Drifting is only faster if you hold it long enough to get the blue/gold/purple sparks because you get a speed boost when you straighten out. I thought everyone knew this 🤔🤔
The only time drifting is faster is on loose surfaces in which you would have to slow down MUCH further in order to maintain static friction, such as dirt, gravel, or snow.
I thought it would be pretty obvious that drifting was indeed slower, like the great drift king Keiichi Tsuchiya once said “I drift not because it is a quicker way around a corner, but it is the most exciting way”
It's not more grip but rather forcing the car into a tighter turn which is faster by using the wheels similar to a slot car has a slot to force it around corners.
its also ironic how you NEED to be drifting to do that move on some gutters. as a lot of simracers found out. the amount of slip angle you use is simply determined by the amount of static grip you have + tyre wear (if youre worried about it). except this trick gives you free static grip. so hell yes, that makes drifting advantageous. except here we have this pesky thing called mortality too.
My boyfriend swears that its the paint job that determines a car's speed. Everyone knows painting flames on your car makes it go faster- even faster then the racing stripe that some Mustangs come with on their high end Shelby model.
It's also very important to take into account the racing surface. In rally racing, the surface is very loose so the maximum acceleration the rally cars can produce is reduced, placing a higher importance on conserving the velocity you bring into the turn, resulting in some turns being taken in a style similar to drifting. Aaaand lol you mentioned rally anyway. OK KYLE I GUESS I CAN'T BEAT YOU.
Also, being aligned the the straightaway in a rally earlier gives more time to accelerate. I watched a guy gain about half a lap just by getting the correct position while turning using drifting.
Drifting pros: Looks cool, Kicks up a lot of smoke that could obscure a pursuing car's visibility. Drifting cons: Slower, destroys tires faster, more likely to result in a collision, consumes more gas at higher sustained RPMs which reduces available distance to escape, puts additional wear on the engine, kicks up a lot of smoke that can make you easier to track from aerial pursuers (like a police helicopter). Result: Like shooting from the hip, drifting is best left to the movies. Additional thoughts: A more realistic escape vehicle will look very plain-Jane (like a Honda accord or Toyota Camry painted silver), but be outfitted with better suspension and tires, and possibly a stripped interior and enlarged gas tank. You want to be able to blend into traffic after breaking the police line of sight. You won't do that in a tricked out brightly colored, loud, gas-guzzling sports car that is kicking up smoke. It looks cool, but it's just silly. Also, a get away car must be cheap enough to ditch. Ditching a $150K suped up sports car is just retarded when your goal is a successful heist, as that will eat into your profits considerably more than an $8K used car with about $8K worth of upgrades. It's a lot easier to walk away from $16K than $150K.
Yeah, I thought the same too. A drift car is literally built different and thrives in a state of controlled chaos, while it doesn't have the necessary stability to put down it's power on an optimal race line, and to get around fast and efficiently. I think it would have been even more apparent that drifting is slower if they had used a "normal" race car or even a road car with enough power, just power sliding. That way the lap times would have been way more apart from each other. Although 3 seconds slower is already an eternity in racing.
Well, to drift wouldn't make you faster, as stated in the video and in @WarlandWriter's comment, but to keep your tires always firmly onto the pavement also isn't the whole answer. In some scenarios, it's actually faster to allow your tires to slide. This may not be called "Drifting", but it's close enough. Even though Rally driving was addressed in the video, the whole story was not told. As gravel and dirt roads deliver a substantially lower friction coefficient compared to asphalt, lap times, or more accurately time per stages, would be significantly slower if the drivers tried to always avoid slipping and sliding. To drift means in this case to carry far more speed through the corners compared to forementioned slip-less driving by allowing the rear to swerve. Another example concerning this is driving on a snowy road. With friction even lower, driving speed is also utterly decreased, making it faster to allow the rear to slide. In non-mathematical terms, a sliding rear is just the rear axle trying to overtake the front as it is traveling with greater cornering speeds as the static friction allows, thus kinetic friction is to be applied. Concerning solid roads, to slide or not to slide is also highly dependend on the vehicle being used. @viperconcept has made a great video treating this topic, here is a link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LOCLOinA_fs.html . The quintessence is that when driving cars with high grip levels, eg. F1, LMP, GT..., it's quicker to utilize a "clean" driving style, so not to drift. On the other hand, cars with low grip are faster when driven "dirty", with a sliding rear. As to why Odi's drifting laps were slower, even though his car clearly wasn't a F1 car, he still used slick, or semi-slick tyres, so tyres with high amounts of grip as compared to road-legal treaded tyres, and used a hard, for racetrack use sutible suspension setup as indicated by rolecage and overall use of the car. High amounts of grip combined with forced sliding of the rear axle meant that drifting times were slower. Higher grip means that Odi had to spend way more energy to get the tyres slipping that he had to sacrifice speed. Had the slide come naturally by an excess of speed, things might have beed different. The problem also lies within that he was having slipping tyres at points on the track where in the first laps he was already comfortably accelerating, thus losing time, which is the MAIN reason why top-level race drivers DON'T drift or powerslide as time spent with slipping wheels means less time being spent on getting faster. This is also the reason why burnout starts are slower than starts where spinning wheels are kept to a minimum. Also, the car's handling is important. When it is stable, so not overly under- or oversteer, there