Practice Drifting in the Rain

Dangerous, yes but you should know better than to do it in your street. Find a race track close by or a secluded area where there's is no potential danger of getting caught and practice there. Go to wherever that place might be and go there more often when it rains because when you practice in the rain, you'll get good at controlling the slide of the car. At first this is not a good way to start out, but as soon as you get use to drifting and have learned the basics that I told you. Then you should now practice in the rain, this will invariably accelerate your growth in the field of precision handling.

Go slowly at first attempt and try to gauge where you'll enter a corner and drift. Remember when in a wet track you will slide easily so you find yourself going slower than usual. Speed is not good in a damp track so just watch how fast you go because you might go too fast and understeer and hit a wall. When the track is very wet, you could encounter hydroplaning. This occurs when you go through a puddle of water and the wheels of your car is no longer on the pavement. So basically your car is floating through the puddle of water. So avoid spots in the track where there's a puddle of water. Aside from this danger, you can pretty much enjoy drifting effortlessly in the rain. First try out the techniques that you learned from my other post. You should find it quite amusing seeing how you can do these drift techniques easily when your in a damp track. Like I said you'll learn a lot from just practicing in the rain condition.

You'll get better and better at drifting when you continue to practice in the rain. So keep it up and never lose focus.

Drifting Competition

Unlike the usual racing events that we people normally see in the TV, drifting is quite different.
Racing is basically competing against fast drivers and whoever crosses the finish line first wins. Drifting competition is more of a sliding style battle coupled with short burst of speed and controlled chaos. Those are some of the ingredients that comes along when competing in a drifting event. The only similarity drifting has with the real racing is the qualifying. Yes, that is the only similarity, but when it comes to winning it's not about who crosses the line first. The way to win is to impress the judges who are carefully watching you as you drift around the corner.

These judges are professional drivers and ex drifters themselves, so they know how to rate drivers. One thing I have to mention is that the judges based their scoring in angle of the car when drifting, your line, the entry speed and the speed you carry while drifting. The drifting scenes have grown inexplicably over the years and many enthusiast are trying their hand at drifting. Competition ranges from all street racers to your daily track attackers, and the pros. The professional drifters that we were accustomed to were the Japanese drivers from the D1 GP now they have drivers all over the world to try their hand at drifting. Drifting is now growing in UK, especially Australia and here in the US as well.

You too can compete and race at your own level, so don't get discourage if you're a beginner right now. As I keep posting read it because I will give you a handful of tips about drifting and your car's set up and more.

Underpowered Cars or High horsepower Car Which Would you Choose

Alot of your drifting technique or should I say style of drifting will depend upon your cars performance. The reason for this is that you can manage to drift a car when its at speed, but if you can't gain momentum enough speed and you'll likely drift in a quick succesion rather than longer hold drift. The reason is simple, when your car doesn't have that much power it won't help you hold the drift for long. The low horsepower car is much harder to drift than the one with higher horsepower. This is because due to the fact that you need to go faster and faster to be able to slide and maintain the drift, and frankly in a low horsepower car you will have quite a hard time. There's a certain point once when your car is in the middle of a drift, and you want to completely clear the corner with a dab of the throttle. That is possible with a high horsepower car but a low HP car need more than just a dab, you need to hammer it since it won't react until you pressed the pedal harder. This can affect your drift once your in the middle of it because you want a subtle increase in throttle not a whole lot. But what can you do what can you do? Practice will help and different style of drifting is required. If you could remember from the other post that I told in drift techniques called the Sliding Power this technique required plenty of horsepower to ensure you get to hold your drift for a while. This technique won't work in a low horsepower car. So you have to use other techniques in able to drift a low horsepower car and that's you will need to have a different style of drifting. I'm not trying to discourage you if you do have a low horsepower car, it just means that you will learn different drifting style to harness your car and for it to be able to drift. I don't mean to say that you need a lot of horsepower in able drift, its balance that were after and surely this is the way most drifters do it.

With the high horsepower car, this is easily the way to drift, but too much power can harm your control over the car, thus your car will sometimes just overteer uncontrollably. Steering, footwork, and your line of drift comes so fast that you have to react fast, this is needed when you have bucket loads of power. Horsepower ranging from 400hp to 5oohp are considered high horsepower cars and a bit hard to control sometimes with their volcanic power and torque. Likewise this gets you to have a different style of drifting, like going fast before the corner and braking hard to reduced the speed and then sliding it. If you go too fast in the corner, you will inevitably crash. That's one thing that low horsepower is good at, you just keep the floor flat so you can clearly drift through the corner.

Whichever car you have you will be able to drift it, but with difficulties on both. Its a good thing because with hardship you can learn a lot and you can get good at drifting whichever car you have.

