question on approach speeds for corners

[jasonaries]

Does drifting allow for a faster approach to a corner?

Here's my guess on this: Drifting through a corner uses more energy than gripping through a corner. So, why can't I approach the corner faster than a grip driver, count on the energy loss to keep me from slamming into the outer guard rail, exit at a slower speed than the grip driver and thus hit the gas sooner than the grip driver. From where I'm at, I'd have to guess that the higher approach speed and quicker foot on the throttle exit would make up or sometimes better a grip run. So, where's my mistake(s) here? I figure it's something simple that I've overlooked.

[GRiDRaceTech]

You've overlooked exit speed.

[Drift For Food]

Grip is faster, even on entrance speed. Yes, drifting can bleed off lots of speed. However, sliding wheels don't have as high of frictions as a rolling tire(grip) During grip driving, you can come in faster, brake faster, turn, and come out of the corner faster. Drifting can't be as fast as grip...for any part. It's not a hate thing or anything bias. It's the simple laws of physics. The coefficient of friction of a rolling tire is higher than a sliding tire. That means a rolling tire has more traction. This means you can brake faster, corner faster, and accelerate faster.

You're looking at drifting versus grip in the wrong way. Don't think of energy required to actually get the car sliding. It can take very little, even a very small change in technique can change grip into drift. A quick twitch of the steering wheel can get a car sliding, as can too much brake into a corner or too much steering, even too much throttle. The key lies in the fact that when you transition to sliding, you lose traction.

From your other posts, I get the sense you are trying to find a reason to drift. You're trying to see if it can help you get faster or something. I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get out of this, but in my mind, drifting is for fun and to teach control beyond the limits of traction. It's not about speed or lap times. However, drifting can teach you a lot about car control. What you learn can transition back to grip and improve your grip technique. You'll learn where the fine line between grip and drift is. You'll learn the fine art of weight shifting and front/rear grip balance. You'll also be much safer if you ever do get the rear end loose when pushing hard. You'll actually know how to control it. Me being a Minnesota boy, I get to drive on this slippery stuff called ice in the winters. One thing I take out of drifting is the ability to control the car during periods of little traction. It's nice to be able to control a car when the rear end's swinging all over the place, lol. It's nice to be able to control a car when the slant of the road has a greater impact on where the car goes than does where your wheel is pointing, haha, fun times...

[jasonaries]

2 avenues open....

Yeah, I am sorta looking for the reasons to drift. I need a little motivation beyond just being cool. I'd prefer for drifting to fit naturally into my driving personality. So, I'm seeking out a wide set of info an opinions on drifting to see how me and drifting will fit together. That might be simple: for fun - as in a way to express myself, like I do with my martial arts, or it may be complex: for car control, etc.

Right now, we know that I like the shift lock method. I, too, am from the snowbelt: Buffalo, NY and currently live in Rochester, NY - so I've racked up some time sliding on the ice. There's no question that drifting skills will transfer to winter driving. Hopefully, I WILL NOT be driving my gold car on the salty roads for a second winter.

I see two avenues open for drifting.

#1 - I really want to investigate for myself, just exactly how drifting affects cornering speed and lap times on a technical track. I can't help it. Curiosity is just overtaking me.

#2 - I read a story on the web called "Death of a Family Member" about a guy who crashed and totalled his gray eight-six in the rain. That was back in 96, and I've never forgotten it. To this day, when it rains, I slow down. I wouldn't mind having wet drifting skills in my pocket for a rainy day when I might need them to save my car...

[mranlet]

You're looking into it too much...

Drifting is just the ultimate in car control - it's cool, fun and fast, but not practical for cutting good times.

-MR

[spccowboyMATT]

mr is totally right, drifting is about getting comfortable with your car and having fun with it. it doesnt get more basic then that.

[Drift For Food]

Funny, I live just north of Rochester, Rochester Minnesota that is, lol. Maybe one day I'll visit the other Rochester

Ok, I think I can make some sense of this by tying it to martial arts. For example, martial arts teaches you aspects about body and mind: control, focus, dicipline, mind over matter, things like this. You learn to wield your body in new ways, push it further, faster. This is kind of like what drifting does. One specific example from martial arts is body control in the air. Twisting and manipulating our body in the air is something we're not normally used to. It's awkward, and we tend not to be able to control what we're doing. This is like someone who hasn't drifted, someone who has never experienced control beyond the normal limits of grip. For example, any type of jumping and spinning kick is strange at first. We don't realize we need to control the weight balance of our bodies to offset the extended leg. It time, you learn to adjust your body to maintain a center balance despite the mass of the leg out from our body. As well, you learn about momentum, momentum needed to rotate the body in the air. You'll provide an initial body twist to gain momentum before you leap and kick. You may even raise the non-kicking leg, knee up, not extended, to hold more momentum. You learn techniques to manipulate what your body does in the air. You twist and balance yourself to control the position and angle of the kicking leg, so you can come across the target properly and with force. These methods of control are like the techniques of drifting. It's all physics. When applied, drifting techniques allow you to control and manipulate the direction and speed of the car during times that a normal person wouldn't be able to, during times of loss of traction.

