Please, Someone Tell Me, What Is The Purpose Of Drifting?

What is the average age of F car owners? Mid 40s? It is no surprise they do not like something "kids" do.

I am a F car owner of average age, but I actually enjoy sliding the tail around turns (in safe conditions) like in movie car chases. Call me juvenile all you want, but I like what I like and I am not ashamed of it!

Different people like different things. Personally, I believe it is wrong to say that only our interests are worthy and others' interests are unworthy.

 

My license plate is powerslide and I'm trying to live up to it.

 

Please, Someone Tell Me, What Is The Purpose Of Racing?
Don't wish to be old fashioned and stodgy, but can anyone tell me the purpose of racing? Other than a way to use up limited oil & gas.

 

I don't get drifting. To me its right up there with those low rider hydraulic hoping contests.

 

exploiting the flaws in traction and grip it can be ballet on a blacktop. i am to hang out with a lot of those guys from the falken team and formula d soon, but i am in no rush, i hate the smell uf burning tires.

someone once told me that inlieu of the asian car makers being able to get in to 'real' racing, they made up their own little games.

everyone as an answer as to why it started, i am just so sick of hearing about vtec/dorifto/touge blah blah blah....

 

Are you guys still talking about this one? wow... lol

 

For the manufacturers, a test bed to evolve new ways to make a vehicle go, stop, and turn better.
For drivers, a way to develop a complete toolbox of vehicle control skills.
For GT racers, a way to express road rage in a controlled environment.

While others here would recoil in horror, I still think it would be interesting to see FIA impose emissions standards on F1 cars: I'd like to see manufacturers given an incentive to build "green" cars that can still move.
(Okay, maybe not F1 -- but as long as racing remains exempt from mufflers and emissions controls, there's no performance development in those bits, and racing will increasingly come under fire from gridlock greenies who don't see any point to racing --- or to vehicle performance, either.)

What else are we going to do until Spain?

 

Yeah well....you got a point....

 

Good point! Further, there are many unusual forms of racing in the US. Particularly strange is truck racing. A truck is made for hauling stuff, not going fast, so what is the "purpose" of racing a truck? Similarly, what is the purpose of professional sports such as football, basketball, and baseball other than to sell tickets???

The ultimate "purpose" of motorsports or any other spectator sport is entertainment. Different people are entertained by different things. That's why truck owners like to race trucks, and rich guys like to race Ferraris. To say that only our interests are good and other people's interests are stupid and unworthy is in fact narrow minded and juvenile.

 

That's a great license plate idea! Thanks, I'll use it!

 

You're welcome.
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Drifting......
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Yes but that was real drifting AND importantly the fastest way to corner those cars. That as we all know is no longer true, excessive drifting is not the fastest way around a corner on tarseal.

Don't confuse OR give credience where it is NOT due
Pete

 

Driifting Definition: To systematically and deliberately destroy as many tires as possible along with your carefully prepared race car in an exhibition or race event without actually smashing it into anything.

 

Perhaps Ralf Schumacher will take up drifting. Would make total sense. Him and Michael Waltrip could "team up"!

 

I've done Pikes Peak and Estes Park at 90mph, nowhere near 120, and darn near burned out everything in my car from engine to tranny to brakes to tires.

Obviously I'm not a great driver!

 

I respectfully disagree. I have seen on many occasions where MS drifted through turns. If he was hitting corners so hard that he exceeded the grip of tires held down with aerodynamic force, he was truley exceeding the ability of the car. There would be no possible way to go faster through a turn. Pretty dangerous though if he had lost downforce.

 

Look at the physics: High school physics teaches you that there's the coefficient of static friction, and then there's sliding friction -- and static friction is higher. Once a rigid object comes adrift, there's far less force holding it back than just before it started to slide. At that point, it's harder to stop the slide and get back to static friction.

With a complex flexible object like a tire, there's a mix: one tread block can be sliding while others are holding. This gives you a borderline grip condition, where the tire chirps and gives leeway, but isn't fully sliding yet. This leads to the hollyweird "squealing tires" cliche (which they even dub into turns on dirt).

Racing slicks without individual tread blocks don't have as large a boundary region -- when they stop gripping, they come loose, mostly all at once. F1 grooved tires can be thought of as having really large tread blocks, falling between "regular" tires and slicks. But the compounds are flexible enough that you can still have a mix of static and sliding friction across the surface. A spot might slip sideways a bit without the entire contact patch coming loose. Think of a caterpillar doing a sidestep.

At the limits of traction, a car might be making leeway without being fully adrift. And that's what we see in modern pavement track racing.

The full powerslide today still has its place. To take a hairpin turn on gravel (as in rallye) within the traction of the tire would be extremely slow. A powerslide would be less surface traction than not sliding, but may still be faster -- especially as gravel (or snow) piling up along the side of the tire will slow the slide, providing traction not associated with the contact patch.

But the handbrake turn is mostly the AWD replacement for a RWD power oversteer to reduce the turning radius at speed, when the corners are really tight -- a way to steer both ends of the car. It may not be the fastest way through a regular turn, but it might be the fastest way through a turn too tight for the car.

I sometimes use power oversteer to bring the rear of the Alfa Spider around in tight corners. It doesn't have good exit speed, but it does put the back end where it wouldn't go just by following the front. (But then, the Alfa is so nose-heavy that dancing the back end isn't too difficult to accomplish.)

Would a full "handbrake turn" slide be viable in modern racing?

About the only place in F1 racing I'd think a power oversteer sliding turn might be useful would be the Loews hairpin at Monaco.

But notice that nobody does that.

Either it still isn't faster than just slowing to a crawl, or a slide would demolish F1 tires too fast.

Hmm: with the new spec tires, might we see someone powersliding the hairpin on the hard compounds?
What do some of the back markers have to lose? (Hmm: Scott Speed is from Cali, isn't he? )

Are any of the F1 game programs versatile enough to handle a powerslide?