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WHAT IS DRIFTING?

Basically, drifting is getting your car sideways down a road. It doesn't sound very hard does it? Sounds a lot like power sliding huh? Well it isn't. It is much more complex, but it is not hard to learn it. Instead of a drifter causing a drift and then counter-steer to straighten out, he will instead over-counter so his car goes into another drift. That is the reason many drifters do it in the mountains, because there are many sharp turns put together in sequences. So in essence a good drifter has the ability to take five or six opposing turns without having traction at any point in time. Sometimes the coolest drifts (in my opinion) happens at long U-turns, when the car will completely go sideways throughout the turn and straighten-out at the end.

HOW IS IT DONE?

There are two ways to start a drift. The first is the clutching technique. When approaching a turn the driver will push in the clutch and shift his car into second gear. Then rev the engine up to around 4000-5000 rpm (it all depends all the model of the car being used) and then slightly turn away from the turn and then cut back towards it hard while at the same time popping the clutch and causing the rear wheels to spin. At this point the drifter has a loss of traction and is beginning to slide around the curve. Now comes the hard part. You have to hold the drift until the next turn. To do this you must keep your foot on the accelerator while at the same time adjusting your car with the steering wheel so you don't spin out. It's not as easy as it sounds. Then as the drifter reaches the end of the turn and approaches the next turn which is in the opposite direction he must cut the wheel in that direction and in some cases, if the previous drift was to slow and they start to regain traction, they must pop the clutch again to get the wheels spinning. And that is how you drift a rear wheel drive car. The second technique is used by a few drifters in rear wheel drives, but is the only way you can really drift a front wheel drive. You have to use the side brake. A front wheel drive can not whip it's tail out because the tires are being driven in the front as opposed to the rear. So when approaching a turn you pull the side brake to cause traction loss. And the rest is pretty much the same except that it's much harder to take more than one turn with a front wheel driver

WHAT HAPPENS IN DRIFTING?

1.     The car would go sideways.

2.     You can hear the screech of the wheels.

3.     The disc of the brake disc will turn red in some cases (especially downhill drifting).

4.     If you are the passenger and you are easily carsick, you will throw up and vomit.

5.     You have no time to think of other stuff, because you have to concentrate or you will crash.

WHO DOES IT?

On the average it is men (mostly Japanese) in their early to late twenties, but more and more often you will see girls participating. You can also see some older man participating.

HISTORY OF DRIFTING

It is a common misconception among people that drifting is a new "fad" but they is way off the mark. Drifting has been around for a long time and has a deep history to it. Basically it evolved from what is called Touge Running. Before drifting was actually developed young guys would take their race cars up into the mountains (touge basically means mountain or mountain pass) and speed through the turns. At first it was considered dangerous to lose traction through the turns. People tried their best to go as fast as possible without losing control. Basically they were what is called gripping now which is popular with the FF and 4WD camps. Eventually it became "cool" to lose control of your tail and then regain it quickly. It showed the driver had great skill when it came to controlling his car. But it kept evolving, drivers would purposefully lose traction and try to power through the turn with the tail kicked out. Eventually they started taking more then one turn with their tail sliding out and that's basically how it all got started. Now people do it everywhere. City streets, mountain roads, parking areas, boat docks, etc..

WHERE DO PEOPLE USUALLY DRIFT?

1.     Mountains, where there is a lot of sharp corners.

2.     OPEN parking lots, preferably empty. Some people create 'donuts' there.

WHAT CARS DO THEY USE?

They usually use FR (front-engine rear-wheel drive) cars. This is due to the fact that they are easy to drift. Here in Malaysia finding suitable drift cars is already a problem. This is because they tend to be rare. Mostly available suitable FR drift car here is the Mazda RX-7 FD3S and occasionally some FCs. There is more 180SXs than Silvias here, and mostly are available in standard form, so you can start from somewhere. AE86s are severely overpriced, sometimes 2 to 3 times the cost of a Corolla sedan of that time (imagine : Toyota Corolla sedan (AE82) = RM (Ringgit Malaysia) 10000, Toyota Corolla Levin (AE86) = a whopping RM 30000. RM 3.80 = 1 US$, RM 6.00 = 1 pound). Of course, if you are extremely lucky, you will find an AE86 that is thrown on the roadside without any owners (but the possibility for that to happen is rare, but there is one case where somebody found a Levin on the roadside and decided to modify it).

WHY CAN'T FFs (FRONT-DRIVEN VEHICLES) DRIFT?

Basically the laws of physics won't allow it. See with a rear wheel drive car power is coming from the back so that basically means that you can slide the tail out and control the movement by countering with the front wheels. With a front wheel drive both the power and countering wheels are up front so it eliminates the possibility of drifting grouped turns. A demonstration would be taking a RWD car and finding an open parking lot. Get up to a good speed and then just yank the steering wheel back and forth and you will start fishtailing. This can not be done with a FF and and drifitng is almost like fishtailing around turns. Of course this doesn't mean that you can't take your FF and throw it around turns because you can. A term that has become pretty popularized from the forums is rear (or @$$) dragging. Some people used the handbrake to induce an FF drift.

WHAT ABOUT 4WDs?

Generally not recommended, but it depends on the car used. This is because drifting with 4WD cars is quite hard, but it is slowly becoming popular. The most popular 4WD cars used for drifting is the Subaru Impreza WRX (1st and 2nd generation, but I preferred the first generation) and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution (popularly known as Evo) series, even though other 4WD cars can be used (but don't try this with SUVs). These two cars are production versions of their rally versions (especially the Lancer Evo, which is considered by many to be a ready-made rally car, until the Evo VII when Mitsubishi departed from Group A to compete in the WRC class).

WHAT ABOUT MRs (MID-ENGINE REAR-DRIVE)

It is very hard to drift in a MR-driven car. But there is some people who can drift with one. The most popular MR drift car is the Toyota MR-2.

HOW DOES IT BECOME POPULAR?

It became tremendously popular in these few years. With some influence from the Japanese anime/mange series, Initial D, which is about 18-year old Takumi Fujiwara, who delivers tofu in the morning and races in the night, there is more and more people that is into drifting. While popular in the east side of the world, it is beginning to catch up in the west side of the world, since the import trend is now on full scale, thank to the 2001 movie The Fast and The Furious starring Vin Diesel. It is now considered cool to drift. Here? It have not catch on yet, as mentioned above, due to the rarity of the suitable cars to drift.