What
Is Drifting? (no,
its not a form of vagrancy)
Basically, drifting is the art controlling your car as the
rear slides around a corner. It doesn't sound very hard does
it? Sounds a lot like power sliding your skateboard, ent?
Well it isn't. It's much more complicated. Instead of a drifter
causing a drift into one corner and then countering to straighten
out, he will instead over-counter so his car goes into another
drift around another corner. That is the reason many drifters
do it in the mountains, because there are many sharp turns
strung together. So in essence a good drifter has the ability
to take five or six opposing turns without having traction
at any point in time.
How
is it Done? Best attempted on the Lady Young Road only (Jus
kiddin)
There
are two ways to initiate a drift. The first is the gear down/clutch
technique. When approaching a bend the driver will depress
the clutch, gear-down into second gear, and rev the engine
up to around 4000-5000 rpm. (it all depends all the type of
car being used) Then slightly turn away from the bend and
then cut back towards it hard while at the same time releasing
the clutch and causing the rear wheels to spin. The drifter
has a loss of traction and is beginning to slide around the
curve. This is the hard part. You have to hold the drift until
the next bent. To achieve this you must keep your foot on
the accelerator while at the same time controlling your car
with the steering wheel so you don't spin out. It's not as
easy as it sounds. Then as the drifter reaches the end of
the bend and approaches the next bend which is in the opposite
direction he must cut the wheel in that direction and in some
cases, if the previous drift was to slow and they start to
regain traction, he must pop the clutch again to get the wheels
spinning. And that is how you drift a rear wheel drive car.
The second technique is used by a few drifters in rear wheel
drives, but it is the only way you can really drift a front
wheel drive. You have to use the hand brake. A front wheel
drive car can not swing it's tail out because the tires are
being driven in the front rather the rear. So when approaching
a bend you pull-up the hand brake to cause traction loss.
The rest is quite the same except that it's much harder to
take more than one corner with a front wheel drive car. Don't
try this at home
Also
check out our Glossary of Terms
or refer to De Forum for interactive
help from people in the know.
Questions
or comments? let us know - email us at info@trinituner.com
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