I come across drifting the same way as martial arts. It's a way of improving one's abilities beyond the point they are at now. Martial arts is manipulation of the body, drifting is manipulation of the car. Both are cool to do and fun to watch, lol. They both also take a lot of practice and focus to get good.

[AlexPfeiffer]

I belive that sliding the car into corners does give you better lap times and learning to drift will help you be a better road racer.

Tires actually make the most traction when they have a small amount of slip, meaning when they are sliding at about 10%, given different types of tires will be different. Say slicks will give the most at less % and street tires at a higher %.

Now you dont want to really toss the car out and get tons of angle like the drifting we talk about on here but you do want to get a good 4 wheel slide going into corners on the race track. A general rule of thumb when you are racing is, when your in the corner and you are able to get the car to turn more than what you need to stay on the track at the exit, your not going fast enough.
A couple of my rules are if you dont hear all the tires squealing from the time you turn in untill you reach full throtle, your not going fast enough. If at all you can steer the car with the wheel, your not going fast enough into the corner.
The car should be sliding going to the apex (at the 10% the tires like) but you want the car to grip up by the time you need to be gaining speed inorder to get a good exit speed.

[SilverGhost]

Re: 2 avenues open....

Originally posted by jasonaries
Yeah, I am sorta looking for the reasons to drift. I need a little motivation beyond just being cool. I'd prefer for drifting to fit naturally into my driving personality. So, I'm seeking out a wide set of info an opinions on drifting to see how me and drifting will fit together. That might be simple: for fun - as in a way to express myself, like I do with my martial arts, or it may be complex: for car control, etc.

Right now, we know that I like the shift lock method. I, too, am from the snowbelt: Buffalo, NY and currently live in Rochester, NY - so I've racked up some time sliding on the ice. There's no question that drifting skills will transfer to winter driving. Hopefully, I WILL NOT be driving my gold car on the salty roads for a second winter.

I see two avenues open for drifting.

#1 - I really want to investigate for myself, just exactly how drifting affects cornering speed and lap times on a technical track. I can't help it. Curiosity is just overtaking me.

#2 - I read a story on the web called "Death of a Family Member" about a guy who crashed and totalled his gray eight-six in the rain. That was back in 96, and I've never forgotten it. To this day, when it rains, I slow down. I wouldn't mind having wet drifting skills in my pocket for a rainy day when I might need them to save my car...

I can see where you are coming from, and when i started drifting, i thought about some of the same things..but the first time you nail a really sick drift, it all goes away and then you fall in love with it....at least i did....now dont really expect many people to think you are cool for drifting, most will just be like "damn that guy doesnt know how to corner" but then with a slight switch to grip, you prove them wrong. when my friends look at me as a drifter, not a driver, they say im insane...even my motorsports friends wont ride with me on a serious run, its kinda fun. my best friend who is sickly into racing and drifting tells me that there is nothing scarier than riding shotty on a 80 mph drift...so just kinda think if that is something you like to do, and experiment with it. but 5 dollars says you enjoy alot!

PS..i also hate the rain. after a curb royaly mucked up my 240 in the rain, i hardly drive at all in it anymore....lol

[Pergatory]

Why does everyone think that traction is the end-all beat-all of racing? There are more factors in racing than just traction. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying drifting is FASTER, per se. I'm just saying it has its advantages that are often overlooked.

For example, when you are grip-racing and turning a corner, your front tires are providing resistance against your forward movement. They are plowing (understeer) in an attempt to turn the car. In drifting, this resistance is overcome by keeping the front wheels straight forward. This has the disadvantage of requiring a slight loss of traction so that the car may rotate through the corner. In most cases, your rear wheels are sliding so much that the benefits are far outweighed (such as in exhibition drifting) and the result is that you lose speed.

In other words, if you can balance the oversteer such that the front tires are facing forward but the rear tires are sliding in a minimal fashion you will have balanced the two styles of driving to achieve maximum speed. Believe it or not, this can be done WITHOUT breaking static friction of the tires. This method of four-wheel drift is the fastest way to take a corner, but requires such a high level of control that it's not a practical form of driving. Some would even say that it's not drifting, but I don't think it's grip either.

