The Truth Behind Drift Racing - Mythbusters - S09 EP03 - Science Documentary 

Walter Röhrl says that drifting is faster on gravel, snow and other loose surfaces. However, if the road surface is made of solid material such as tarmac or concrete, then a clean line with as little steering angle as possible is faster!

Watching this in 2024, and seeing them crash that 240SX over and over again was hard knowing the price of such a clean S chassis...

"I Drift not because its a quicker way round a corner, but it's the most exciting" - Keiichi Tsuchiya.

3:02 "Our drifting instructor today is professional driver..." STIG???

This is one of those ones where you go, "If it was faster, every racing driver would do it". Rally is really the only time it makes sense when you're going for time over style.

Every 14 year old all of a sudden becomes both an experienced driver and theoretical physicist every time a drift video is put online 😂

26:30, option 3, someone used whatever piece of equipment was handy and smashed the ladder upwards to keep people from climbing it.

That guy Conrad can drive like crazy

I would've liked to have seen them test this on different road surfaces: wet, gravel, dirt, and even snow if possible, and see how the results compared.

This is my favorite episode ever, seeing Adam's reaction to himself pulling off a sick drift. I know that feeling and it's pure adrenaline filled joy, if you've ever done it real good you know that particular kind of laugh 😁

Thanks for the uploads..can't wait for a new episode to drop...makes my day everytime. Please if possible could you maybe please upload episodes from season 1 upwards after this season❤

Audio getting better! 🤗Thank you for bringing these back.🤗

I wonder what Conrad’s time was in the last course drive.

That's because he's not Fujiwara and doesn't practice 3 years with a paper cup full of water!

This last limo drift was crazy if rly it was hes first try like they showed to us xd

That jet flying by looks a lot like a Dassault/Dornier AlphaJet, it may be one of the few civilian operated Alphajets in the US.

Jamie drifts like a *savage* 🤣

Is drifting faster? It depends on the car, the surface, the corner, and a number of other factors, but usually no.

Honestly it depends. On a solid surface, since that's primarily what the mythbusters are testing, it depends on drive train, corner geometry, the straights in and out of the corner, tyre wear/temps, fuel levels, and the driver's state of mind. It also depends on what you're doing. I'm mostly a sim racer but with track experience from ameuter racing series. And there's a reason in competitive driving we aren't tandem drifting around corners and the only time I see a car sideways on track is when someone's done it unintentionally or in drift specific events. Most of the time grip is faster. But there are exceptions for specific drive trains on specific corner layouts. an FWD car can benefit from rotating the car early on fast corners by locking up the rear wheels. AWD can benefit in slow corners. If there's a moment when your drivetrain can benefit from rotating early then drift may be quicker. However it's hard on tyres and if you're only going for a single fast time you may benefit from the drift. Over a race, you're going to absolutely smash your tyres and slow down your car compared to grip over the length of the race. Therefore drift is faster with particular corners and drive trains but it depends what your priorities are when it comes to tyre management. The other biggie is risk if you have other people sharing the track and you send her' into a drift unpredictably. Is that tenth of a second you save drifting your AWD car around that wide hairpin worth the risk to your car as a whole if you want to secure a win? No.

I love it that with these all new videos i still can feel like a 10 years old kid watching your things on Discovery Channel. Edit and Energy is still the same, thanks guys

Once a drifter always a drifter that was awesome 👏 👏 👍 👍

Am i not allowed to drift cars in my studio apartment? 😢

Just wanna say the methodology is seriously flawed. The time it takes to complete the turn is important, sure. But as important (and sometimes more important) is how much speed you have going out of it and how grippy the car is at the exit, because the more grip, the better it will accelerate.

Miss this show!!!

25:00 looks like an AlphaJet, most likely from H211, which is based in Moffett.

In theory, a perfect car with 100% grip and no under/oversteer is the fastest. For grippy conditions (think track racing) 5-10 degrees of slip angle is generally the fastest thanks to getting some extra turning in the corner beyond what the front tyres was able to provide. Drifting is almost never the fastest because you waste time sliding around instead of accelerating/decelerating in the direction of travel. It's all circumstancial though. Looking at low grip racing (think gravel rallies) you can tell that not drifting at all will always be slower, though it's more like powersliding around.

