Haldex / AWD limit handling

[DocSteve]

Hi,

Apologies if this appears like a stupid question but I have been struggling with it. I have a Golf R, which is clearly not a car that someone vaguely competent should easily be losing control of but driving it has thrown up some issues hat I have not been able to pin down. I am used to driving RWD cars, including my track MX5, although I do enjoy driving a decent FWD motor from time to time.

The main issue, I guess, with the Golf R and its Haldex system is this:

When the stability control is fully disengaged and driving on/past the limit then it is very hard to know what the system is going to do i.e. if it starts to oversteer then what throttle inputs should be used to either deliberately sustain it or deal with it. I had assumed that it would behave somewhat like a FWD and more gas would during oversteer conditions transfer power to the front wheels and alleviate it. What seems to happen is that it actually continues to generate rear-bias and further provoke oversteer in most settings. Obviously aspects of handling that are not dependent on the driven wheels are independent of this e.g. the effects of weight shift resulting from throttle inputs and the effect of steering. The issue is more when traction is being broken and how the Haldex deals with it.

Any thoughts or expertise welcome. I should probably take it to a track and really get to grips (pardon the pun) with it but to be honest it's my road car and I don't really want to do that.

Cheers
Steve

[Reg Local]

DocSteve said:

Hi,

Apologies if this appears like a stupid question but I have been struggling with it. I have a Golf R, which is clearly not a car that someone vaguely competent should easily be losing control of but driving it has thrown up some issues hat I have not been able to pin down. I am used to driving RWD cars, including my track MX5, although I do enjoy driving a decent FWD motor from time to time.

The main issue, I guess, with the Golf R and its Haldex system is this:

When the stability control is fully disengaged and driving on/past the limit then it is very hard to know what the system is going to do i.e. if it starts to oversteer then what throttle inputs should be used to either deliberately sustain it or deal with it. I had assumed that it would behave somewhat like a FWD and more gas would during oversteer conditions transfer power to the front wheels and alleviate it. What seems to happen is that it actually continues to generate rear-bias and further provoke oversteer in most settings. Obviously aspects of handling that are not dependent on the driven wheels are independent of this e.g. the effects of weight shift resulting from throttle inputs and the effect of steering. The issue is more when traction is being broken and how the Haldex deals with it.

Any thoughts or expertise welcome. I should probably take it to a track and really get to grips (pardon the pun) with it but to be honest it's my road car and I don't really want to do that.

Cheers
Steve

This is a difficult one to answer as your description is a little limited, but I'll share a few thoughts which may help you.

Firstly, in modern cars, it's rare for the stability control to ever be fully "off", even if you've switched it off and the light on the dashboard shows the system as deactivated. My first thought when I read your post was that the ESC (or whatever acronym VW use) was activating and doing it's magic throttle release / individual brake trick and that you're possibly confusing that with the Haldex system moving torque between the front and rear axles.

My next thought involves the way these part-time systems operate (and the misunderstandings that these systems can cause). Start with the principle that the primary benefit of four-wheel drive in a road car is that it increases traction. i.e. Traction off the line, when accelerating hard and at times when traction may be limited such as slippery road surfaces, steep inclines etc. What four-wheel drive (full or part time) does not do is increase a cars grip with the road surface - so four-wheel drive will not make a car brake or corner any harder or better than an equivalent two-wheel drive car. It may allow you to accelerate earlier in a corner than a 2WD car because all four wheels are driven, but a 4WD car will have no extra grip than its 2WD equivalent.

I've not as yet driven a Golf R, but I have driven a number of Haldex equipped part-time 4WD cars and these systems measure wheel speeds and calculate if any wheels are losing traction. They will then direct torque to the (usually) undriven wheels. You can feel the system working if you've a sensitive backside, but you need to understand what the car is doing in order to make the correct inputs.

The natural tendency of these types of car at the limit is to handle in a very similar way to the two-wheel drive car they're based on - mostly because, up to the point where traction is being lost, they are a 2WD car. So in the case of a Golf, it's tendency will be to understeer at the limit. If you counter this understeer with a further application of the throttle, the understeer will initially worsen, because the additional throttle will induce some wheelspin, which the Haldex will translate as a lack of traction and then direct some torque to the rear wheels.

