I have read that drifting is faster around a corner than grip (normal) driving/racing.

From a drifting forum:

"There's been a long debate in auto racing about using drift as a technique to get around a really sharp corners verses grip, so don't think it's new or changed. Think about the origins of drifting. A technique developed by Japanese racers due to the rugged mountain roads that Japan possesses, born of competion."

And another....

"If the corner is tight enough where your car's turning radius wouldn't allow you to make the corner without going off the other side of the track or hitting the wall..... throwing your rear end around is probably faster then stopping and reversing to make the turn "

....and the reply:

"NO"

"DRIFTING IS NEVER FASTER!!"

So which is faster around a corner, slowing down and using the apex of the turn, or flying in hot and manuver a slide through the turn?

I used to do a lot of "drift" driving on dirt roads (though I never had the car or the skill to do it on tarmac). In my experience/opinion (I don't have any scientific hard facts to back this up) you retain more drive-train momentum/speed in a controlled drift than if you slow enough to "grip" through the turns. Hence you already have your transmission and drive wheels "spun up" as you exit the turns, allowing faster acceleration times coming out of them.


-Chris whY, metamultimediamaniac and Mad Scientist

If your drive wheels are spinning, (presumably the rears) your not propelling the car forward as fast as the engine is capable of doing which is why you never see serious racers doing it except on dirt tracks where the cars are set up ridiculously so they can take the sharp 180s at the ends of the straights.

Another important thing to consider is that by pivoting around a point (such as the front wheels) as you corner, rather than turning a lot of your momentum into heat in the brakes, you can maintain more momentum. The MBs covered this in the Superhero episode, with the grappling hook shot out of the car to help corner the car at high speed.

Think of it this way: take a 25 pound ball, and attach a string with a grappling hook on the other end, and rig the string to break under just a couple pounds of force. Throw this at a vertical pole such that the string is horizontal and hits the pole with the ball to one side of the pole, and the hook to the other. The string hits the pole, and the ball pulls it until the hook catches on the pole. The ball's trajectory curves and then the string breaks as the ball tries to keep going.

The ball continues on in a new direction, with a substantial amount of its original speed, but you haven't added any energy (in fact, breaking the string took some away) coming out of the turn.

In drifting, the front wheels take the place of the string, hook, and pole, and the driver's corrections in steering take the place of breaking the string.

-Chris whY, metamultimediamaniac and Mad Scientist

Depends.

Watch NASCAR, Watch Indy cars, watch Formula 1 racing. These professional drivers any doing their best to get around the track as fast as possible. Do they 'drift' around the corners?

Now watch dirt track racing. Do they 'drift'?

So it depends.

Watcher, the simple answer is that pavement has much better traction than dirt-even if "Blue Grooved".

quote:

Originally posted by dickfez:
If your drive wheels are spinning, (presumably the rears) your not propelling the car forward as fast as the engine is capable of doing which is why you never see serious racers doing it except on dirt tracks where the cars are set up ridiculously so they can take the sharp 180s at the ends of the straights.

My theory is that if you are pushing the car forward as fast as the engine can drive it (or even just too fast for the corner), your directional momentum will fight against the steering, causing understeer and a quick end to your race. If you slow down to allow fully gripped steering, you lose time and momentum. But if you tap your brakes and steer correctly and then accelerate going into the corner, you can make the mass of the car AND the power of the engine work FOR you in steering, rather than against you. Use your front wheels as pivot-points, and go ahead and waste a little power driving the wheels at an odd slippy angle - but with much more power applied than if you were "gripping" and not understeering, and acheive the needed change in direction with less loss of momentum (and therefore velocity and energy) and already have your drive train spun up and providing max acceleration as you come out of the corner. The energy lost in non-optimal tire-to-road contact is amply overshadowed by the increase (over "grip" cornering) in previous momentum maintained through the corner and actual new drive energy applied controllably to the road mving through - and exiting - the corner.

-Chris whY, metamultimediamaniac and Mad Scientist

I think some context is in order.

Drifting is not done on paved tracks by pro drivers in specially-engineered cars. Those cars are specifically engineered for grip cornering.

Drifting is practiced in street racing, by people driving souped-up production cars which are not engineered the same way. People who build/modify those cars are great at what they do, but they are _not_ engineering million-dollar cars from the ground up. They are adapting what they can get.

-Chris whY, metamultimediamaniac and Mad Scientist

Oh, and race tracks and tires are also engineered very differently than streets and street tires.

-Chris whY, metamultimediamaniac and Mad Scientist

Read the Wikipedia article on drifting.

Drifting competitions are mostly not races at all, but runs where the driver is rated on characteristics of his drifts.

