hmm considering your gear gating, and based on this:
http://www.perodua.com.my/ourcars/viva-elite/specifications4 speed... fark i jelly LOL
btw on viva paper spec, compared to my dyno charts, you got 30 more torque than my car despite vastly lower horsepower and displacement

damn light car lol
i think right, if you pull to 2, you'll be able to overcome my woes/issues and very possibly be faster than my car

if 3, it's up to the gearbox to switch between 2/3 and more often than not the TC gb's are retarded

often times my gearbox shifted mid corner, making a decently ran racing line to become shit as my balance was thrown out mid cornering as there is "rev matching" (ROFL when another vet told me that

) for our gb in the sense that if your rpm is over a certain limit (eg: 5k rpm) it will not downshift to safeguard the engine/gearbox. and thing is you can't brake too much/more than you have to just to lower the rpm as you'll effectively lower your speed and ultimately your lap times.
the idea of generally keeping at gear 1 is to also eliminate the gb acting out on me. and as you mentioned me braking early, i would say yes ESPECIALLY on the long stretch before the obstacle and the first corner after starting line as those are the times i go up to 2nd gear, and i brake early is not to reduce my speed, it's to reduce my rpm (very slight trail braking to impose some load to the engine to lower the rpm faster) so i can down shift quicker into 1 and not have it mid shifting during a corner/passing the obstacle which STILL HAPPENED anyways despite my efforts about 60-70% of the time.
from the paper specs la, the viva is almost in every way superior than the iswara on that small track. it has a lot of potential so long you put the effort to it.
and hey, that other 4 speed TC toyota vios got #1 in our category so... lol (lol fiesta DCT

)
god car with trial and proven gearbox owning high tech ford fiestas
daresBase on your several posts of wall-of-text today, I can already predict whats the dominant topic tonite
The fact that the Powershift is FULLY AUTOMATIC does not help (no manual shifting whatsoever
). Summore in a small track with short straights, the DCT is practically useless.
The facelift Fiesta 1.5l with Selectshift (aka manual mode) should fare better.