I would love to see a Pro WRC driver like Sabastian Loeb try the course and i bet he would smash it !!

technically when u drift a lil, u have additional energy reserve to be used as soon as u get ur traction back, and by reserve i mean whole rotating assembly of engine/gearbox/driveshafts. So basically u get a KERS :p

All the Drifters even sim drifters(assetto corsa) are proud that their art has been appreciated!

This is awesome.

Drift can help to pull on more speed while negotiating a turn, rear tires provides that force to took turns faster while drifting. rather than putting 45 mile per hour speed limit, test for maximum speed on the same turn, while turning and drifitng.

it hurts seeing an old 240sx get abused like that now, but back then they were cheap and nobody cared...

Learning to drift should be part of every driver's ed program. If you can drift you can recover from an unintended skid or avoid it all together... dry, wet or ice.

Forza is dope for drifting... Realistic physics helps a lot. The best is when you drift past your buddy while racing him in the same vehicle. The look on his face when he realizes how beneficial it is to drift... Priceless!

oh 2015, back when S13 Silvia cost 20 bucks

I don't think anyone who actually races or drifts would ever claim drift was faster..

I've spent the last 15~20 years with powerful sports cars on tracks, big events, etc. But I've never managed to properly learn how to drift. That sucks, cause I really love this. But I spend my whole session doing 360s when I try to drift.

If drifting was faster it would be part of every day motorsport, traction is what is fast , not breaking traction. Drifting is just showboating , skilled yes, but if it was faster all motorsports would do it if there was any advantage.

what happened to inertia? what about clutch work - no handbrake? hmmm

This is awesome

Depends on the circumstances. In some hairpin corners, it's faster. On a big road course? Probably not.

This is one of the myths I can't understand, why it even exist? Maybe because people who never drive in real or a sim-racing will understand that drifting means lose of traction. Traction is that what makes you fast :D The only reason you see cars in rally drifting is, because traction is already (because of the surface) not or not as much as on dry termac, there! And than, even Rally cars do not drift every turn for no reason :D

2006 11 yo and been watching mythbusters on tv after school instead of playing with everybody else. now almost 29 and unemployed. moral lesson interact with others when young lol

In rally, there is insane amount of physics in fast cornering when the road is like ball bearings. Weight distripution, car wheight, where engine is located, angle of the curve etc etc.

I've seen a lot of new drifters somehow couldn't get the grip back in time, so the wheels just keep spinning like crazy while car actually slowing down to the point where the car was almost stop.

Before watching, I'm gonna say there's no way drifting is faster, as there is more wheelspin so less power to the ground - the whole point of drifting is to keep the wheels spinning. So there has to be a massive amount of "lost" power ie power translating to forward momentum. Now to watch the video - feel free to roast me if I'm wrong.

Now that was impressive! Nice work!

knowing these two couldnt stand each other has killed this show for me

Holy fuck...jamie pulled an adam and did an accent! 🤯

Fun video to see again.. - the "non drift timing seems that car is a 4 second per 90 degree vehicle (22 mins in) - faster corners will still result in about the same time - just with a bigger radius (omega *r - centripetal acceleration, oly moderated by vehicles with downforce, and higher grup at higher speeds...) Drift racing - anyhow is just a rules based spectacle, it is all car control at the traction limits (seemingly beyond) - lots of power sliding and smoke the spectators adore.. True drifting in other disciplines - means you're overcooked - graduated from static friction onto the dynamic phase - just holding on until "static takes back over" and acceleration really starts again (no power ges to the ground while there is no traction)...

I despised them for destroying that Silvia!!!

