With the release of the third installment in the movie series "The Fast and Furious," this one is called "Tokyo Drift", drifting has finally made it to the big screen. Sure, Hollywood has known about donuts for decades, but this one's all about the sport of losing traction. In drifting, drivers force their car to slide sideways through a turn, and professional drifters can accomplish a true driving contradiction: They can control what happens when their tires no longer grip the road.
Drifting is really nothing new. If your car's rear end has ever swung around on a wet road, and you've struggled for 50 feet to get control, you've drifted. Even in car racing, drifting is pretty old hat. When race car drivers go around a turn at high speed, especially in the early days of racing when tires didn't have the grip they do now, the back end would sometimes swing out. The car would either spin out or the driver would recover from the drift and keep moving. Today, even with tires that could probably grip a vertical wall, the ability to drift without spinning out is an enviable skill in racing. The best drivers can control a drift so they can use it to their advantage -- a driver who can take a "non-ideal" path through a turn and brake late, causing the car to lose traction through the turn, has far more opportunities to pass than a driver who can't manage a drift. What's relatively new is the advent of drifting as a sport in its own right. "Drift racing" was born on the winding mountain roads of Japan in the 1990s, and it has been spreading to the United States and the United Kingdom for the last five years or so. A simple drift has a car moving sideways through a single turn, but it can get much more complex than that. At the pro level, drivers can drift through several opposing turns without their wheels ever gripping the road. That's where the winding mountain roads come in -- aside from the death factor, mountain roads are ideal drifting courses. The multiple, tight, S-type turn configurations allow drivers to display the most advanced drifting skills.
Drifting is really nothing new. If your car's rear end has ever swung around on a wet road, and you've struggled for 50 feet to get control, you've drifted. Even in car racing, drifting is pretty old hat. When race car drivers go around a turn at high speed, especially in the early days of racing when tires didn't have the grip they do now, the back end would sometimes swing out. The car would either spin out or the driver would recover from the drift and keep moving. Today, even with tires that could probably grip a vertical wall, the ability to drift without spinning out is an enviable skill in racing. The best drivers can control a drift so they can use it to their advantage -- a driver who can take a "non-ideal" path through a turn and brake late, causing the car to lose traction through the turn, has far more opportunities to pass than a driver who can't manage a drift. What's relatively new is the advent of drifting as a sport in its own right. "Drift racing" was born on the winding mountain roads of Japan in the 1990s, and it has been spreading to the United States and the United Kingdom for the last five years or so. A simple drift has a car moving sideways through a single turn, but it can get much more complex than that. At the pro level, drivers can drift through several opposing turns without their wheels ever gripping the road. That's where the winding mountain roads come in -- aside from the death factor, mountain roads are ideal drifting courses. The multiple, tight, S-type turn configurations allow drivers to display the most advanced drifting skills.
Clutching and Braking
There are two primary techniques that drivers use to initiate a drift: clutching and braking. Drifting almost always requires a rear-wheel-drive car; it's possible to drift using a front-wheel-drive car, but it's relatively rare. In a common clutch-initiated drift, as the driver gets near a turn he'll push in the clutch and drop to second gear. He'll then rev the engine up to about 4,500 rpm. When he releases the clutch, there's a huge surge in power to the wheels because the engine is spinning so quickly. The sudden power dump makes the back wheels spin so fast they lose traction, and the back end swings into the turn. In a basic braking technique, the driver pulls the emergency brake as he enters a turn, causing the back wheels to lock up and lose traction, initiating a drift. This type of brake-initiated drift is one of the only techniques you can use with a front-wheel-drive car. In a rear-wheel-drive car, there are at least a dozen possible drifting techniques, and pro drifters often use several in a single run.
Once a drift is initiated, the really hard part of the sport begins. Holding a drift instead of spinning out requires a lot of practice. Expert drifters use a combination of throttle (accelerator) control and steering motions to control a drift, not allowing the car to straighten out, regain traction or slow down through the turn. The best drifters can maintain a drift through several turns in a row. That's a pretty high level of drifting skill -- those drivers can expertly execute multiple techniques one after the other to maintain extended control of a drift. In the next section, we'll check out the physics of making a car drift and the many different drifting techniques you might see on the pro drifting circuit.
Play the video below to watch Subaru Impreza WRX STI Drifting Donuts (feel free to comment about this blog, thanks). Dear friend, while waiting for video loading/buffering, feel free to visit my other blogs. I hope you can bookmark this blog for future visit and become this blog follower's (i'm really appreciate it), there are much more good & great stuffs I will put in this blog then. Thanks in advance for visiting and bookmarking this blog.
Article source : howstuffworks.com.
Once a drift is initiated, the really hard part of the sport begins. Holding a drift instead of spinning out requires a lot of practice. Expert drifters use a combination of throttle (accelerator) control and steering motions to control a drift, not allowing the car to straighten out, regain traction or slow down through the turn. The best drifters can maintain a drift through several turns in a row. That's a pretty high level of drifting skill -- those drivers can expertly execute multiple techniques one after the other to maintain extended control of a drift. In the next section, we'll check out the physics of making a car drift and the many different drifting techniques you might see on the pro drifting circuit.
Play the video below to watch Subaru Impreza WRX STI Drifting Donuts (feel free to comment about this blog, thanks). Dear friend, while waiting for video loading/buffering, feel free to visit my other blogs. I hope you can bookmark this blog for future visit and become this blog follower's (i'm really appreciate it), there are much more good & great stuffs I will put in this blog then. Thanks in advance for visiting and bookmarking this blog.
Article source : howstuffworks.com.
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