is no point in trying to get the car rotating more than necessary as it's already following nicely the driver's input through the steering wheel. But in the case where the car is overly stable or unstable, so that it either reluctantly turns into the corner or tends to go into a spin, it's better and faster to slide. An understeering car, primarily FWD cars, a quick flick with the steering wheel so to get the back sliding will encourage the car to corner, and also to do it faster. A skidding rear, as found in torquy RWD or rear-focused 4WD cars, can't really be tamed. Avoiding slides means the car will be driven below its limit, so powerslides and slight drifts are to be favoured as the car's full potential can be unlocked, as long as the are coming from the car, not from over-aggressive driver inputs, notably a too far pressed gas pedal. I may not be as eloquent as @WarlandWriter or Kyle with mathematical formulas describing this issue, but I happen to know this to be true from personal driving experience. In conclusion, drifting isn't always faster, while clean driving also isn't faster at every occasion. As in everything in life, a middle ground has to be found. Clean driving is best utilized at high grip levels and/or with a stable car. Drifting, well, not exactly drifting, but sliding is best used, when the overall grip conditions are poor, as in rain, gravel roads, snow etc. or when the car is tending to overdo it in wanting to corner (oversteering) or in a lack thereof (understeering). With a bazillion of factors and circumstances, Kyle, your video isn't giving the whole answer. To drift or not to drift can be a deeply philosophical question, with its answers only fitting one scenario each. P.S.: Dom might actually be faster when drifting, as muscle cars, which his cars clearly are, are prone to be torquy and unwilling to follow a straight path. Powersliding would be better in his case, which is, btw, canon as he does so in the latest installment in Russia with his 2000+ hp monster. ;-) P.P.S.: A great example for a slide-heavy driving style would be Juan-Manuel Fangio, five times F1 world champion in the 50's. He perfected the art to slide around almost every corner whereby all four wheels were pointed straight ahead, giving the appearance in pictures that he drove straight. Somewhat similar was Michael Schumacher's driving style. He kept driving his F1 race cars like they were gokarts from his youth, which resulted in him drifting, though only slight, around corners by a big margin faster tha his opponents. There exist videos on RU-vid wherein his telemetry data are compared to his then-teammate Johnny Herbert, detailing exactly his faster corner speeds through Maggots and Becketts at Silverstone. Gerhard Berger, who inherited Schumacher's cockpit with Benetton after the latter's departure to Ferrari , later described how the 1996 car was very unstable, thus helping to achieve a drifting F1 car. And, I mean, 7 world championships speak for themselfes. P.P.P.S.: Whoever finds grammatical errors may keep them. Finders, keepers, after all. :D
I think this can be dumbed down to a simple statement: "Drifting is faster if your car is going to break away in the turn ANYWAY. Otherwise, holding the line is better." Traction = Power Applied. Power Applied = Speed. No traction, no power, no speed. Honestly, I think drifting is more about maintaining control in difficult turns than speed itself and acts as an alternate form of dynamic braking. After all, every second the wheels spend out of alignment with your velocity vector, they're bleeding energy into the pavement. It's a give-and-take relationship. You can definitely get some benefit from it in the correct turn conditions, but the question is whether that benefit outweighs the performance of holding the line so that power applied goes back in RIGHT on cue. And that's a matter of vehicle, conditions, the turn itself, and experience. If you don't know your vehicle's handling characteristics, and you're doing something like a high speed getaway, trying to drift on purpose is little more than reckless driving. Perhaps even Fatal. Try drifting an SUV with high friction coefficient between tires and surface? That's not a drift, that's a rollover waiting to happen.
There's a point in the transition from static to kinetic friction that a little slippage creates more friction force than static friction. Some drag racers call it "hazing" the tires. The friction coefficient is slightly lower than static but the tire is spinning faster than it would if it wasn't slipping a little. If you can manage that accelerating through a curve or out of a corner you can get through it quicker than full, showy drifting or not slipping at all. It also tears up tires and you're more likely to lose control.
“Daddy’s gotta science!” You always make me laugh and love science, never ever will I get tired of this show! I hope you get to do this for as long as you want!
Drifting's initial application was used in downhill racing in an effort to brake as little as possible, thusly maintaining a higher overall speed. I would expect that a drift would be superior in that specific situation rather than grip racing. Granted, I'm no scientist, but this thought occurred to me while watching this video. Great show guys, long time watcher, first time commenter. Keep up the awesome work.
TL:DW. No, most of the time. Drifting is marginally faster if the car you are driving is going to understeer and/or lose speed/traction on that corner anyway. You can retain slightly more speed by drifting around the corner then if you take the corner wide and have to break late. However, with more grip there will never be a time where drifting is going to be better than maintaining traction and speed. Naturally this is why you see people racing offroad using it in races but almost no one on a racetrack use it outside of a drifting event. Personal point. Why is this video only talking about breaking entries? While handbrake entries are common and easy, it's still very easy to just counter steer once you lose traction in the rear wheels anyway (RIP my minispooled R31 and your bent chassis rail). Also: Love the S14 swap on that s-chassis.
@Big Red Ball "Naturally this is why you see people racing offroad using it in races but almost no one on a racetrack use it outside of a drifting event." There you have it. Drifting on a Racetrack is slower. Offroad is a different story. Less grip. Same in a Rally. On a Streettrack the rule is, smooth is fast.