I suppose it’s possible to set up a track in such a way that drifting will yield better lap times than grip cornering, and that would be the exception rather than the rule.

quote:

Originally posted by ratranger:
Read the Wikipedia article on drifting.

I disagree somewhat with your conclusions as they relate to this discussion, but that is an excellent article. Thank you for pointing it out.

-Chris whY, metamultimediamaniac and Mad Scientist

It depends on how much grip is available. In Formula 1, etc. they have a LOT of grip so it's best not to drift (it would be dangerous).

In rallying, etc., there's not much grip. To go around a winter rally without sliding you'd have to go very slowly indeed - not good for winning races. In this case they just go as fast as possible and try to stay on the road by swinging the car around and using the spinning wheels to change direction.

There are some things about tires that are not being mentioned here. This whole discussion is really about static vs. dynamic coefficient of friction. CF is how much slipping force 2 surfaces can resist with a given force pushing them together. Static CF means the 2 surfaces are not moving relative to each other (i.e. not slipping) Dynamic CF means the 2 surfaces are slipping.
I was taught in Physics 101 that a non-skidding tire has a higher CF than a skidding tire. Later I learned that tire data does not support this assumption. The number changes with different tires and surfaces but the idea is the same. The maximum CF is usually achieved at 8% to 12% slippage. Meaning for straight line acceleration every 100 inches the vehicle moves forward maximum CF is achieved with the tire rotating between 108 to 112 inches. Another way to achieve this slippage is for the tire contact patch to be running at an angle of 8 to 12 degrees from the actual direction of travel. With rear wheel drive cars and front steering the rear tires need to run at an angle with respect to the corner. More than the maximum CF angle you lose CF and the result is a larger radius corner being traveled so you must slowdown to navigate the corner to tighten the radius. This angle can actually be seen in photos of race cars on the track. Even Formula 1 cars have a slip angle in corners. For a 100 inch wheelbase car the rear of the car hangs out between 8 and 12 inches to reach the maximum traction point.
Typically dirt racing is done on moist or tacky clay (very close to the consistency of modeling clay) but there is an optimum slip angle or CF which is at the higher end of the angle range (12 degrees) when tacky and lower angle (8 degrees) when dry and hard. So a car that is perfectly balanced on a tacky clay track will over steer on a dry clay track or even an asphalt track.
Normal vs. drifting is actually a discussion about drift angle. Normal would be as discussed above whereas drifting uses a much higher angle and thus a lower CF and lower cornering speed. But there is more! Actual cornering speed is unimportant usually since they don’t judge races by who has the highest cornering speed. They are usually judged on who crosses the finish line first (i.e. shortest time). Drifting doesn’t use this scoring method there are style factors and wow factors etc. A purpose built racecar will be faster not drifting than a purpose built drift car drifting. The corner radius on drift tracks is much smaller which requires the car to be designed to handle tight radii. Most racecars are not designed for tight radius corners and in-fact most racecars the corner radius is not largely factored into the build of the car but the g-force certainly is. A purpose built racecar on a drift track would likely have more weight moved from the ends of the car toward the middle, all wheel drive as well as front and rear wheel steering would be a major advantages. With all race cars wide sticky tires, light weight, lots of power, and low to the ground would also be big benefits. If you are trying to put on a drift show, you need lots of smoke and large drift angles so they often use hard rear tires that are not too wide and massively over inflated, rear springs that are much stiffer than used in racecars and much lighter front springs with wide sticky tires in the front for better traction in the front.
I hope this sheds some light on the topic.

On pavement (haven't seen "drifting" on dirt), sideways is slow. Drifting is for looks, not speed.

In autocross, hand brake turns allow you to pivot the car and get it pointing back the other way when the turn is around one pylon. If you set your car up to drift for that one corner, you'll lose a lot of time on the rest of the course. Use the handbrake and drive the car.

I disagree with you oldguy1 I've seen high-speed drifts on PAVEMENT in the canyons and I have to say it's really effective. btw there's more than one way to drift than the handbrake alone.
the drift can also be used to defend your position if your in the front, unless your opponent would rather get into a double crash...

Drifting also occurs a little in Grand Prix and F1 just not with the crazy angles that they do for show

for a FF layout its always better to go grip or a lil understeer
For FMR I find the sharper the corner the more effective the drift is (as long as you don't crash)

In a front wheel drive, drifting can definatly be faster. Just the fact that the car is drifting says the vehical is going faster than if the car was going slow enough to maintain grip at all 4 corners. A bit off subject but... The best car commercial I have ever seen was a add for a Mazda RX7. The entire commercial was the RX7 drifting down a twisty mountain road. No spokesperson, just raw footage of some spheres to the wall mountain driving.