If your throttle application is particularly rough, this could immediately unsettle the rear of the car and possibly induce oversteer.

In all honesty though, I don't think this is what's happening. As I mentioned earlier, stability systems are never really "off", and I think there's a good possibility that you're confusing the intervention of ESC with the actions of the Haldex system. If a car is sliding in a corner, it's far more likely to be the ESC intervening due to rapid changes in yaw, rather than the Haldex reacting to a traction issue.

I've been researching modern stability systems for my next book, and a very knowledgable PHer (who helps calibrate these systems for a living) has shared some very interesting points with me. Having attempted to translate his very technical advice into something more akin to laymans's language, the best advice when stability control systems kick in is to hold your throttle where it is (perhaps feather it back slightly), and steer in the direction you want to go. Try not to lift off completely or brake and avoid de-clutching. The system is constantly measuring many different perameters and is able to apply a level of control which is unavailable to the driver, so just let it do it's thing.

One very pertinent piece of advice he gave me was along the lines of "I've driven many different cars on test tracks, at the limit of adhesion - understeer, oversteer, drifting are all familiar to me, but on the road, I always, always leave the systems switched on".

Which leads me into my final point, which you might not like. There is a time and a place for exploring the outer handling limits of a car. It isn't on the road. A Golf R is a very fast and capable road car and you'd be better concentrating on driving it swiftly and safely, within the limits of adhesion. Tyese types of car have very high limits and if you're exceeding them on the road, your cornering speeds are too high.

Try to concentrate on taking a bit more speed off on the way into a corner and then building the speed up through the corner - rather than carrying too much speed in and the trying to sort out the subsequent slide.

And leave your stability control on!

Edited by Reg Local on Friday 29th January 20:59

[DocSteve]

Hi Reg,

Thanks for your thoughts - they are all quite reasonable, including your last points. Rest assured I do not perform dangerous manoeuvres on the public road and that I believe any experimentation has been conducted safely in areas where I have had enough available vision, grip and space to do so. Part of the reason I am asking the question is that the opportunity to explore this on the public road safely is rare - mostly in low grip conditions. Certainly, I have not provoked the car to move around simply due to excess corner entry speed - that would be madness.

In addressing your other main point, you are of course correct that in most modern vehicles switching off the stability control system rarely means that. The Golf R, however, is one of those rare beasts where you can either put it into an intermediary mode or completely switch it off (this is not possible in the GTI, for example). Therefore I am quite sure that the Haldex is the matter for debate.

I perhaps have not come across very well in my post, but I am trying to ask what I believe to be a genuine question that could have some relevance on the public road - especially for example in snow or ice (where I do think stability control systems still do not always work so well). I think you are correct in that you can feel what it is doing but my question was more about what I should expect it to do, which seems difficult to gauge.

I may not be as experienced as you but I do have a reasonable amount of on-road AD training under my belt and appreciate where you are coming from with your concerns!

Steve

Edited by DocSteve on Friday 29th January 21:35

[Reg Local]

You'll need to describe the issue in a bit more detail.

Is the car oversteering when you experience the problem? Is it oversteering because you've induced oversteer with a lift of the throttle mid corner? If so, are you lifting off to counter understeer? Or are you deliberately lifting off to provoke oversteer?

Does the torque transfer to the rear feel like it comes in too suddenly? Does it feel like it's removed suddenly?

How does the car react to throttle inputs when it's oversteering? And how does it react to steering inputs?

[DocSteve]

Reg Local said:

You'll need to describe the issue in a bit more detail.

Is the car oversteering when you experience the problem? Is it oversteering because you've induced oversteer with a lift of the throttle mid corner? If so, are you lifting off to counter understeer? Or are you deliberately lifting off to provoke oversteer?

Does the torque transfer to the rear feel like it comes in too suddenly? Does it feel like it's removed suddenly?

How does the car react to throttle inputs when it's oversteering? And how does it react to steering inputs?

