Drifting v's Power Sliding

[OlberJ]

I've touched on this before but interested to see what other people think.

To me, driving through a corner, clipping your apex and powering out the other side with the tail wagging is very very satisfying and not exactly dangerous in the fact you can see where you are going by the apex. You've got good car control, you're being quick and a bit showy as you ps off down the road.

Drifting appears to me to be the opposite of this, upset the car before the corner, commit yourself completely and hope there's nothing on the other side of the corner to hit. The skill here seems to be in your angle of attack being as wild as possible and keeping the same shape all the way round. Not exactly quick driving either.

So what's your thoughts, power sliding for real men and drifting for ballerinas?

[TheEnd]

by your description, drifting needs balls of steel, and powersliding is the easy option for ballerinas, air hosts, and blokes who work in high street shops.

[james_gt3rs]

TheEnd said:

by your description, drifting needs balls of steel, and powersliding is the easy option for ballerinas, air hosts, and blokes who work in high street shops.

[OlberJ]

TheEnd said:

by your description, drifting needs balls of steel, and powersliding is the easy option for ballerinas, air hosts, and blokes who work in high street shops.

Touché

I guess easy = safer?

[RobM77]

It's too late to change it now, but the term drifting has been around since the infancy of driving theory and refers to something completely different to "Drifting" as it's become known recently. Drifting in the traditional sense actually refers to a state where the front and rear of the car are sliding equally (full name: "four wheel drift"). Optimum grip is achieved in a small drift (front and rear at optimum grip) and this is the state that a good racing driver corners at from turn in to exit. So the most skilled drivers in the world are all actually drifting when they corner - Hamilton, Button, McNish etc.

As for the different between "Drifting" (as in D1 etc) and powersliding, having tried both on a few occasions I'd say drifting takes more skill because you're using weight transfer, which is the harder skill to master (with rear wheel drive anyway). You're also holding a line through a corner, rather than just having a flurry after the apex.

Far harder than both though is braking right on the limit, turning in at exactly the right speed, cornering in a four wheel drift at optimum slip, and then accelerating on the limit afterwards; and modifying all of that in the context of a race track to gain optimum lap time whilst following a racing line which gives the fastest path around a corner, and perhaps racing another driver. Sorry to any drifters out there, but I've got far more respect for Lewis Hamilton, Sebastien Loeb (same thing, just bigger slip angles) or Allan McNish than I have the D1 guys. Just my own opinion I'm afraid - don't flame me for that!