oh, btw, everybody, the drifting you see people do on drift servers are powerslides, those are people practicing initiations and trying to hold it. read drift is where the rear end is loose the WHOLE TIME on the track, they would link everything together, and manji in the straights.
and, btw, a powerslide around a corner is one thing, linking several together is another
Well, the way it looks is though NOBODY thus far that has replied has even come remotely close to even explaining a thing about what drifting really is. The whole concept has been missed and the topic has been turned into another "I LIKE IT", "I DONT LIKE IT" things.
The guy was not asking for eveyone's opinions on this subject, he was asking for an answer. All he got was more reasons to ask questions.
I really would like to explain this to you, I would. But the whole thing would take some time. Not to mention everyones corrections of what I KNOW to be true.
I will send you an IM, i'll try to keep it short, but I know I can at least give you perspective from a RL drifter such as myself. If anyone else here can at least give a small reason why we do this in real life, it might help to shed some light on why we all flock to LFS to practice.
hey! it's mr. Dori-Dori himself! and he speaks english!
but, i thought that manji= swerving and choku=straightline
and choku dori is where you pull the ebrake on a straight to initiate even before you hit a curve, so that you would be holding a constant angle for a long time...
and manji is where you see cars doing pendulums on the straights
First and foremost, yes it is I the famous DoriDOri himself speaking english and all, 23 years younger and cocky as hell! What up now?!
On a more serious note, I wrote out what I believe to be the best explanation of drifting in and of itself from the perspective of America's Dori-Dori.
There are many reasons one would drift, but, its hard to give a definition when everyone that tried it or even likes it
has got some knowledge about it so I will break it down and tell you why I drift.
I started into the drifting scene at a very young age and never really gave it up. I was fasinated by the way a car can move
and the way it sounds when driven hard. Road racing, grip driving, touring, whatever you want to call it, keeping the back end in
was were I started. I gained more and more ability behind the wheel and Gran Tourismo (1-4) fed the need to enter corners at
100+mph. The all out rush of being on the edge of traction was great and the fact you could get what was more or less
drifting out of a well tuned car was where I was hooked into the sim's for practice time and real crazy speed.
Drifting is not OUT OF CONTROL... its really so far from the truth to say that. Saudi drifters are out of control. Wreckless.
The basis of drifting is holding a slip angle, yes, but that has so little to do with why we do it. The way a car reacts to
input that results in what appears as loss of control is really a whole lot of control being poured into the controls of the
vehicle. The adrenaline rush of entering a corner sideways and knowing you have it all under control is the best feeling in
the world, its right up there with exiting a corner with a slight amount of wheel slip to get MAX acceleration down that final
strait to cross the line and lay down another FAST lap.
I do it in real life because of the feeling. As you would feel hearing a song you wrote, making that goal that wins the game,
or even landing that job you always worked so damn hard for. When your counter steering around a corner and you bump full
opposite lock, that's the moment you worked so hard for.
The feeling you get when you connect 10 corners together and nobody but you saw it... thats the moment that makes it all so
worth it. Drifting is a personal thing. No 2 drift cars are the same, no 2 drivers drive the same, no 2 sessions are the same.
No matter what, the experience is like nothing else. Just as a WR hotlap would be the culmination of so many laps of hard earned
skill.
Drifting Explained as well as I can:
Until the car is near turning backward you can FEEL the angle, how close you are getting to the limit, how far you can go, and not every
corner or every transfer corner to corner will be full lock, or wide open throttle. Its a balancing act. You steer with the
wheel and the pedals. When your at a full turn opposite of the corner and opening or closing the throttle changes the angle
its the balance of steering and throttle/brake that you use to tighten or loosen the angle of the car.
The emergency or side brake is something that is very misunderstood in the drifting world. When you are trying to get a longer
slide into a tight corner you might give it a tug to get sideways, and, when you get the angle balanced out you can give it
another tug and hold it to keep that angle but keep moving strait the way your front wheels are pointed.
Taking away ALL the traction of the rear end when it begins the arc toward the inside of the corner leaves only the fronts to
take up all the duty of steering and angle, your just dragging the back end down into the corner. The less traction the rear has
the more dependent the car will be on steering angle because the rear will have nothing to offer in terms of traction. Allowing
the car to continue in a straiter line since the tires pointing toward the inside are doing notthing.
Its all about the balance of what is available for traction.
Drift car setups are very touchy to even try to explain. Myth number one is you need BIG camber, high power, and even a RWD to
achieve it. FWD setup on the proper tire and wheel sizes can do more than anyone can give credit for. Its all about control,
setup and aftermarket parts only help you tune in the characteristic's you are confortable with.
