"RG" wrote in message
. ..



Watching that for the second time, I was a bit surprised by the shifting
characteristics of the SMG. I was expecting the shifts to be more quick,
more like what you might hear in an F1 car. Listening to the upshifts in
the M6, they sounded very much like a shift that would take place with a
conventional manual transmission, by a competent driver, but a driver that
was being fairly conservative and kind to the car.. Clean and precise,
but with a very noticeable drop in engine revs and corresponding drop in
power delivery during the shift, very much unlike the nearly instant
shifts without power delivery interruption that you would hear in an F1
car using what I understand to be the same basic technology. Perhaps due
to the particular selection of the many program options of the SMG that
the driver of the M6 chose for that run? I understand that BMW is bring a
conventional manual to the M5 and M6 soon, much to the delight of the
detractors of the SMG.


I'll have to go back and view it again, but I know the person driving the M6
and am sure he was using the "S6" mode. In S6 the shifts are almost violent
(you can see the camera jerk each time he shifts) and they occur extreemly
fast .... something like 50 milliseconds or something. You keep your right
foot to the floor and there is no drop in engine RPM until the next gear
engages. You might have been seeing the car hitting the rev limiter a
couple of times that will drop the RPM off slightly.
This occurs at 8,250 RPM and it is hard not to hit it in 2nd or 3rd because
the car is accellerating so fast.

Eisboch