It depends on the turn on the track because smaller curves you wouldn't drift anyway but she turning without drifting can require a harder press it the break showing you down and with drifting even on a track it you got the notification you don't lose speed and have a boost to straighten out with at the end of the turn making you faster... Drifting every turn will make you slower but a real drifter knows not to drift every turn anyway
You also have to take into account the wear on the tires if you're drifting. If it's a short race, then sure, MAYBE it might be beneficial if you're good enough, but in a longer race, you're gonna be losing grip and you're gonna be sliding if you go long enough, that or you're gonna need to pit more often
Kyle, aren't you going to answer Groot's corrections? After all, he said, "I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot." You can't just brush that off.
How does the radius of the turn affect the time? What about the method of drifting? There's inertia drifing, e-brake drifting, and power sliding to name a few. I'd love to see a vid where you include these into your calculations too
Most people have never heard of Initial D. Especially outside of Japan. The Fast and Furious movies, on the other hand, are very well known across the world.
My thoughts exactly but only because the idea and popularity of drifting and how it ended up in Fast and the Furious is because of Initial D. The Japan one was also supposed to be like an homage to Initial D or something. That said the terrain argument Kyle closes with is exactly the point? It's popularized and a big part of Initial D because specifically the terrain the racers in Japan are using in the show, a twisty mountain, apparently works better with drifting than regular driving. It's very specific. Also just for funsies I don't think most people notice the title is Engrish cuz it's probably supposed to be Inertial D for inertial drift, but the two words are spelled the same in katakana so whoops.
Drifting is HELL on tires too. When I saw that loss of control on that second lap coming in, I knew that the tires were shredded even before the driver confirmed it - the friction practically smoked it to bits.
Me too, those are low racing wheels - there's probably not much left except for the ones closest to the rims. That car will need a full tuneup and some work down there as it was more or less scraping the asphalt when the tires gave way.
The Mythbusters had done a test like this, only using a non purpose built drift car, and they were on dirt. They found that the times were roughly the same because in some situations the time lost taking the corner slower was made up because they had less grip to accelerate with, meaning carrying more speed into and out of the corner helped immensely.
Gonna have to call you out on this one Kyle. Everyone knows drifting is slower, that's why no actual racing disciplines use it. Obviously you wanted an excuse to rip it up on track. That is something I can respect tho. Edit : I meant tarmac based racing. Obviously rally, ice and snow racing drift to keep momentum.
Yeah there are several race disciplines that's use drifting under certain conditions or situations to be faster. Like mike said, rallycross uses is around hairpin turns and loose terrain such as Gravel or dirt to throw the car as fast as it can go in a low grip environment. But also there is Formula Drift professional series and Gymkana. drivers are awarded points for speed and drift angle.
People ruined language with the shorthand. Pretty much everything has to do it, and after a while majority of people forget what it means. Ask any kid what msnbc means and if any get it right give them some money.
I had a discussion about drifting with a friend of mine recently, who said that although you can't go as fast drifting in turns, you can make sharper turns, which can turn out quicker if the distance lost is greater than the speed lost. Thus - so she claimed - drifting on a regular race track or on a highway is slower, because it was designed to make regular turns at high speeds. A city has much sharper turns and thus in a city it would be advantageous to drift. However, before she turns up and starts spreading her lies, I wanted to debunk that. First of all: Yes, you do indeed turn your wheels in relative to your centre of mass, and thus the turning radius of your front wheels becomes relatively smaller. However, turning your front wheels in does not allow you to cheat physics by making the centripetal force think that your centre of mass is now actually closer to the centre of your turn. You still need to supply a centripetal force to make your car go around the bend. This force (Fc) is dependent on mass m, velocity v and turning radius R by Fc=m*v^2/R. This means that at a certain velocity, you can't just choose a different R just because you happen to be drifting. Your centre of mass still needs to follow the same path for a given Fc and v. Which brings me to the next point. The limiting factor determining the ratio v^2/R is the maximum centripetal force you can supply. In this case this Fmax is supplied by the frictional force (Ff) of the wheels. Thus, rewriting the formula: Rmin=m*v^2/Ff Ff=mu*Fn=mu*Fg=mu*m*g, thus it is linearly dependent on mu. Thus, Rmin is proportional to v^2/mu. In a drift, mu decreases. Quite drastically, in fact. A quick calculation gave me that at a drift angle (theta) of 5 degrees, mu effectively becomes 10% smaller already. This means that while drifting, your turning radius would become 10% greater in order to maintain the same velocity, or you'd have to slow down by 5% in order to keep a 'normal' turning radius. Since half your wheels are using the kinetic friction, rather than the static friction you can never turn as efficiently as you would in a normal turn. (Which makes sense, as cars are designed to make normal turns.) Lastly, I wanted to address my personal biggest issue with my friend's argumentation: Turning your car sideways to make smaller turns is a terrible idea. I don't believe I have ever seen a car that was wider than it was long. Math. Suppose you have a car with length 2*L and width 2*w. The surface area that would need to be available for you to make a normal turn with radius R would be the area of a circle drawn by the outer edge of your car (R2=R+w) minus the area of a circle drawn by the inner edge of your car (R1=R-w). For a 90 degree turn, that boils down to: A=1/4*pi*R2^2-1/4*pi*R1^2=1/4*pi*((R+w)^2-(R-w)^2)=1/2 pi R w Same thing, now turn your car by an angle theta. R2=R+L*sin(theta)+w*cos(theta), R1=R-L*sin(theta)-w*cos(theta). Filling that in and simplifying gives: A=pi*R*(w*cos(theta)+L*sin(theta)). This means that at a 10 degree angle with a car 2 m wide and 5 m long, you've gained yourself 42 cms on either side, increasing your area by a whopping 184% (to me this seems a bit much, but I can't figure out where it went wrong either, so I'll assume it's correct. Also the fact that the relative increase does not depend on R seems weird to me.). Tl;dr, Sorry for unleashing the mathematical fury of my friendly discussions upon you. The turn you make drifting cannot be faster than a turn made normally because you can't change how your centre of mass behaves, and you will need a lot more space to execute the turn. Because science. (Can I say that or is that copyrighted? I don't know, it just feels like the right thing to say here, under a Because Science video. Hope you don't mind.)