That honk gag was pure gold

mythbusters made my childhood better

I remember watching this when it aired. For the "final race" they had a drift driver who's race style was "Style points" not time. He wasted so much time putting in fancy point scorers and so lost the timed race, it was who is quicker not who gets the most style points. It didn't prove anything to do with "Which is quicker"

Man I want to cry for that car.

they say slip is no grip

I love this episode~ thanks

Commenting from 35min of watching, it truly depend on the road condition and space you have to execute your turns. In rally, you can get some very narrow U-Turn to perform and most rally drivers will drift to U-Turn because the space is too narrow for a full lock steer U-Turn. Also RWD and AWD make a big difference. So is it faster? The real answer is it depend.

"my best drifting time was faster than Conrad's because he is a better drifter" GENIUS 34:05

gotta love Conrad.

I also agree about which tech is faster, cause I haven't seen an F1 race car drift on a race before

You can tell this is an old video no one in these days buys an s13 just to destroy it like that

😂😂😂 the drinks didn't pour with all that drifting

that poor Silvia

Sugoi!

I swear I couldn't work with Adam

As a general rule, if some style is allowed by the regulation for F1 cars (e.g. drifting) and teams are not doing it, it will be slower than what they're currently doing. F1 cars even sometimes skip painting the car because it reduces the weight of the car even though not having the paint slighly increases air resistance - and if you review their choice, they skip the paint depending on the track they will be racing. The paint weights maybe 100-200 g for the whole car. And F1 teams are already driving the cars differently for qualifying vs race because the race is about endurance of the tires and qualifying is about fastest way to run a single lap.

You test just the e-brake drift with an underpowered car with not enaugh grip. A WRX car would be faster, due to the much faster turn in and a huge power combined with 4wd. But this is just e-brake drift. There are also power slides and braking drifts. Power slides use a littlebit more power to cause an oversteering in favour of a faster turn in. Braking slides use braking power with an agressive setup of the breaking balance to the front, highly common in rallye sport, but also use in other racing sports. These cause that the weight balance change temporarly to the front, making the rear lighter an turn the car faster in to the cornor. Both methods decrease the necessary time to align the car to the cornor exit and increase the time to accelerate with the optimal grip to maximize speed behind the cornor. This techniques are hard to master, especially with cars designed for maximum traction but we see it even in the F1. Masters of these techniques were James Hunt, Nikki Lauda and Michael Schumacher. Legends who used it were Ayrton Senna and Juan Manuel Fangio. Luis Hamilton and Max Verstappen are the most talented drivers using these methods even today. This is reason why Max Verstappen is significantly faster than his teammate Sergio Perez because Perez can't control such aggressively tunned car like Verstappen's bolide.

This could've been a legendary crossover if they got Top Gear to do the myth with them

Hobbyist driver here, commenting before fully watching the video, from my experience drifting on loose surfaces like gravel, dirt and snow is quite a bit faster than slowing down and taking a corner clean, hence why rally drivers do it so often. But on solid surfaces such as concrete, tarmac and asphalt, it slows you down too much compared to just taking a clean line. Im expecting them to find the same results Edit: disappointed that they didn't do any testing on other types of surfaces

I miss the playfulness, puns and pranks from the old days of this show. The screaming and laughter too

if i only i could have access to such nice track to practice some drifts :(

Without watching, I can tell you that in winter diving in Canada, drifting is the fastest way.

IF YOU AINT FIRST YOUR LAST RICKY BOBBY!!!

rain is perfect for for learning car control so is wet cut grass in paddocks cause if ya can do a controlled drift on those surfaces ain't hard to apply to tarmack

I guess what is best for a specific corner is really what matters. Moto gp riders drift around some corners but not all. I assume it would be the same for cars.

Full on sideways drifting is very slow, if it's speed you're after you generally want to stick to the basic rule of speed (that nobody ever tells the boi racers who spin their wheels at all the lights...🤣): Any time your wheels are spinning, sliding, or not in contact with the road, you aren't accelerating. That said, the answer is really: it depends, and on many different factors at that. The physics of it tell us a car does indeed go faster if the back wheels drift in corners of certain angles, but the drift is very slight, a few degrees at most, barely even perceptible from outside the car, any more and you'll just be slower than if you hadn't bothered. The benefits are much larger on loose surfaces, but even though you see those rally cars going full on sideways, they are generally keeping it as straight as they can, it just works out that at that speed "as straight as you can" just happens to be sideways...😁

might be better using an independent time keeper your reaction times on stopwatch could differ.