The first time I encountered it was exiting a wet roundabout in cold weather - the car understeered briefly under throttle input which almost instantly resulted in the power being transferred to the rear and an oversteer which then became more pronounced with sustained throttle input; it then corrected after coming off the throttle (smoothly I hope..). Of course it is possible that I applied extra steering lock during the initial period of understeer although I don't think I did - I deliberately tried not to do much with the steering in order to understand what the system was doing. I then encountered it again in snow where I applied a fairly decent amount of throttle to the car when it was moving slowly with some steering lock on - I expected understeer but what happened was oversteer that showed no signs of abating before I called it a day. I would have expected that it would transfer power to the front under these circumstances.

The car does as expected have a natural tendency to understeer at higher speeds with throttle and steering input which tightens up when coming off the power but I suspect that is more to do with weight transfer and the characteristics of the chassis/suspensions setup that most road cars have rather than anything to do with the Haldex (i.e. I would expect that with almost any car)

I hope that makes some sense!

[Vanin]

Reg Local said:

This is a difficult one to answer as your description is a little limited, but I'll share a few thoughts which may help you.

Firstly, in modern cars, it's rare for the stability control to ever be fully "off", even if you've switched it off and the light on the dashboard shows the system as deactivated. My first thought when I read your post was that the ESC (or whatever acronym VW use) was activating and doing it's magic throttle release / individual brake trick and that you're possibly confusing that with the Haldex system moving torque between the front and rear axles.

My next thought involves the way these part-time systems operate (and the misunderstandings that these systems can cause). Start with the principle that the primary benefit of four-wheel drive in a road car is that it increases traction. i.e. Traction off the line, when accelerating hard and at times when traction may be limited such as slippery road surfaces, steep inclines etc. What four-wheel drive (full or part time) does not do is increase a cars grip with the road surface - so four-wheel drive will not make a car brake or corner any harder or better than an equivalent two-wheel drive car. It may allow you to accelerate earlier in a corner than a 2WD car because all four wheels are driven, but a 4WD car will have no extra grip than its 2WD equivalent.

Edited by Reg Local on Friday 29th January 20:59

Surely Reg if the front wheels of a front wheel drive car are squealing on the limit round a corner and losing grip because they are starting to spin, then a four wheel drive system will provide the shove from the rear to keep the front wheels from spinning thereby giving grip to all four wheels.
Also the way a suspension system loads up is different and a four wheel drive set up may prevent an inside wheel lifting.

If you have any doubts take a Tesla 90S for a drive on a roundabout and see if your nerve goes before the car slides. Mine did.

[Reg Local]

DocSteve said:

The first time I encountered it was exiting a wet roundabout in cold weather - the car understeered briefly under throttle input which almost instantly resulted in the power being transferred to the rear and an oversteer which then became more pronounced with sustained throttle input; it then corrected after coming off the throttle (smoothly I hope..). Of course it is possible that I applied extra steering lock during the initial period of understeer although I don't think I did - I deliberately tried not to do much with the steering in order to understand what the system was doing.

Understeer in a front-wheel drive car is generally caused by a combination of excess corner speed and/or excess throttle application. The best way to correct understeer is to gently lift off the throttle - this will reduce the torque going to the front wheels and transfer some weight forward, slightly increasing front tyre grip and reducing or removing the understeer.

If you accelerate in an understeering FWD car, the understeer will generally just get worse. In your Haldex-equipped car, the car has recognised that the front wheels are losing traction, but because you've switched off the stability, the car will only deal with the traction issue, which it does by transferring some drive to the rear wheels. If your inputs are harsh, this torque transfer will be sudden and in a car which is already at the limit of adhesion at the front axle, it will easily transition quickly (snap) into oversteer.

Your best approach is, of course, always to avoid the understeer in the first place.

Your second best approach would be to correct the understeer in the normal way with a slight throttle lift.

If its all gone tits-up and you're oversteering, keep some throttle applied (not a bootfull - just enough to keep the car sliding at a managable angle) and just steer in the direction you want to go. Lifting off the throttle at this stage will remove drive from the rear, transfer weight forward (and away from the already sliding rear wheels) and make the oversteer much worse.

