[CivicSiRacer]

Originally Posted by SilverY2KCivic

Yes an no. Doing it all the time is dumb. In my car I do it on occasion just so the tranny will downshift sooner if I'm going to do an accelerating pass like on the freeway if I'm stuck behind a semi and I want to get in with faster flow of traffic. I'll only do a D4 to D3 shift, and when I'm done passing, I'll put it back in D4. The manual for my car actually says to do that for a quicker downshift for passing purposes. Otherwise mashing the gas for a downshift can make it lag since it has to be "in the right range" to do it on it's own.

When I auto-X, I'll start out in D3 and when the tranny shifts from 1st to 2nd, I'll put the shifter into "2" and leave it there, and i'll keep me in the optimum power band for the duration of the course, otherwise putting it in any "D" gear will make the tranny shift around too much, thus hurting my times. "2" allows the tranny to stay locked in 2nd gear and won't let it shift up or down.

Ah I remember autocrossing my automatic 1993 Civic Ex. What a pain. At some courses the car would downshift to 1st and totally mess up the balance of the car causing the car to understeer. Hated that