Grip drivers as some would call it, setup the race car for a certian amound of bump and rebound in the rear to keep the back end
in check. A drifter would tweak that setup a little to give less traction to keep the rear end out. And the whole camber issue,
whoa, now there is a misconstrued ideal. Big camber is for bigger traction at large angles that would normally have a tire at a
+5 degree camber angle during entry. Ever seen a cadillac slide a corner on dry asphalt? Motortrend ran an article some years back that
was accompanied by 2 pictures of a caddie in what they called "oversteer" and that was doing some damage to the alignment, then
the other pic was called so perfectly "psychosteer" where the front left tire was folded under the car and the rim was eating a
very unhealthy amount of asphalt. Big camber means big traction at high G slip angles.
The snow is falling, I have acsess to an AW11 MR2 and a MX83 Cressida .... I'm going to DRIFT!
Be back when the snow goes away and all I have is LFS again to practice.
Yes, dry asphalt indeed is destructive to tires and suspention, seperates seam welds and weakens overall structure, thats probably why most drift cars only last a few years at most. Not to mention all the crashing that seems to happen with everyone else.
****edit, choku means strait, dori means drift, according to you. Doesn't that indeed mean drifting on a strait as the japanese always told me? WTF is manji? I'm gonna go look this one up, here I come wikepedia!
**********EDIT 2
Manji or Choku Dori, means swaying drift or pendulum drift. Ha! Were both right!
The hate of most things, including drifting/racing is often caused by ignorance IMO, those that slag off drifting/racing probrably don't know anything about what they are talking about, therefore they go by well overused stereotypes, coming to the conclusion that all drifters are 11 year old kids that can't drive, plus you don't have to be just a drifter or a racer, can't we be both, or does it satisfy some primitive human need to be in a certain group and slag off the other group in an effort to make yourself feel supierior? Who knows?
I race because I enjoy the rush of getting a lap perfect and getting a new personal best/race win.
I drift because its a rush when you pull off a drift perfectly.
Both racing and drifting require a high level of car control, if you look hard there is nothing wrong with drifting and racing, its just some people love to be snobbish and look down on others, and therefore pick on drifting
What worries me is that theres a class system where certain 'groups' of people are thought by many to be below others by the 'master race' of supposedly supierior racing s2 liscensed users, (a.k.a Drifters/Demo Racers), didnt something similar to this happen in Germany in the 1930's/1940's??
@keiichi, nice explanation! and btw, how would you decipher between a long, one angle'd drift to make a dramatic entry into a corner and a series of linked drift that resembles a pendulum?
btw, i just performed highspeed, straightline, all wheel drifts on all the corners of blackwood......i popped all 4 tires after one lap, and destroyed my suspension!
but the thing is i was only provoked into driving this aggressively because i was chasing down a stupid mofo that rammed me in the pits... i got my revenge...muahahahahaha....
Well, there is the reason I went S1 then S2 as soon as I experienced the faceless ramming that goes with the demo servers.
As for the diffrence between choku dori's and sidebraking, well, didn't that just explain them? Far as a diffrence, the side brake entry, vs the choku dori, I am not sure how much further from the same they can get?
I tried to make as much sence of what you said as I could, I understand english is NOT a first language for everyone and that it is very gracious of you all that have learned it to speak it as best as possible. Thanks.
I'm a one trick pony though. I can spot a line great, but, hanging the tail out, abusing my car is what I do best. My brother on the other hand is the one that is the "grip" driver for lack of a better universal term.
My real name is Ben, I'm from the upper midwest and I'm just an average guy with above average talent and knowledge of motorsports. I am far from the best, but, I do well. The whole keiichi thing was a joke among friends back when I first started drifting and has nothing to do with my ability behind the wheel, the name was all for laughs. Kinda stuck with it now, eh?
atlantian- "i got my revenge...muahahahahaha...."
Seems to be the first real reason demo users and S2 users dont get along, things said out loud like that.
To answer the original question, what is the fascination with any activity? Some people are drawn to certain activities, and some of this is because of where they live. I used to play table tennis, which is not very popular here in the USA, but I started playing in college because there were a few good players in my dormitory. I also used to bounce trampoline which is even less popular, but I always had an interested in gymnatics since junior high school, but since I worked during high school, I couldn't participate until college it was too late, so I just messed around with trampoline.
The uppper echelons of any competitive activity may require a lot of skill, but that doesn't make it necessarily interesting viewing to a large audience. Table tennis isn't popular in the USA, and even world wide interest is diminishing. Other than Nascar, drag racing, and the Indy 500, there's very little coverage of auto racing in the USA, and even this represents a small precentage of the viewing audience in the USA.