okay you have a good point but let me explain in real life. just one imagine you are racing in a parking lot in real life drifting helps a lot for you to maintain the speed because im keeping the revs up and i dont have to downshift more than 2 gears (sometimes dont have to downshift at all) when compared to slowing down for a turn usually means going directly to 2nd or third gear while a good drift can be executed on 5th or 4th gear ( i know this by 7 yrs of experience) so after the turn i dont have to upshift again to get back my to my speed thus saving me time. on track drifting is definitely for fun only since turns are not sharp enough for a drift to be advantageous and yes races in multistory parking is pretty common
You lost me as soon as the math came in but I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying, it depends on the surface and vehicle type. For instance, rally cars and gravel. It's usually faster to slide because there is less grip to begin with so turning the entire car to the direction you want to go and using the power of all four wheels is better than just using just the front two.
WarlandWriter If the road friction is low, such as dirt track, drifting by over steering, to change the cornering angle quicker, and perhaps substitude braking before the corner. As we can see at super motard, or motorcycle racing on ice, where most of the time, drrrrrrifting is seem to be quicker.. IMHO. Thank you, for any feedback. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gQY4yW7Zl20.html
That guy didn't know anything about drifting. When you start drifting you have to move the steering wheel left to right until sparks come out of the wheels, then, when the sparks turn blue, you stop drifting and get a super turbo.
I watched a couple of the Fast & Furious movies and have always wondered... What kind of transmission has multiple gears for reverse? They're backing up fast, and they change gears to back up faster?! I don't suppose you could explain that one with science? :-D Kyle, you looked like you had an absolute blast! Thank you for letting us enjoy the trips around the track through your experience!
jaspr1999. There are transmissions with multiple reverse gears, however they are mostly found on vehicles such as tanks and large trucks. The cars in Fast and Furious would only have one reverse gear. I think they just tried to make the scene look cooler.
Joey Wilson, - I agree. When I was watching them do that in the movie I couldn't help but laugh as the lightest low/high gear transmission I know of is over 500 pounds, with additional accouterments adding another 300+ pounds, and way too heavy for a vehicle built for speed. In an interview with Vin Diesel, he said he kept asking about it and kept being told not to worry about it.
Mercedes actually has a multiple reverse gear transmission, also they do custom make stuff for these movies just look at the high speed reverse scene from 2 fast 2 furious.
Drifting:A way of turning corners by sliding the vehicle while maintaining control of it. Invented by Keiichi Tsuchiya aka Drift King. Introduced mainly by Pluspy, Initial D and Fast and Furious (mainly Tokyo Drift). Formula: Great engine sound+great car+great songs(such as Eurobeat)+skill+cup filled with water+manual shifting=drifting Best performed in RWD cars, FWD also suggested but AWD not.
I think there is only one example where intentional drifting yields a faster result. There is a rally car manoeuvre called the Scandinavian Flick (or a pendulum turn in the US I think) that is performed on a 180˚ or hair pin turn. By breaking and throttling at the same time, the rear wheels of the car have a lower wheel RPM. Steering opposite to the turn while entering and then using the sideways torque the rear of the car follows the arc of a circle with the front wheels act as the centre point of the circle. The car basically swings like a pendulum. While overall speed is not really different, the advantage are that the car is oriented to leave the hair pin turn in a straight line and that a decent engine RPM is maintained. It was good that you brought up rally car drivers but this was also done by prohibition era bootleggers. In this case, it is not a simple speed advantage but utilises the fact that the front wheels steer and the rear wheels apply power (or in the case of AWD, the rear wheels apply greater power). ETA: The sentence should read "the rear wheels of the car have a HIGHER wheel RPM".
That maneuver works for rally cars, yes. But not on pavement. Even on turns like the Grand Hotel Hairpin at Monoco, nobody ever drifts. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ed8zaLh2WBw.html
I can think of another, and that's from a complete stop. You know, like a (presumably sane) driver would normally use at an intersection in a city/street/non-track-or-highway setting.
ringlhach I think drag racing might not conform to your definition of sane but oversized drag slicks are made with a thin side wall to act like a spring. Also, by distorting, the contact patch is increased resulting in an increase in static friction. This stores some of the tires energy which is released when the speed of the car reaches the point where the car's foreward motion and the resulting tire rotation allows kinetic friction to take over. Like rally driving, these are in no way normal circumstances. Anyone that thinks drifting on a city street has an IQ lower than his car's horsepower by an order of magnitude. No sane person would do this on a public street. Res ipsa loquitur. PS Because using special characters, as in formulae, in annoying in text, I am using coefficient of friction and total friction, both static and kinetic, interchangeably. I know that it is annoying but it is for simplicity.
