How to drift a car.
A basic instruction on how to drift a car.
Here you are, “heavily” invested in your drifting hobby, or maybe even career. Let's just call it a lifestyle. When I say heavily invested, I mean you have just spent $5,00 - 7,000 dollars, maybe more, or you got a sweet deal. You have bought yourself a rear wheel drive car, maybe even already slammed and stiffened with some coilover kit, or not, and it’s absolutely stock. Nevertheless you can still send it sideways. In this article we will go over a technique on how to lose grip in the rear wheels, set a steering angle and proceed to complete a corner in a drift motion.
In order to begin our first drift, we need to acknowledge that the power might differ depending on the car you’re attempting to drift. Someone might be reading this and only has a 170hp car, and someone else might have a 300hp car. Person with a lower horsepower car might find it more difficult to put the car into a drift. The basic principle of drifting a car is still the same. Don’t let this undermine your ability to drive your low horsepower car.
We have positioned ourselves in the driver seat, started the car, equipped any necessary safety gear. First you must choose a “target” corner for you to initiate drift on, otherwise, you’ll just be uncontrollably turning everywhere. Give yourself distance and time to prepare.
Start driving your car by going into first gear, If you don’t know how to do this, we have an article on that as well by clicking How To Drive Manual Car, now that you’re giving your car a smooth start, shift into the second gear and gradually increase speed to about 30mph and set your engine RPM to about 3,000.
Once you have approached the desired corner, you begin by rapidly turning your wheel in the direction of the corner and just as quickly you counter steer into the opposite direction, causing the vehicle’s weight to throw over on the side, allowing it to lose traction in the rear wheels. This is the moment.
Now you’re in a drift motion, to stay in a drift motion and complete the turn sideways, you must keep the engine RPM steady, your foot must always be on the gas pedal, if you lift the pedal, you lose power to the wheels, and your vehicle would go into the spin, or just stall. If you’re seeing yourself going into the spin, depress the clutch pedal to prevent engine stalling, saving yourself time to restart, and your starter life. Keep your foot on the gas pedal and keep up the engine RPM until you complete your desired corner.
Congratulations, you have drifted your first corner, and I’m happy you did it with Grassroots Drifting! There are other techniques on how to initiate your drift that we will cover in the next article, and there will be another article on how to transition your car into the second turn. First, practice your basic initiations in a safe environment such as organized drift events which are posted in the calendar section of our website, or an abandoned parking lot with no objects to hit, as it is, still a dangerous sport, and could cause an injury or damage to your car. Please refrain yourself from attempting these stunts in a public area, with public present, or someone else's private property, it’s not worth it.