Dirfting, at least in the USA, is a niche activity, one that isn't destined to have a large audience in the USA. Poker get's more coverage than drifting here in the USA. Bowling is trying to make a comeback with new ownership (3 retired microsoft executives), but I doubt that will happen.
Think of all the events there are in the summer and winter olympics and how many of them would you really find interesting?
drift is the fastest growing motorsport at the moment, its a fairly new sport to the media so its obviously not as big as others, but it is growing. you think car racing took off over night?
and i can safely sat 2-5 cars going door to door at 100+kmh's sideways is great viewing. the audiences in America, but more importantly other countries grows by every event, more money is being poored into the sport, some teams over here in Australia have spent near 1million on the sport, id imagine in places like America the bill would be even higher.
You do know how it cost to run a kart in a series for a whole season, right? You need a truck, a pit crew, fuel, spares, etc. Kart isn't cheap, compared to drifting in which you can still use your car in streets (i.e. Pro-Am) I still think drifting is one of the cheapest motorsports.
I have never owned own kart-car (Or whatever it is called), but
1) Old friend of mine owned one back in the 80's. And he wasn't rich.
2) You can always loan a kart-car.
Sure, you can sure loan a drift car also, but I'll bet it is much more expensive than loaning a kart-car. Think it through couple of minutes and you understand why.
Drifting looks "cool", while racing really only looks interesting with overtaking etc - people who don't understand racing just associate racing with driving like they do on a road but with faster cars. Drifting looks VERY impressive to someone who doesn't really understand basic vehicle dynamics.
I am not a fan of drifting and hate its most visible face, the rice boy street race/drift cnuts. Here the Skyline has the name of clit, because every cnut has one
That said, watching people who know what they are doing in a close twin can be great to watch, in short doses.
The reason it is popular and the fasting growing motorsport at the moment is simple, twin battles are short bite sized things that appeal the the short attention span of the MTV generation. To the Y generation something like the 8 hour marvel that is Bathurst is just too long for them, they need the quick fix instant gratification that something like drift gives.
and yet they still complain about it! i think because ive had a taste of both sports i have a bit more of a level view of things, but a lot of drifters complain about how expensive the sport it, when in reality racing, even at a low level is more expensive, not only have i found race seems to put more stress on the car, and u see more things fail, but uve gotta factor in brake pads, fluids are more critical, tyres are more expensive, although once you get to a decent level your using chewing through a few pairs of brand new tyres each day.
the thing is, drift is more driver orientated, u see top level drifters out in their daily drivers doing some crazy shit and $20,000 personal cars with 200hp competing against $100,000+ team cars with 1000hp, u dont see the same fine tuning to the extent u see with top level racing and not the same $$ being spent. when drift see's more and more $$ ull see the teams spending more and more $$ and you will see some of the fine tuning, but when it comes down to it the driver will be the main deciding factor.
and this attitude is how racer gangies get the reputation of being stuck up thinking they are superior.
dickheads on the street putting their foot down coming out of a corner is NOT drift. just like you wouldnt classify people who race through the hills or on the street in the same league as circuit racers, or traffic light racers on the same level as proper drag racing, you can find examples of a shitty ricer culture in all motorsports, just as much so if not more than drifting.
also, MTV generation? i dont see what's bad about a sport being more enjoyable to watch, if its more enjoyable to participate in and more enjoyable to watch, what else do you need?
That is what I am saying. The morons on the road acting like gits is what has given the sport of drifting a bad name. They are the cause of the problems and WHY there is the friction.
For many they hear drift and they just think about the hoons they see around them. Many would not even know that D1GP and the like exist. For them drift = cnuts on he street killing people. Is that hard to understand?
I assume you just saw the name the Skyline has gained and as you have one took offense. Sorry but you have to admit that cars like the Skyline, WRX and Evo attract the wrong sort. Not all owners are like that but that does not matter when it comes to reputation does it, all owners gain the reputation. Does not matter if its fair, thats how society works I am afraid.
Again, it was not a put down it was saying WHY it is popular because to many it is more easy to get into than an 8 hour enduro race.
I can enjoy watching a good battle or just a good solo drift, as I stated. You have to admit though that the "public face" many see IS the problem and why drift has gained a bad rep. Just like the Skyline for many has a bad rep. Not the cars fault but that is how sterotypes work
It will change but its a new sport and this always happens. I was snowboarding from very early days and you should have seen the shite I experienced on the mountain because the association with the majority of boarders which were as much a bunch of young cnuts with no respect for other as the street are racers today.
...i popped all 4 tires after one lap, and destroyed my suspension!