Neil Evans I wonder if that is due to the characteristics of the car itself, i.e. power to weight ratio, tire characteristics and longevity (factoring a couple extra tire changes during a race might eat up any time gains). I know that NASCAR racers have four unique tires on every car, i.e. the left are different from the right and the fronts are different from the rears (similar to the unidirectional tires on a Porsche as the rears are larger than the fronts). Though I have never really thought about a really complex system like an F1 car. Racing is about efficiency where drifting is about style. Race car designers would probably prefer to remove paint and decals from the car design as it is dead weight.
commatoes "Racing is about efficiency where drifting is about style." You hit the nail on the head right there. And yes, it absolutely is about the characteristics of the vehicle. Not only tire life (which is a valid point), but suspension setup, engine mapping, weight, and so many other factors combine to make racecars what they are. I made a comment a little bit below about how drift cars specifically set up their suspensions to increase their ability to change from static to kinetic friction. This is entirely opposite of race cars, wherein they do everything in their power to maintain traction (static friction).
I think what we here in KY call a state boy slide is about the only applicable use on regular streets. It's sort of drifting/sliding to catch up around corners, especially on gravel or dirt. Not regular or even somewhat tight curves.
Groot is voiced by an actor who is in the fast and furious movies, the episode is about the fast and furious movies... so how exactly is the reference irrelevant? And what the hell does the quality of Groot's 'speeches' have to do with relevance!?
Kyle, you also have to remember. The suspension setting on this car are done to make the car more stable while sliding. If you were to have taken the time (not a sensible option) to make sure to optimise the car for grip driving, you would have had to change the springs, change damper valving settings, changed the sway bars (or add one in the case of the front suspension) you would have had a much bigger difference in lap times than just 3 seconds. That car was really unstable during the grip laps, but like.i said, it was set up.to slide and it did that really well.
1:15 into the video, lemme just ruin this for ya guys. If you are drifting your tires have gone beyond their limit of grip so you are no longer putting the maximum amount of your engines power to the ground, therefore it is not faster. A proper racing turn allows you to accelerate for the last half of the turn.
Sean Person - though there was only a 3sec difference and the driver proposed a quicker lap. There's obviously opportunities where it can be beneficial to slide/drift. Quite disappointed this couldn't be adressed enTIREly..
3 seconds on a track that takes 1 minute to go around is days in racing time. Yes there are sometimes where it may be advantageous but again if you are racing a proper line and hitting all the corners how you should, you only MIGHT need to drift if you need to pass someone who is slower than you but in your way.
I bet if they had set up that drift car like an actual race car it would have gone much more than 3 seconds faster per lap. Some example of the differences would be different rear spring rates, a different rear sway bar, different shock valving and different camber angles front and rear. So for a drift car to go 3 seconds faster (5.5%) per lap not drifting, that is a big difference.
You guys are also ignoring rally races (dirt courses) where you never really have static friction and it that case drifting is not only faster but necessary to stay on the road at speed
2 things -- 1) Drifting CAN be just a tiny bit faster, if a) it's power-on drifting as you exit a corner, and b) you don't have to countersteer. 2) Drifting on an off-road course can sometimes be the fastest relatively-safe way around a corner. See also: WRC footage from previous winners. But the rest of the time, you're totally better off not purposefully evoking a drift.
But, 1) above is not what most people consider "drifting", although it is a loss of traction while experiencing lateral Gs while your steering wheel is pointed somewhere else.
Drifting from what I understand it, is a controlled slide. Cars are designed to grip the road and increase the friction to allow grip. When the tire is spinning that grip translates to higher acceleration and speed. When you slide you loose that friction and so retain some amount of speed due to the lack of friction. Think of it like Hydroplaning. Hitting the brakes will only cause your tire to lock up and cause you to loose total control over the vehicle due to lack of friction with the road. It will not slow you down and reestablish the lost connection with the road. The problem I see with drifting over not is that often times to create the "drift event", you have to use the brakes. So already you are slowing yourself down in anticipation of the drift. You are entering the turn slower than if you were just going to grip through it. Without the needed grip of the road, you are no longer able to accelerate back to your prior speed. It takes precious time to regain that control of the vehicle and re-accelerate after you exit the turn. This translates directly to the slower laptimes. You loose a lot of speed drifting due to the use of the brake -- hand or otherwise -- while regaining control over the vehicle. Also the risk to your tires and chances of spinning out as showcased in this video are another good reason why Drifting would not be ideal for an escape.
If you want to be fast you need power and grip. If you drift you throw away grip and speed but have more fun and look badass (if you do it right). It's basically impossible to be faster on a lap drifting than normal driving in almost all cases. But that isn't the point of drifting, drifting is *A R T* It's not Fast. But it's Furious.
CROblazer420 unless you're on a dirt road at 200km/h and have a 30° turn left. You change car position in advance go down to 120km/h,but your car has good position on road and high RPM.