DocSteve said:

I then encountered it again in snow where I applied a fairly decent amount of throttle to the car when it was moving slowly with some steering lock on - I expected understeer but what happened was oversteer that showed no signs of abating before I called it a day. I would have expected that it would transfer power to the front under these circumstances.

You're expecting too much from the system in this case - some power is always being directed to the front wheels, it's just that, when traction is limited, the system will transmit some of the power to the rear wheels as well. Snow is one surface which should prompt the system to direct drive to all four wheels at once. If your throttle inputs are harsh, the wheels will keep spinning and the drive will continue to go to all four wheels. If you left the stability switched on, the car will do much more to help you sort it out, but with it off, it'll just deal with the traction and leave you to sort out the slide. Once all four wheels are being driven, the car is doing everything it can to give you maximum traction - at this point it will not start directing more torque back to the front wheels.

DocSteve said:

The car does as expected have a natural tendency to understeer at higher speeds with throttle and steering input which tightens up when coming off the power but I suspect that is more to do with weight transfer and the characteristics of the chassis/suspensions setup that most road cars have rather than anything to do with the Haldex (i.e. I would expect that with almost any car)

This is normal in any car - I'm yet to drive a car which isn't sensitive to weight transfer when pressing on.

[DocSteve]

Reg Local said:

DocSteve said:

The first time I encountered it was exiting a wet roundabout in cold weather - the car understeered briefly under throttle input which almost instantly resulted in the power being transferred to the rear and an oversteer which then became more pronounced with sustained throttle input; it then corrected after coming off the throttle (smoothly I hope..). Of course it is possible that I applied extra steering lock during the initial period of understeer although I don't think I did - I deliberately tried not to do much with the steering in order to understand what the system was doing.

Understeer in a front-wheel drive car is generally caused by a combination of excess corner speed and/or excess throttle application. The best way to correct understeer is to gently lift off the throttle - this will reduce the torque going to the front wheels and transfer some weight forward, slightly increasing front tyre grip and reducing or removing the understeer.

If you accelerate in an understeering FWD car, the understeer will generally just get worse. In your Haldex-equipped car, the car has recognised that the front wheels are losing traction, but because you've switched off the stability, the car will only deal with the traction issue, which it does by transferring some drive to the rear wheels. If your inputs are harsh, this torque transfer will be sudden and in a car which is already at the limit of adhesion at the front axle, it will easily transition quickly (snap) into oversteer.

Your best approach is, of course, always to avoid the understeer in the first place.

Your second best approach would be to correct the understeer in the normal way with a slight throttle lift.

If its all gone tits-up and you're oversteering, keep some throttle applied (not a bootfull - just enough to keep the car sliding at a managable angle) and just steer in the direction you want to go. Lifting off the throttle at this stage will remove drive from the rear, transfer weight forward (and away from the already sliding rear wheels) and make the oversteer much worse.

DocSteve said:

I then encountered it again in snow where I applied a fairly decent amount of throttle to the car when it was moving slowly with some steering lock on - I expected understeer but what happened was oversteer that showed no signs of abating before I called it a day. I would have expected that it would transfer power to the front under these circumstances.

You're expecting too much from the system in this case - some power is always being directed to the front wheels, it's just that, when traction is limited, the system will transmit some of the power to the rear wheels as well. Snow is one surface which should prompt the system to direct drive to all four wheels at once. If your throttle inputs are harsh, the wheels will keep spinning and the drive will continue to go to all four wheels. If you left the stability switched on, the car will do much more to help you sort it out, but with it off, it'll just deal with the traction and leave you to sort out the slide. Once all four wheels are being driven, the car is doing everything it can to give you maximum traction - at this point it will not start directing more torque back to the front wheels.

DocSteve said:

The car does as expected have a natural tendency to understeer at higher speeds with throttle and steering input which tightens up when coming off the power but I suspect that is more to do with weight transfer and the characteristics of the chassis/suspensions setup that most road cars have rather than anything to do with the Haldex (i.e. I would expect that with almost any car)

This is normal in any car - I'm yet to drive a car which isn't sensitive to weight transfer when pressing on.

Thanks again Reg for your detailed reply.

