arite guys, please prove my idiot freinds wrong. they seem to think drifting a turn instead of hitting the apex and accelerating out of it is faster. i mena how the **** could it be true.. first off the entirety of the turn they are losing momentum because the tires are spinning, 2 they arent lauching out of the turn... am i missing some magical exception to physics?

 

Anytime a car's tires break traction, it is operating less efficenatly than it could if the tire's available traction is not exceeded. The reason is slidding friction is less than static friction, so the tire offers less grip in the slidding mode. So the thing you want to do is go right up to the tires's limit of adhesion and try to stay there without breaking traction. That is why cars and airplanes have anti-skid brakes; you can stop quicker without skidding. The same applies to acceleration at the drag track, and lateral acceleration in a turn. When you drift around a turn, you are just scrubbing off speed.

 

thank you

 

If they still question you, all of you can sadle up and run your cars at a local autoX event. Let them do it their way, and you just drive the course, not even trying to be as fast as possilbe, just maintaining traction. You will be several seconds faster than they are, even if you have never autoXed before.

Commonly referred to as slowing down to go faster.

 

Long story short:
Your friends dont have a ******* clue.

 

What do you think in D1 events they dont go by lap times? Because none of the cars would be drifting then.
Drifting is just for show and fun.

 

drifting....

 

correct, but missing a few vital areas.

Sliding a car may cause you to loose speed but it CAN allow a car to be quicker around a given circuit.

this is most evident in 3 seperate instances (there are probably more, but these are all I can think of in terms of racing).

1. Rally

Remeber rally's are held on tarmac as well as gravel and other surfaces.

The idea here is to get the car pointing the correct way before you enter the turn, this allows the car to be much quicker exiting to corner. It is also usful when linking up S bends over a short distance.

On eof the techniques used is called the 'Scandinavian Flick'. Essentially before you get to the corner you give a sharp stab on the steering wheel in the direction of the corner, this unsettles the car causing the back to slide out you then turn into the slide, which is the opposite direction to that of the corner.

This means the car goes thru the corner with the noise of the car pointing in the direction you want to go. You can still hit the apex, but the 'attitude' (attitude = angle of the car compared to road direction) of the car will be different.

2. Rally Autotest.

When you have very tight bends to negotiate it is often far quicker to use the hand brake and slide the car round the corner.

This is not for high speed corners but very sharp 90 degree or hair pin bend style corners.


3. Circuit racing.

Yes this is the more odd ball one.

If you hark back to the 50's and 60's you'll notice that the driving style of race cars was very different to that of todays cars. This is mainly due to the cars having less mechanical and aerodynamic grip. In much the same way most road cars do not have race car grip levels.

This stlye of driving was know as drifting (and not the modern Japanses compition style). It's very difficult to master and only the best drivers would succeed.

This kind of cornering really does let you steer the car with the throttle.



Road driving, in general has more akin with Tarmac rallying than circuit racing. So it may well prove to be faster by sliding a car than not.

This is just a wider picture of the subject. On a normal race circuit in a modern race car then as a rule it will be more benifical NOT to slide. However this not always because a slide would be a lot slower, but more to the point that modern race cars have enormus amount of grip that when they let go they don't slide but completley spin.

 

presumably this means you CAN'T actually powerslide a car then

 

all you have to do is look at professional racing like formula one or gt racing for example.. i dont see ferraris and all them drifting around the track. even leaving a few skid marks is considered very very bad in such events

 

not at all, it just means I think drifting is gay

 

haha, yup.. but then again, its not even a long story... its just common sense!

 

Drifting is fun. Thats why people do it. Just like doing burnouts.

 

I live about 5 miles or so outside of city limits, I drive that stretch everyday. There's a lot of corners and it's all flat. I was headed to town about a year ago and I was aproaching a left turn around a hill (no visibility) when out in front of me about a 100 yards before I hit the corner, heading towards me, comes a little primer gray, body kitted, giant winged civic with too much speed and totally in MY lane if I were 5 seconds faster that day it would have been a head on collision.

Burnouts kick ***, but I've never endangered anyone doing them. Annoyed some people, for sure tho

If you're gonna drift, great, you should just keep it to the parking lots and stay off public roads

 

a pity, as require enormus amounts of skill to power slide a car.

I guess you should just stick to straight lines.

 

pwnd.

 

Synchronized swimming and drifting have a lot in common ...

Since when is a subjectively judged "competition" considered a real sport? I mean, in poker, at least there is a clear winner ...

Ice skating, gymnastics, drifting, dog shows, rural livestock shows are all about the same when it comes to "competition".

Some "person" that has nothing to do with the training, driving or raising proclaims the winner. That is what is lame.

Sliding a car through a turn is a heckuva lot of fun. Appointing someone to proclaim I did it better than you is what is lame ...

JMHO ...

 

LOL continue to troll if you like, I won't be drawn into a flame war with YOU. I've stated my opinion, you can either accept the fact someone out there actually has a different opinion than you imagine that, or you can just continue to argue with yourself. I'm out...

 

Being able to control a car in a slide is more of a recovery technique than a "go fast" technique. If you sucessfully recover from a slide, that only means you recovered from your own mistake. The guy that got around the turn at max speed without breaking traction is already ahead of you.

 

i never thought i would see someone who understanded this on this site.

thank you!