@@gradywilliams383 The video asked if it was faster with respect to the Fast and Furious movies. I've only ever seen the 1st three but from what I recall they only drifted during get aways or in extremely curvy high incline or declined areas. For the Tokyo Drift movie they always raced in places like parking garages and mountains. He also stated that professional drivers all agreed that drifting is always slower, but then also stated that it was useful in low traction scenarios, rally.
dude, there's a lot os aspects you're not taking into account.. - there's Specialized tires for drifting; - speed in and out the curve differs in grip and drift; - the suspension set up is different in both sports... and so on, and so forth...
The suspension set up is different? Take any stock car, take it on a track of your choosing then make a couple laps by drifting and gripping. Grip will always be faster.
What he's saying is that the drift car Odi is driving is not setup for grip, everything is different, camber, gear setup. It makes a huge difference.. For example, a RU-vidr did this exact track with donut media in a Mazda Miata and it was one second slower than Odi's drift car. Odi is a professional driver... He'd be able to go alot faster if he had setup his 240 for a circuit rather than drift.
Well yes, that's obvious. I thought he was another one of those people that think drifting is faster, which is just retarded. What I meant by my comment was that you can eliminate all that and make it fair game by taking a completely stock car, grip will always come out on top.
I'm using an example here, I work with a group of guys in short oval track racing, incredible stuff and a great experience to see. When they go around the oval they actual try to slide the corner just a little bit, to keep the car smooth, yes gripping may be faster but in an application such as that it's good because it helps the car rotate around the corner allowing you to push off the inside and glide to the outside of the oval into the straight. This style comes with lots of practice in oval racing, years of technique and learning.
because u just cant drift on f1 because u die, the structure of f1 car make that they can go fust, so the forces push on it much hire, than it on normal cars
Yea f1 pulls some incredible g forces when they set down on bumps. Truthfully a lot of research went into their tires but those cars are all aerodynamics.
There is one factor that I believe has not been considered: every car has two important curves: torque and horsepower and the peak of these two curves occurs at high revs (in petrol cars). As such, a drifting car could keep the engine in a rev range so as to maximize these two variables, and thus be more efficient than just braking and cornering. Electric cars are a completely different story :). I also think that using drift only in sharp turns will be better than drifting in all corners. Just a thought ;)
Didn't the Mythbusters test this though? I think they also came to the conclusion that even at the best curve for drifting it's at best just as fast and for the majority of curves, especially >90° ones not drifting is much faster. But it's been a while. I think they also mentioned the advantage of not having to re-up the revs. But I also think an expert driver can use the gears to always stay at optimal revs, even decellerating.
Lt_Joker correct. If a driver knows how to heel-toe downshift well, he will most likely be in the optimal gear and in the optimal power band to accelerate out of the corner faster. Most cars that have paddle shifters will automatically blip the throttle to provide that Heel-toe effect. Also drifting is slower because you are wasting more energy and traction by using it to keep you sideways in drift rather than propel you forward as the tire was intended. If you create wheelspin, you inherently lose much of forward grip, in fact it creates less grip than what the tires could originally handle.
One other advantage to drifting would be the smoke. If you kick up enough of it and learn to control the drift correctly, you could conceivably trick pursuers about which way you turned.
Check out grip vs drift with Keiichi Tsuchiya, unfortunately its in Japanese but, they show that up to a 4 degree slip angle is marginally faster than a grip run, with a full drift being the slowest. Is drifting faster, yes. But only if you don't care about increased tire wear and fuel consumption.
Physics says that using 100% of your engine's power to propel your vehicle in the desired direction is *always* faster than using 20% of it to turn your tires into dust. It's a mathematical fact. Thanks Thermodynamics!
Science isn't wrong but grip vs slip is too complicated for a simple power to friction curve, many many more factors involved, your outlook on this is far too simple. "It's a mathematical fact" "thanks thermodynamics" dropping science words and trying to act smug when you never gave any thought to the amount of variables you're not considering Ohhh boi. Turning a corner and drift/slip are fundamentally different, for one in a drift you are turning in the opposite direction to the corner, what is taking you around is actually understeer. 100% engine power in a given direction is a fallacy, we're looking at what is faster round a corner, not if the cars put out the same amount of power and one had less friction which would be faster. Drifting car can apply more power than a car limited to grip, I will explain. When taking a corner grip only, the limiting factor to your speed is the amount of grip or friction the tires can provide without slipping, the tires slip or skid when the inertial forces are greater than the grip the tires can provide, this will be the maximum speed you can take the corner without losing control. When drifting, the inertia of the car will, along with other factors change the arc the car makes around the corner, but your speed is not limited to the maximum grip the tires provide as with the grip car. Following on, a misconception that Kyle fell into is that the car in a grip run is accelerating around the corner, in order to take most corners optimally the driver will decelerate hard approaching the corner matching the speed and thus inertia to the highest amount the tires can take to maximise speed, the driver will take the corner at a constant speed then accelerate out of the corner, this is important to remember that the car is not accelerating. At a small slip angle the friction on the back tires is barley reduced yet because of the angle the car is permitted to accelerate into the corner away from the direction of momentum. Key here being the difference in the angle of acceleration as opposed just driving around a corner. There is way more stuff to factor in and many more variables to account for but this is a youtube comment so wtf. To reiterate real life is way more complicatied than a couple of equasions and your perceived understanding of how something works. TLDR; Angle of acceleration > reduced friction "at small slip angles".