In the first example, I did deliberately apple excess throttle whilst exiting the corner in order to assess what might happen. What you have said makes a lot of sense and fits with what I experienced. I guess that in either a RWD or FWD car it would have been obvious to me what was going to happen but in this vehicle it really wasn't / isn't. Overall, I am quite sure if I gave the Golf R to a 18 year old keen but inexperienced driver they would stay out of trouble in it compared with a powerful RWD or even FWD car but, still, I think that for someone with a reasonable amount of experience it is an odd steer that is not that intuitive.

With regards to your advice about oversteer, I dare to take issue with some of that - I think it is valid advice if the oversteer is not primarily occurring due to a loss of traction at the driven rear axle but perhaps not so true if the principle cause of the oversteer is loss of rear axle traction on a low grip surface, especially at lower speeds - where the effect of traction on the trajectory of the vehicle is much more significant than any weight transfer process, if you agree?

In the snow, I take your point about leaving the stability on, but for the purposes of the discussion I think your description of the situation without the stability on has probably nailed it. If all 4 wheels are losing traction and then there is more grip available at the rear and traction is gained there then the power may shift to the rear, which in a very low grip situation like that may be enough to induce significant oversteer. On reflection the situation in the snow I described was on an incline (going up) so that could well be part of the explanation there.

On the last point, with regards to road cars and expected handling I meant the tendency to understeer on corner entry (I'm sure we've all driven some track cars that don't quite do that if set up in certain ways...!)

I genuinely have an interest in limit handling (and think I'm reasonable at it, rightly or wrongly) and this car has challenged my expectations. Very much appreciate you taking the time to reply and I have enjoyed your articles so far - PH is great sometimes!

Thanks
Steve

[Alpinestars]

Reg Local said:

If its all gone tits-up and you're oversteering, keep some throttle applied (not a bootfull - just enough to keep the car sliding at a managable angle) and just steer in the direction you want to go. Lifting off the throttle at this stage will remove drive from the rear, transfer weight forward (and away from the already sliding rear wheels) and make the oversteer much worse.

I enjoyed reading your first post, but not sure about the comment above. Maybe it's the way you've written it?

If the driver comes off the throttle having got into an oversteer moment and has some opposite lock applied, coming off the gas is likely to allow the rear tyres to re grip, ie stopping the slide. BUT, when the tyres do re grip, the car will travel in the direction of the front wheels, which because of the opposite lock, are pointing in the opposite direction to the initial slide. This would result in what I think is termed a tank slapper/fishtail.

Coming off the gas is no bad thing so long as the wheel is straightened quickly enough (which often it isn't) so that when the car comes back, it travels in a straight line. No different to what you'd naturally do, even when applying the throttle, to bring the car back. In the latter circumstance, assuming you have the slide under control, you have more time to straighten the car and the transition between oversteer, and fish tailing is more gentle.

I can't see coming off the gas when you're already in an oversteer slide, with opposite lock applied, makes THAT slide worse.

[dvenman]

Alpinestars said:

coming off the gas is likely to allow the rear tyres to re grip

It will have the effect of moving weight *forward*, adding grip to the front, making it steer better, exacerbating the oversteer.

[Alpinestars]

dvenman said:

It will have the effect of moving weight *forward*, adding grip to the front, making it steer better, exacerbating the oversteer.

Not sure I agree. What you're describing is lift off oversteer. You're close to the limit of grip, steering applied in the direction of travel, and you come off the gas. Weight transfers to front, less weight and hence vertical force on the rear, rear loses grip.

Once this happens if you apply opposite lock, you might recover the slide. If the slide is recovered, once the rear tyres find their grip, the car will "come back" and will start going towards the way the front tyres are facing. If you apply power after recovering the slide, and with opposite lock applied, the car maintains its slide. If at that stage you come off the power, the car will straighten.

If you're inducing a slide with power, coming off he power kills the slide. Staying on, keeps it sliding. Applying opposite lock stops the slide from becoming a 180, 360 etc.

[Reg Local]

Alpinestars said:

Reg Local said:

If its all gone tits-up and you're oversteering, keep some throttle applied (not a bootfull - just enough to keep the car sliding at a managable angle) and just steer in the direction you want to go. Lifting off the throttle at this stage will remove drive from the rear, transfer weight forward (and away from the already sliding rear wheels) and make the oversteer much worse.

