It's not needed at all, just driver preference. Some drivers (and especially not a professional paid driver in a factory car) will 'bump' the clutch just to assist on downshifts. It reduces wear to the gearbox and also can assist in preventing the rear axle locking under heavy braking. Both good when cars are privately-owned and you're not in a full-on race. Otherwise, the car is designed to be used with left-foot braking and no clutch required.
@@askidja Sequential transmissions, even if they have paddle shifters, still use a clutch to get moving. After that, the clutch is more or less ignored.
@@OsellaSquadraCorse you know, I've always wondered about the clutch action on downshifts with a sequential gearbox, and now I know why. Thanks for this!
This particular Ferrari 550 GTS was driven by Alain Menu, Peter Kox and Tomas Enge in 2004 and with one hour to go of the endurance classic Alain Menu lost the lead with a punctured tyre.
it's a dogbox sequential gearbox, you don't need to use the clutch for upshifts, for downshifts you either need the clutch, or to match the rpm of the engine to the lower gear with a throttle blip (usually called heel and toe), some do both, but since here he downshifts so late in the braking, only the clutch is needed, since the rpm will stay low anyway, he could blip the throttle to save some of the clutch from the wear, but it's not mandatory. TL:DR He downshifts with the clutch to save it from the wear, he doesn't use the clutch on upshifts cause on that transmission is simply not needed Back in the GT1 days, when the cars where pushed to the absolute limit, downshifting without throttle blipping could cause the car to lock the rear tyres, or in extreme cases it would have destroyed the transmission alltogether, it is possible that nowadays these cars have been equipped with an electronic kicker to avoid the need of throttle blipping, or they don't use it for the reason above