Sounds like Im not the one slingin around science words willy nilly. Drifting is OVERSTEER. Holy shit. As soon as you said its about understeer (being unable to turn as hard as you would like) i just... I couldnt read the rest of that trash. Drifting is faster on loose surfaces *only*. Thats it.
The major advantage of drifting around tight corners is aligning your tires for the straight faster and thus being able to accelerate out of the tight turn quicker, not the drift itself.
But we already know the coefficient of kinetic friction is less advantageous to acceleration than the coefficient of static friction... SMH. Drifting is a waste of tires AND TIME when it comes to lap times. That is always true.
You are talking about sliding the car not drifting it and also if you do that you run the risk of spinning out at the exit since you will be at the real edge between grip and loss of grip. Drifting would involve a slide just like a rally car which is the worst way around a corner on tarmac.
There is a difference between drift and powerslide. Most fast and furious races feature powerslides. Though powerslides will still be a slow option than proper racing lines they still can be a good way to get your car in perfect position for 90 or crazy 180 degree turns with delayed braking before the turn and early acceleration after. Also fun video to watch nevertheless.
@@Utubesuperstar it doesn't work like that! You can still drift with a awd cars and still do a power slide with rwd cars.. for example Ken block does drifting with awd cars! The difference is in the style. Mostly a drift is initiated before the apex of the turn and its held for a longer duration. Power slide is initiated mostly after the apex of the turn and its used to get your car to a disired angle.
You always want to be on the edge of your tires' grip. Drifting involves going over that, wasting power and lateral grip. Even with an understeer-prone car, drifting will be slower than simply maximizing what grip it's already got(understeer prone can also mean you lay down power quicker, so you are mostly managing your apex speeds). That said, purposely drifting can be a good occasional blocking tactic if the trailing car is close enough to not have the space to maneuver around your slower moving vehicle. The real key is knowing when to use which tool in your toolbox.
Anyone who follows professional racing knows the answer. Even playing a racing video game it's really clear. You're going nowhere sideways. You can't accelerate effectively
I was taught that a drift is a tool you use when braking will produce understeer (e.g. entering a corner way too fast). Drifting is then used to produce oversteer in such a way that you are now using the gas pedal to reduce speed and maintain control of the vehicle
1:41 Without friction you wouldn't be able to MOVE anywhere since you need friction for the tires touching the road, to move you forwards, or backwards.
Woah, I was NOT expecting this video to be so in depth. I love the detail you go into in all of your videos, but generally speaking, non-car focused channels can't usually get car stuff correct. You sure as hell did, though. As a lifelong car enthusiast, part-time mechanic, and weekend autocross racer, I can most definitely say that *you absolutely nailed it.* Glad you pointed out the applications of drifting in rally. Really, a greater slip angle on loose surfaces will yield faster times than that same driving style on tarmac/pavement. (And you should really try driving a car with a manual transmission! It's so much more engaging and arguably safer than driving with an automatic!) Great stuff!
What do you mean? People drift on rough terrain not because its faster but because its faster than slowing down enough to retain traction in that context
@@mondaysinsanity8193 it’s faster in low grip no grip scenarios because you are using your power to turn cause your wheels don’t have the grip to do so
@@mondaysinsanity8193 really do you have any real world experience or training? Cause I do it’s a simplification but you do use throttle as a way to help turn
3 seconds is a large difference in racing, but one thing not mentioned or overlooked is that the car you did your testing it was designed and built around drifting which gave it a little bit of an advantage in the drift scenario. I also didn't notice you mention anything about tire swapping so the tires you were riding on probably were more drift focused than race grip. So with that said, the actual time difference could be much greater with cars that are not favoring one method or the other. Edit: Oh, and it's kind of the same principle when stopping. This is why anti lock brakes are so much more effective than skidding to a stop.
Not a driver, let alone a race/stunt driver, but I'm betting the big advantage to drifting is the ability to take sharp corners and hairpin turns without having to gear down (as much). But only during those instances. The unavoidable drawback is accelerated tire wear. And the possible loss of control, as the vehicle is sliding.
Switching gears really doesn't take any significant amount of time, especially if you have a sequential transmission. And it depends on the corner, or rather the speed with which you can take it at. If your car doesn't have a lot of torque throughout the rev range, you're not gonna go drift a hairpin in 5th gear going 40km/h
Drifting can be faster on very slow corners, but it's very hard to do it, and you'll normally end up on a spin, doing it normally is faster most of the time simply because it's easier to do
Starfire Storm no, it's not. If the drifting car enters the corner faster than the nondrifting car maybe? But it's the concept as to why someone on ice skates will travel the rink faster than someone just wearing shoes, while drifting you have less control of the car.