I enjoyed reading your first post, but not sure about the comment above. Maybe it's the way you've written it?

If the driver comes off the throttle having got into an oversteer moment and has some opposite lock applied, coming off the gas is likely to allow the rear tyres to re grip, ie stopping the slide. BUT, when the tyres do re grip, the car will travel in the direction of the front wheels, which because of the opposite lock, are pointing in the opposite direction to the initial slide. This would result in what I think is termed a tank slapper/fishtail.

Coming off the gas is no bad thing so long as the wheel is straightened quickly enough (which often it isn't) so that when the car comes back, it travels in a straight line. No different to what you'd naturally do, even when applying the throttle, to bring the car back. In the latter circumstance, assuming you have the slide under control, you have more time to straighten the car and the transition between oversteer, and fish tailing is more gentle.

I can't see coming off the gas when you're already in an oversteer slide, with opposite lock applied, makes THAT slide worse.

Try it in an old 911, or a Hilman imp.

To clarify, though, there are two main causes of oversteer - cornering too fast and accelerating too hard (or a combination of the two).

In the OP's example it sounds like the initial slide is caused by excessive corner speed, exacerbated by some wheelspin caused by exessive application of the throttle. If you're cornering a little too fast and the rear breaks loose, lifting off the throttle will transfer weight forward and the rear will - at best - step out even further, and at worst rotate.

The other cause of oversteer - excessive acceleration - tends to happen at lower speeds when the driver is too enthusiastic with the throttle. It's the same type of oversteer induced deliberately by "drifting" types. Drifting can look very dramatic and gives a great impression of speed, but any experienced driver will tell you that the same car will go round a corner much faster when it's not drifting, so an excessive speed oversteer slide will occur at a higher speed than an excessive acceleration oversteer slide (generally, of course).

It's correct that, if the rear has stepped out due to excessive acceleration, lifting off the accelerator will return grip to the driven wheels and quell the oversteer. The problem with this approach is that the grip returns very, very quickly - usually more quickly than the driver is able to remove the corrective lock they have instinctively applied (it is a very instinctive reaction - I've given skid training to very inexperienced drivers and they almost always apply some level of corrective lock in an oversteering car).

So, car oversteers, driver applies corrective lock, lifts off the throttle, grip returns, car suddenly veers off in the opposite direction as per the steering applied.

This can have two possible consequences:

1. Car shoots off the road on the outside of the corner.

2. Car goes into a secondary slide in the opposite direction. And it's always the secondary slide which gets you!

The traditional advice rolled out by a lot of "experts" and even by Roadcraft is that, if a car is oversteering, you should lift off the accelerator and even de-clutch if you're in a manual car. The experts will tell you that this will "remove the cause of the skid".

In my experience this is very bad advice. If a car is oversteering - for whatever reason - try to ride out the initial slide. Don't apply any more throttle, but hold the throttle where it is (or feather it back slightly), steer where you want to go and keep your inputs smooth and delicate.

[Alpinestars]

I agree re power oversteer as in my earlier post.

Throttle
Slide
Catch
Either show boat by applying throttle and holding it sideways
Or straighten the wheel to avoid a tank slapper.

With lift off I still can't see that applying throttle helps. Except in very limited circumstances. Eg a fwd car will pull itself out of a slide, or as you say an old school 911 where there is weight over the rear wheels might give some traction back to the slipping rear wheels.

I can't see that if someone has barrelled into a corner too quickly, lifted off, rear slides, that the right advice on a road is to apply throttle. Surely the first thing to do is recover the slide, and only if you get it back apply some throttle? (Fwd, rwd rear engine possibly aside). Applying more throttle on the road is going to end in an even bigger crash 9 times out of 10.

[DocSteve]

Alpinestars said:

I agree re power oversteer as in my earlier post.

Throttle
Slide
Catch
Either show boat by applying throttle and holding it sideways
Or straighten the wheel to avoid a tank slapper.