I got into a discussion about this today, so I have been giving it some consideration. There are several good points made here I think.

by slambusa, "If the corner is tight enough where your car's turning radius wouldn't allow you to make the corner without going off the other side of the track or hitting the wall..... throwing your rear end around is probably faster then stopping and reversing to make the turn ".

by ChrisWhy, "... In drifting, the front wheels take the place of the string, hook, and pole, and the driver's corrections in steering take the place of breaking the string." and "The energy lost in non-optimal tire-to-road contact is amply overshadowed by the increase (over "grip" cornering) in previous momentum maintained through the corner and actual new drive energy applied controllably to the road mving through - and exiting - the corner."

by dfez, "If your drive wheels are spinning, (presumably the rears) your not propelling the car forward as fast as the engine is capable of... "

by Imfinenu, in summary form, some tire compounds achieve maximum CF when slipping a precise percentage and vehicles can be designed to take advantage of this during cornering, as well as straight line scenarios.

To expand on the subject and describe it more precisely, refer to this article: http://autopedia.com/stuttgart.../StuttPhysics10.html

To summarize the article (hopefully without botching it), all rubber compounds / tire tread configurations / road surface contribute to a specific grip angle for the particular combination. As forces are exerted laterally, the tires being to 'walk' due to a constant slip and grip action. There is a certain amount of slip neccesary to take advantage of the adhesive characteristics of the tire-surface interaction. This defines the grip angle. The coefficient of friction in this case is beyond that of static. The tire is actually slipping a specific amount to achieve peak CF.

The above point suggests that, even while 'gripping' through a corner, the fastest line would actually involve the car 'drifting' outwards (path corrected by steering).
I believe this is emphasized if you watch cars on almost any banked track leaving high speed turns, you will see the angle of the car is already straight relative to the straight away ahead, even through the last several degrees of a turn (basically, the car is slightly nosed down into the turn and drifting).

The above mentioned style of driving does not fit wikipedias definition of drifting, since it requires the wheels to be turned the opposite direction of the turn relative to the centerline of the car and some degree of variation in slip angle between front and rear tires.

It would appear that by deffinition 'drifting' is purposefully slower through certain corners, because as dfez said, you're not putting all the power to the ground you could be.

That said, there could be situations similar to what slambusa mentioned where your curve radius is so tight, it exceeds the vehicle turning radius. In this case, you could not physically grip drive the corner without a three point turn. It would be faster to lower your turning radius by drifting the corner and carrying momentum through the turn.

Also with some street cars, the suspension could be set up in such a way that turning tighter than a certain radius results in understeer at a given speed, and the car physically has enough horse power and weight over the real wheels to exert a greater force along the tangent of the curve in a drift position. A number a variables factor into this, and it would be beyond me to calculate an actual scenario.

I'm sure if you search hard enough, you can find some racing footage on asphault with a relatively tight corner that every one slides through a bit.

Maybe this would be something worth setting up for an episode if the numbers work out? Get a NASCAR team and a drift guy out there and set up one turn optimised for grip and one for drift and see who can get the fastest time through each.


Just by simple physics, I would estimate that drifting in a front wheel drive car would ONLY be neccesary to attempt a turn tighter than the turning radius of the car, since loosing grip on the rear wheels will only ever add to the work the front wheels have to do to complete the turn.

Since this tread started, I saw an object demonstration of the answer in an F-1 race. Two drivers enter a relatively tight turn wheel to wheel and when they tried to put the power down, one car just twitched slightly like it spun the rear wheels a couple turns and the other car accelerated away like the wheelspin car was parked.

My god people!!!
AERODYNAMICS!!!!
In modern racers ESPECIALLY F1\Indy\Cart an excessive amount of slip angle completely destroys airflow over the car resulting in a rapid loss of downforce. In rallying as aero has evolved the engineers have resorted to putting vertical plates across the entire span of the rear wing in order to redirect airflow over the wing. Also rubber compounds in early cars (IE, 1960's) were rock hard and treaded, allowing more lateral movement and a more forgiving nature (they were also cross ply and had a habit of reducing contact patch size significantly under side load). These tires could take alot of punishment before overheating. Modern soft compound race tires are prone to rapid overheating when exposed to wheelspin (especially when there is an extra ton or so of downforce increasing friction and therefore heat).

Take away wings, ground effect and super soft slicks and the fastest way around any corner is with a moderate angle (around 10 degrees) of four wheel drift.

That is the idea of a balanced suspension setup.

Let the forward weight distribution left over from the braking process point you into the corner and bring the rear out a little (trail braking), neutralize the oversteer with just the right amount of throttle and let all four wheels drift out from the apex to the corner exit adding additional throttle to maintain the neutral balance all the way to the outside of the track (steering/balancing with the throttle). A soon as you feel the car start hooking up give it everything until the next braking zone.