To bring all this together, what it means for a practical drivers is that grip is the best way to ensure you are taking a corner fast every time. On the other hand, if you're confident in your control, you can use drift to sacrificing some time setting up for the corner, and obtain a faster exit speed. Using this technique is effective for thwarting passes or catching up on a straight. Drifting and grip are really not different forms of driving at all, they are two sides of the same coin. A balanced driver will use them together, just as they would use an early or late apex, to gain an advantage in certain situations.

Keiichi Tsuchiya in the 80's also demonstrated very effective use of drifting in brake zones in order to give him a better entry angle into the next corner. However with all the fancy ABS systems in use these days, this style is becoming less practical as braking while sliding is obviously far less effective than braking while gripping.

*Edit - I almost forgot to answer the original question. Entry speeds are slower in drifting due to the loss of traction required. A grip driver can brake later than a drift driver. However, the exit speeds are improved because you are able to begin acceleration in the exit direction before you exit the corner. In fact, the more extreme your drift angle, the sooner you may obtain the exit angle and begin to accelerate out.

[scirocco]

im just going to copy and paste what i said yesterday on a different thread:

scientifically, trail-braking and power over do allow you to brake and put down power in the exact direction you want, just not as much. Think about it this way: when you decelerate in a straight line, you will be on the edge of grip, if you are very good, when gong through the corner. When you slide, you can be farther into the corner (almost at the clipping point) and just be finished braking. When you power over (step on the gas at corner exit or to continue the drift), you put down power straight down the stretch that comes after the corner exit, past the clipping point. it also keeps you moving on the edge of front tire grip if done properly. its all about physics.

if u dont understand this, just think about this: lap times for keiichi tsuchiya are better the more he drifts (by FULL seconds). How do you think he got the title , the "Drift King"? he drifted in GT500 before anybody did that at all.

if u stil dont get it, there's always the search button and http://www.howstuffworks.com

btw, as soon as the car is straight you want to let of the gas just enough to maintain grip so you can max out your acceleration on the upcoming straight. Also, feint is no good unless u hav horrendous understeer (almost as bad as in an FF) in which case you usually want to side drift (E-brake). btw even tsuchiya-san says you can use the E-brake if you want and taniguchi habitually uses it so quit complaining.

[TeamSLIPdrifter]

i saw a video on best motoring where they were testing the evo VII and the guy in the r34 was doing this and ran out of laps to pass the evo but he caught up to him really quick. Thats what got me questioning drifting being faster but this explained it for me. Thanks everyone. This forum rules.

[05m0515]

well, i was sliding around at the auto-x last weekend and i came in 2nd. i was less than a tenth of a second behind the winner, an s2000. i beat out a wrx sti, a reg wrx, a z06 corvette, another s2000, an FC, a honda 600, an mr2, and a 240sx. results can be seen here
http://wwscc.org/event_results/2004/wwscc04-5.html
i was in NOVP(novice pm) so ill bet driver skill had alot to do with it. but still, i was drifting the HELL out of my rolla. moreso on my later laps which reflect that(slower lap times). my fastest lap was my 1st, in which i was in a situation like alex p was saying, 10% slip etc... the more i slid the slower, but when i slid the least(my 4th lap) i got my slowest time. the 4th lap was an experiment to see if full grip would be faster or slower, and it WAS slower. althogh my true slowest lap was when i spun out twice and ate 3 cones, but i wont get into that

EDIT: i just realized this doesnt show my fun run lap times, in which i drifted the most, but i assure you they were slightly slower, albeit fater than my full grip lap...interesting, no?

[jasonaries]

Many thanks for a superb set of contributions!

I am really pleased with the diversity and depth of the answers everyone has posted. It's really been cool reading each and every post. I'm signed up for track time in October, and will gladly give everyone a briefing on how it goes and on how your contributions have influenced my driving and perspective. Yeah, man, this forum rocks.

[santi]

while grip racing some ppl use the term 4wheel drift.. it's your car beein dragged to the outside of a track by centrifugal forces.. so the tires are slipping some.. it's not drift like we are thinking when we see in formula d.. but there is some slip.. if you watch like the scca road racing series.. like they had on at the begining of the atl formula drift comp.. from some angles on the outside of the corner alot of car you'll be able to notice look like they are pointed straight down the straight away they are coming on to.. but are still sliding to the outside of the track.. thats still a drift no?. just not how we do it