Drift 101: Initiations and Drifting
Ever been curious as to how you can make a car start to slide like the professionals in Formula Drift? Well, look no further as we’ll give you a brief look into drifting starting with the different types of initiations. We’ll start with the most basic and one you’ve probably even played around with as a teenager: Emergency Brake Initiation.
DISCLAIMER: Drifting, as with any motorsport, is dangerous and the techniques in this article are to be done off road on a closed course. TLDR: DO NOT DRIFT ON THE STREET, YOU BLOODY IDIOT.
It’s the first and very basic technique that is taught in drifting classes around the country. You’ll rip the handbrake up, lock the rear tires, and initiate into a slide to start your drift and feed in throttle to keep the drift going.
However, you do have to add some steering before you do the handbrake or else you’ll just end up going straight instead of sliding sideways.
So, as you begin your turn, push in the clutch and pull up the handbrake to get the rear wheels locked up. As the rear begins to come around begin to add some counter-steering to keep the car going in the direction you want it too and feed in that throttle to keep the drift going.
How much counter-steer will be determined by how far out the rear of the car goes out and your particular corner. So the bigger the angle the more counter-steer you’ll need.
Clutch Kicking
If you’re familiar with dirt bike riding and 2-strokes, you’re probably going to recognize this technique. As you steer into the corner this time, you’re not going to rip up the handbrake but instead hold the throttle and pop the clutch.
This sends a shock to the rear wheels and causes them to judder loose as you turn in. You can also begin to fan the clutch over and over to keep a drift going and is a technique heavily utilized in lower horsepower cars but LS-V8s can use this technique as well if you begin to lose drift in the middle of the corner and you can’t lose speed by using the handbrake.
The clutch kick is a very useful technique in most every car, however the challenge will be controlling the throttle as you kick the clutch as you don’t necessarily want to change the RPM too much as you pop the clutch over and over. As you learn, you’ll start to “feel” it out and know how much throttle you actually need.
Shift-Lock
You road racers will recognize this one as it’s something you’re trained to avoid as you learn heel-toe shifting in road race or autocross school.
The “shift-lock” is actually wheel hopping on purpose and you’ll start to down shift as you go into the corner. Now, instead of rev-matching before going into gear you’ll keep your foot on the brake and let the clutch go.
This will dramatically slow the rear wheels down and they will hop. Once you feel the hopping get off the brakes and feed some throttle in to keep the drift around the corner.
This can be a difficult technique to learn and do correctly on the first try. Not only could you hold the brake on too long and over rotate, you would stall the car. The moment you feel the rear bounce and the rear start to rotate around get off the brake and get on the gas.
Inertia Drifting
This is a technique that can be a bit hairy to do the first time and is usually a more advanced technique. Instead of locking up the rear tires as done previously, we’re going to use the inertia and weight shifting that the car has to get drifting.
Again, this isn’t necessarily a technique for the first time or even the faint hearted as you’ll be carrying a lot of speed into the corner. However, as you drift and learn what the car actually does as you slide, you’ll realize that you scrub a lot more speed off than you thought you were doing.
The idea for initiation is to carry speed into the corner and at the last second let off the throttle all at once. This will cause all of the weight to go from the rear of the car to the front quickly causing the rear of the car to become light and drift around.
Sometimes adding a dab of brake will help this weight shift. Another way to do this with not as much speed is a pendulum drift where you’ll start on the racing line, then suddenly steer the car to the opposite side of the track, then back to the racing line.
This will shift the weight to the other side of the car and start a drift. This pendulum motion is done quickly to shift the weight around fast enough to initiate a drift.