Bigger advantage at a U-turn to downshift and pull the handbrake t flick the backend around the corner rather than going full throttle to forxe the back tgrough the corner. Just led it slide
While drifting in general may be slower, it’s primarily used for downhill racing in Japan, which was the main point of the third FF movie. Look into an anime called Initial D.
i've actually done some gokart drifting on a indoor track. what i found was that if i drift long turns i lose time compared to just turning. but racing is about getting through a turn, then accelerating as fast as you can up to the next turn, then slowing down as fast as u can (with control), to take the next turn as fast as u can. on sharper turns, u can actually drift through the turn faster. however, coming out of the turn and getting down the straight to the next turn is slower because you've lost the friction between the tires and the ground. HOWEVER, er, sometimes you can drift a turn so much faster than slowing down to take it normally, that u have more time to let your tires hook back up with the ground and get up to top speed, orrrr get through the turn faster and maintain high rpm/low friction but carry that speed, at an angle, down a short straight and get into the next turn where u can slow down a bit, let the tires hook up and accelerate down a longer straight faster. drifting every turn would definitely be slower, but drifting some turns should be faster. but the biggest problem is tire wear. if you took tire wear out of the equation, i'm certain that most racers would be drifting certain turns and taking other turns normally in most races. but then they would go through 3 sets of tires to one set by someone not drifting at all. TL;DR: drifting some turns, but not all, would be faster than taking every turn normally. but would be harder on the tires.
would these numbers change at all depending on the angle of the turn? like taking a wide turn like in your test sure drifting would be slower but what about on sharp u-turns where the driver would have to slow down significantly more to make the turn?
Dillon Highsmith Sadly no. Even then the grip approach yields superior results as you maintain apex. Maximum speed. Keep in mind any advantage on the track is lost when you factor in tire longevity. It looks cool and is lots of fun to do but there's a reason all high performance cars highly favor apex. Rally is a bit of an exception.
Lucifer 69 if you had trouble slowing down you might want to drift. That's exactly why rally uses it, their roads are a lot more slippery than f1's rubbery asphalt. They lose traction a lot faster.
shinarit You clearly didn't read my entire post. Rally is the exception but apex still wins. Slip results in a loss of speed. Always. Designing a car to meet all track conditions is difficult so they compensate by drifting tricky turns. Rally is less about drifting and more about endurance and actually finishing the race. Edit: On a track there is no reason to drift. Even if it was faster you would burn through your tire in a single lap. 2 tops on a decent length track.
if you're going down a road like Irohazaka (www.google.no/maps/place/1st+Irohazaka/@36.7120573,139.5109434,5462a,35y,38.37t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x601fa8b144b7a34b:0x71b581f4c7fbd942!8m2!3d36.7452806!4d139.5135355?hl=en) it would be faster to drift, or on a really narrow road with sharp turns.
Drifting in movies is cars acting. Like dramas or rom coms or even pornography, it's portraying not how something is, but how it feels. Speeding away feels like what drifting looks like.
No because you are effectively losing traction which means you lose tire to the skids. And also no direction from the skids. Plus when racing you brake more so you keep traction to regain speed but if you drift you are risking destroying the axles due to torque apon regaining traction. Have you seen what happens to all of the test cars that top gear BBC had when they drifted. Tires get shredded( AMG Mercedes, Porsche and all chaterham cars.)
Callum Moon well they were sliding over dramatically for every single corner in this so it’s not really a fair test, especially if you want to compare them to someone with balls of neutron stars in a lightweight, borderline professionally tuned car in an environment where drifting is not only advantageous but almost necessary for that level of speed.
Drifting allows to drive a curve faster than would be possible while having normal grip. If you take a curve with normal grip too fast you get off the road. If you drift you accelerate more towards the center of the curve you are driving, thus staying on the road. If you had an infinitely strong car you could drive a 90° turn full speed, while drifting. So drifting is faster in corners.
Depends, drifting is only faster if you experience understeer during cornering. If your car turn the curve with no understeer, drifting would cause slower lap time than normal grip.
I thought drifting would be faster because normal driving requires that you actively decelerate to take a turn, and then you need to accelerate. But with drifting, you don't need to decelerate as much because the inertia is going one direction, but the tires are producing a force in another direction, and when you are getting out of the curve, as the inertia loses energy, the firce applied by the tires has less opposition and can accelerate, so you accelerate before you get out of the curve. Now, Kyle Hill, I know your resources are limited, but none of those curves are very closed, that is where you really want to use drifting, so you have to decelerate the least posdible instead of wiggling the car to get it to drift. So, probably in harder curves, drifting is indeed faster.
Mythbusters tested this and found that it was slower in practice than making a normal turn! Really good episode on both sides! Can't wait to see what you tackle next!
I think it depends on the angle and radius of the turn. If you have 90° turns with small radius, it might be faster. It also lets you change your direction more abruptly, which is advantegous in a chase. (I might be wrong in any or all of this...)
I think the way I heard it explained was that the higher the coefficient of grip is (That is, the total amount of lateral force allowed through the interaction of tires and the surface), the lower the optimal slip angle is. This would explain why rally cars use a high slip angle on gravel, because the road facilitates a very low coefficient. Then you could also look at GT3 cars as a mid point on the spectrum of grip, because in low speed corners for qualifying, when the aero isn’t working as hard, those cars have a relatively small amount of slip angle, but also much more noticeable than an F1 car. I also specified qualifying because running the car with any slip angle heats up the tires like a madman, and most endurance cars avoid going full tilt for just that reason, as the heat makes the overall times much slower.
When talking about F1 cars, you ignore the umpteen wings/spoilers which only provide significant amounts of downforce when driving forward and not sliding sideways. Ever see what happens when an F1 car's air isn't clean and their spoilers don't provide the downforce they're expecting? It's not so pretty.