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I drive a stock 350z and have been learning to drift it over the past few months. I wrote this for anyone who can relate to my experiences. I hate understeer, and here is what I did about it.
You can only ask a car do so much(the cars limits), if you give 80% steer, you can only give 20% gas, and vice versa. So what happens over 100%? This all depends on how your car performs and what takes you over the edge. If you brake 90% you can only turn 10%, if you brake too much(lockup) some cars can oversteer(mainly older cars, better brakes in back or no abs) not mine however. If you give 20% steer and 100% gas you will most likely break the back loose. My car gets a lot of understeer, and that is a drifters nightmare. My theory(not that you care) on cars having so much understeer in this day and age, is the fact that it is much easier to control than oversteer. To get rid of this nightmare, I had to concentrate a little. The most common things I found to give my car understeer was turning to much(ex: 60%steer/60%gas) and jumping on the gas too quickly. Try turn to the opposite direction of the corner and turning in early enough to hit the apex, this helps throw the weight of your car around a bit. This I believe is called feint motion, I found it easy to start with because without side brakeing or clutch kicks, you have a smooth throttle transition into your drift. When I used to turn in without a clutch kick or feint motion, my front tires would loose grip(turning too much). Now I can turn in a little better and some solid drifts are coming together after 4 events. At my first event an intstructor explained this percentage thing to me and it really helped me out, so I hope it can help you as well. Make your actions smooth, I know the pro's move their hands very fast but were not there yet.
P.S. don't be afraid to look stupid out there, I sure did and had a blast doing it
You can only ask a car do so much(the cars limits), if you give 80% steer, you can only give 20% gas, and vice versa. So what happens over 100%? This all depends on how your car performs and what takes you over the edge. If you brake 90% you can only turn 10%, if you brake too much(lockup) some cars can oversteer(mainly older cars, better brakes in back or no abs) not mine however. If you give 20% steer and 100% gas you will most likely break the back loose. My car gets a lot of understeer, and that is a drifters nightmare. My theory(not that you care) on cars having so much understeer in this day and age, is the fact that it is much easier to control than oversteer. To get rid of this nightmare, I had to concentrate a little. The most common things I found to give my car understeer was turning to much(ex: 60%steer/60%gas) and jumping on the gas too quickly. Try turn to the opposite direction of the corner and turning in early enough to hit the apex, this helps throw the weight of your car around a bit. This I believe is called feint motion, I found it easy to start with because without side brakeing or clutch kicks, you have a smooth throttle transition into your drift. When I used to turn in without a clutch kick or feint motion, my front tires would loose grip(turning too much). Now I can turn in a little better and some solid drifts are coming together after 4 events. At my first event an intstructor explained this percentage thing to me and it really helped me out, so I hope it can help you as well. Make your actions smooth, I know the pro's move their hands very fast but were not there yet.
P.S. don't be afraid to look stupid out there, I sure did and had a blast doing it
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