History of Drifting

The origin of drifting can be traced back in its native land which was in Japan. On the many rural mountains of Japan, the street racers would go up to the mountain and race there. From there started an event called touge racing ( Toh-gey - mountain racing) and at that time it was growing in popularity. One of the many founders of drifting was Kunimitsu Takahashi he was an exceptionally talented racer. From Takahashi to Keiichi Tsuchiya, Keiichi was the man to follow up on drifting when it was still developing.

Keiichi became known as the dorikin (Drift king) in the street because of his skills. He eventually turned pro racer and went on to achieved many great feats in his racing career. In 1977 Keiichi began his racing career driving many different cars in amateur racing series events. Racing these underpowered cars was difficult but again a great learning experience. Later Keiichi was picked up to drive the ADVAN sponsored Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno (JDM Corolla GT-S). During many races on a downhill corner he would drift the car and carry a better corner speed than his competitors. This technique is what made him the Drift King, not, as most believe, that he was first in the drift scene. In 1988, alongside Option magazine founder Daijiro Inada, he would help to organise one of the first drift events, the event was a success despite very few drivers were capable of drifting then.

Alot of the techniques that were used in drifting was derived in rally racing, where the fastest way around a corner is to slide. That is why some of the current drifters around are ex rally racers and they are very good at drifting because of their experience in rallying.

Grip or Drift

So by now you're familiar with drifting, but while your getting good at it. Its good to mention the other way around the track. Which is grip driving, this is the opposite of drifting. While most of the drifting is for the show of how skilled you are in holding a powerslide. The grip driving is simply going faster in the corner. You really want push the car to the limit and set a fast time. The grip driving is for doing a time attack or track battles. Its two different ways of approaching a corner and clearing it. So long as you practice hard enough you can learn both of these two driving style. As a amateur racer myself I prefer more in grip driving because it brings adrenaline rush in me. I also drift to showcase by powersliding skills, but the most important thing is to do one at a time. Don't just think you can learn both at the same time. If you focus on drifting then stay at it until you get good, and if you started on grip driving then do the same thing. My point is to learn one first rather than trying to do both at the same time. I will cover more grip driving more in depth in later post.

More Drift Techniques

As you learn and practice the drift techniques that I showed to you. You can try to learn these drift techniques that is more advance but its not very difficult to do. Once you've got better at drifting you'll want to learn more, here are more drift moves to learn.

Braking Doriifto - this drift is done by applying braking before you enter a corner. Once you lose traction by braking a little harder, you then steer the car to the right or left which ever corner you're trying to go. It takes practice to be able to do this drift, you really need to get good at braking, downshifting, and controlling the steering.

Sliding Power - its a weird name but this is done by drifting with a car that has a lot of horsepower. To ensure that you can hold the power and the slide, you should have mastered the steering control to do this drift successfully. When you're entering a corner, you use your braking just enough to slow down and to prevent you from going off track. Then you stab the throttle to induce rear wheel spins; therefore, your car will oversteer. Once it oversteer, you must hold the steering wheel and continue to apply throttle to keep drifting until you clear the corner.

High Speed Drift - high speed drift is done on a high speed corner. When you're approaching a corner, before the corner you let off the throttle then turn the steering wheel slightly right or left. If the car doesn't drift from when you let off the throttle, then your car is not set up for it. I'll cover drift set up for the later post, but at least you know the basics on how to do the high speed drift. This drift is normally done on medium powered cars, powers ranging from 290 HP to 320 HP rear wheel drive cars.

See How Easily You Can Learn How to Drift

Drifting is not hard at all, it just takes time and pratice. If you read the post before this one, you were given a prerequesite before you start drifting. If you practice those exercises, these drift techniques that I will cover here will be much easier for you to learn. So without further distractions here are some of the drift techniques that you can try.

Swaying Start Drift: This technique is very easy, ok its easier said than done but here is the down low. When your approaching a corner turn to the opposite direction then suddenly correcting it by going to the right direction. What your doing is that your swaying the car to transfer the weight from the back. This motion will make your car go sideways, and all you have to do when your drifting is hold it until you clear the corner.

Down shifting Drift: Doing this technique requires you to do a lot of down shifting. Here's a scenario, your approaching a fast right turn at a conservative speed. Then at the turn in point you brake a little bit then throw down the gears. When your doing this as you down shift you feel the car jerk forward, when that happens turn the car abruptly to the right or left. The cars weight when you down shifted goes all the way to the front and in turn makes your car light at the back end. So the back will slide much faster and easier.

E- Braking it! - Sounds cool huh, this technique is the easiest one that you can do. This is very easy because all you have to do is turn the car right or left at the same time your pulling the emergency brake or parking brake. Your car will slide easily and beautifully when done right, and also if you want to challenge yourself just a little bit. You can go faster then do this technique and your car will slide longer and faster.

So, there it is I hope these techniques of drifting can help you become good at it. Don't give up if you can't do it right now because with practice you can get good at it. And I repeat don't try this near your street or everywhere else, just do it at the track its much safer for you and your car.