With lift off I still can't see that applying throttle helps. Except in very limited circumstances. Eg a fwd car will pull itself out of a slide, or as you say an old school 911 where there is weight over the rear wheels might give some traction back to the slipping rear wheels.

I can't see that if someone has barrelled into a corner too quickly, lifted off, rear slides, that the right advice on a road is to apply throttle. Surely the first thing to do is recover the slide, and only if you get it back apply some throttle? (Fwd, rwd rear engine possibly aside). Applying more throttle on the road is going to end in an even bigger crash 9 times out of 10.

The discussion seems to have moved on from the effects of Haldex, although I will say that my original post related to throttle induced over/understeer rather than excess cornering speed as Reg suggests above.

I agree with most of what you say - advising people to apply more throttle when they don't really know what they are doing is likely to just make a bad situation even worse. However, I was experimenting with this on the track with Mark Hales (great coach btw) recently in my track car which is front engined and RWD. On one particular corner I was setting myself up for it by braking into the turn-in (trail braking, if you will) and the result was oversteer which I then corrected before getting back on the power. What I learnt was that I could get around the corner faster by getting straight back on the power (not enough to break traction at the rear though) which settled down the oversteer with minimal steering input and resulted in a higher speed on the straight before the next corner.

I think the key point as you and Reg allude to is what has actually caused the oversteer - if it is excess throttle and loss of traction then applying more throttle is not likely to help, although the issue of over-correction is what causes most problems, I think. On track if this happens I find briefly letting go of the steering whilst correcting usually prevents the problem as if you keep hold of the wheel most of the time you will have too much corrective steering lock on just as the grip recovers at the rear and as above - tank slapper/slide in opposite direction/everything going green :-)

Steve

[Reg Local]

Alpinestars said:

I can't see that if someone has barrelled into a corner too quickly, lifted off, rear slides, that the right advice on a road is to apply throttle.

Please point out to me where I gave this advice.

You do know that I'm not just making this stuff up, don't you?

[Alpinestars]

Reg Local said:

Please point out to me where I gave this advice.

You do know that I'm not just making this stuff up, don't you?

See my first post. You suggested that when traction is lost, coming off will make the oversteer worse.

No I don't think you are making it up, as per my first post. You come across knowledgeable about the subject matter, but I don't get your point about coming off the gas making oversteer worse. Maybe we are taking at cross purposes, but the bit I highlighted in my first post suggests the initial oversteer was due to too much power, applying more power before catching isn't right in my view. Applying power once you've caught the slide makes the transition from slip to grip and a potential tank slapper, slower. So ideally one would apply throttle after catching the slide. But to come off the gas on a power slide has to be the way to slow the slide.

[Reg Local]

To be clear - and because I don't want anyone misunderstanding this important point - my advice with oversteer, whether it is caused by acceleration or excessive speed, and whether your car is front, rear or four-wheel drive, is to keep some throttle applied and steer in the direction you want to go.

My advice is not to apply more throttle.

Nor is it to lift off the throttle, de-clutch, brake or do anything else which is likely to transfer the cars weight in the wrong direction.

[Alpinestars]

Reg Local said:

To be clear - and because I don't want anyone misunderstanding this important point - my advice with oversteer, whether it is caused by acceleration or excessive speed, and whether your car is front, rear or four-wheel drive, is to keep some throttle applied and steer in the direction you want to go.

My advice is not to apply more throttle.

Nor is it to lift off the throttle, de-clutch, brake or do anything else which is likely to transfer the cars weight in the wrong direction.

What is the advice if the oversteer has been caused by lifting off?

[Reg Local]

The same.

[Alpinestars]

Reg Local said:

The same.

I hope you appreciate I'm not trying to be funny, just trying to understand your advice.

How can it be the same? If you've come off the gas, how can you both stay on the gas and not apply more gas at the same time? They are mutually exclusive when you're off the gas in the first place.

To be clear, if you go into a bend too fast, decide to come off the gas (fully), which results in the rear losing grip as a result of weight transfer, would you get back on the gas or stay off the gas? You can't apply more gas (ie some gas) and apply no more gas (ie stay off the gas) at the same time.

Hope that makes sense.