the same time blip the throttle with your heel or the right edge of your foot – the throttle blip. The result: the gear change matches engine speed and the car stays settled.

Why it matters

Without a blip, the engine drags on the driveline as the clutch comes up, because engine speed is lower than the new gear demands. That unsettles the rear axle – particularly dangerous mid-corner. Heel-and-toe solves it: brake, declutch, downshift, blip, release the clutch – all at once, all smoothly.

How to learn it

Heel-and-toe takes practice. Start slowly on a straight road and at low revs. Foot position is everything – the brake pedal has to travel far enough and the throttle has to sit close enough. Some shoes help far more than others. On circuit the coordination becomes second nature after weeks or months.

Practise heel-and-toe with ESC

On ESC track days with manual Porsche models, our coaches show you how heel-and-toe works. In the PDK cars in our fleet, the gearbox does the blipping for you. Learn the classic technique.