Real drifting doesn't use handbrake, if you need hanbrake is to make a correction not to start the drift

Welk. Pulling the handbrake is definitely not faster, but MAYBE in some corners just little clutchkick and slight drift would be faster

Y do I hate them after doing this to the car nice job lads

Its easier to park like that initiating with a little handbrake, then powering through to open the rotation a little

the thing is not go sideways, it is more about keeping momentum

It's like Jamie and Adam asked the question "What would be the perfect script so that it's fun to watch but feels like 99.9% fun and only 0.1% work to make it?"

38.50 - Adam kissing the kerb as pretty as American History X (This is comedy!)

Drifting is great for the tires industry

Slip angle is the fastest way through a corner. Right on the boundary of drifting and understeer . You dont see f1 drivers using slip angle because they have to conserve tires

Several problems with their testing and conclusions. 1st off, a car that is set up to slide is better at sliding maneuvers. A car that is set up to drive on regular roads will not be able to drift quickly around corners. 2nd, is the goal in "drifting" to go fast or be spectacular? Because there's a fine line between drifting just enough and too much to gain an advantage. The second issue is clearly demonstrated with Conrad's "race lap" where he's actually drifting ever so slightly for the best pace whereas when he's doing the "drift lap" he's show-drifting which will sap speed and traction from each line he takes. And that is all before we talk about surface. On anything less than tarmac, drifting can be beneficial and sometimes even necessary to be competitive. In rally sport, if you don't drift, you are not going to reach the podium. And even on tarmac, with hair pin turns, if you don't drift in rally you WILL most definitely have to slow down WAAAY too much to take those corners. And the main difference with the BEST rally drivers is that they will actually be traveling backwards when entering a tight hairpin corner so ALL power is used to change their momentum into exiting that corner. But most importantly, it's about the CAR and what your intentions are. And one could argue that ANY car that takes a turn is "drifting" every so slightly. Tires are not magical things that make cars that take turns act like they are on rails. Any time you take a turn, you are sliding sideways but it just isn't so profound and noticeable as a power slide is. And it's when you sit just slightly past the limit of losing traction that you can gain benefits in drifting a vehicle. A car that is set up for drifting is a pretty poor race car, just like a Formula 1 car is a pretty poor drift car. If you try to drift a Formula 1 car, you are in for a PROPER challenge and even the best drifter will eventually find a wall to kiss... VIOLENTLY! And i haven't even talked about tires yet, and i won't, except that tires DO matter in how you intend on racing a lap time. Again, in F1 racing, if you drift even a tiny bit... those tires will be useless in a lap or two. F1 tires are made to keep perfect lines, if you lock them up or drift or spin them at any point, they will suffer greatly. Overdoing it on any compound will simply ruin your tires, no matter what type of vehicle you are using.

in Rallye it works because some corners are so tight it woul take ages with normal driving but for 98% it s true drifting isn t faster

Nice S13 Silvia

Without watching... I would be willing to bet my money on.. drifting being the slower way. . If it would be faster... All racing cars would drift around corners.. Maybe in very low friction/surfaces or very tight corners) I can see some benefits..

Only time you will see Jamie run.

In rally, it is faster because of the underground. On tarmac it's just for stylepoints.

6:10 Someone machine that man a stick shift ornament!

Drifting is only usefull mainly when the wheel turning cycle is not sufficient enough to make a very very tight turn, this strategy is especially valid in rally competition, drifting on any other scenario is quite useless and actually slower than doing the turn properly. Havent yet watched the video, let's see what they can come up with. EDIT: Yep, just as we knew all along, this time Mythbusters did a pretty solid set of scientific tests.

poor silvia.. but good episode

It would've been cool if they explained Why it's slower :P

Ah the good ol' drifting gets harder the less horse power you have. Should've also invited Keiichi Tsuchiya though

Thanks RU-vid

first test should have been longer entry and exit and come in at higher speed that would make the time of the corner more exaggerated because it would depend more on how the car is carrying speed through the whole corner