I grew up racing with downtube friction and later indexing, and am absolutely comfortable with it. More recently, I used brifters for several years, and while I would not bother racing without them, for everything else the downtube stuff works brilliantly. Like I said, I still ride with the same people I always did, and have no more or less trouble keeping up with them than I would with with brifters. IOW, if I get dropped it's not because I can't shift with my brake levers.