Chaka

Japanese chix with bad teeth will be clawing after you.

BUFFALONOGAROpebFATS

loling at this ^^^^^^^^^^^^

BUFFALONOGAROpebFATS

what is an ideal line on pavement where the grip is mainly determined but the lateral forces you put on the car, is not the same in rally.
with rally cars, and mind you this differs for 2wd and awd platforms, your grip is already taxed. making the car go faster is a result of lots of factors, but traction is HUGE. you cant go fast forward unless your drive tires are going forward. hmm how is the best way to put this...?

lets say you are mid turn. and lets say it is a gravel/loose dirt road. if you take the turn like you would on pavement, your tires have to do 2 things. move you forward AND keep you in the turn. now take that thought and imagine the car has already been rotated so that the tires are just trying to pull you forward, no steering forces neccesary.....and and so now the sole purpose is to drive the car forward. kind of...but do you get it?


if you really want to get down to it a rally driver will tell you drifting is slower. what they consider drifting is anyways; to them, what looks like drifting to us is actually :setting up" the car, and there is a fine line between drifting and setting up.

disclaimer: i am not a rally driver, nor do i claim to be an expert driver of any sort, but, i crew for a rally team and i always ask about this stuff and what i said is what i gather from my driver.

S4lorn

overly tight car are both not ideal. Some like a car a little loose, I prefer loose over tight but as close to balanced as possible. Most street cars are specifically designed with an inherent push to keep people from over cooking them going in.

I was always taught that smooth is fast- some of your fastest lap times will feel like you are going slow from within the car. I used to see a lot of people new to racing, or competition driving, that thought the more they moved the wheel (*** happy) the faster they were going. Remember- when those tires are sliding sideways and spinning they are not propelling you forward. Plus it tears that $hit out of them.

I also think that drifting easily appeals to people who do not understand the nuances of driving a race car quickly. And I agree it is great for show- lots of smoke and noise- Yehaa!

Sorry for the long reply- I am not a pro but started racing Karts at about 9 and moved into more forms of racing later and have been through multiple driving schools. The more I learn- the more I realize I have to learn.

As always- this is just my opinion

Thanks-

Dan

Toddorbert

The original post made no mention of where the drifting was done.

I feel that the fastest way to take a turn can be measured using the bell curve. The very top of the bell curve is a perfect turn. In front of the curve, you have grip, but are not pushing hard enough. Behind the curve, you are pushing too hard, and are going to lose traction or drift. Keeping that in mind, I made mention of rally because they have managed to combine many techniques to reach the top of the bell curve.

Understandably, rally drivers would not consider what they do drifting, because drifting as it is known now has been defined by the japanese to mean sliding the car through a turn for as long as possible. That is not anything near what I meant to suggest. Rally car drives do "drift" their car, and by that I mean intentionally lose traction on all four tires, to adjust the cars position to come out of the turn.

I agree that drifting done during a race in the sense of drifting competition style is slower than always maintaining grip.

The only advantage I could see in drifting during a non rally race is if you're going into a corner to hard (right side of the bell curve) is to start a drift to try and scrub more speed than just braking, but at this point, it's probably better to just point the wheel straight, brake as hard as possible, and hope not to crash, so I guess that there is no advantage to on course drifting.