[Lil' Lavery]

In my experience, I've found very little absolute need for two speed gearboxes. In the seasons I've been on teams that have had them, the driver very seldom felt the need to shift gears. Based on that, I've largely pushed for my teams to stick with single speed transmissions to save money, time, weight, and complexity. That being said, that is based on my experience, and I know there are others who have very different perspectives on this issue. I have never had the chance to try out a dual speed transmission with any sort of automatic shifting code, nor do my teams get the countless hours of driver practice some top tier teams do. Either of those may lead towards more effective uses of a shifting transmission.


The one thing I will mention is that shifting transmissions essentially mean you're also using pneumatics. While it's possible to servo or motor-shift, it's incredibly rare and generally has worse performance. I know 67 has some experience in shifting without pneumatics (as they avoided pneumatics entirely for a long time), but even they changed towards using pneumatics to shift.