Oh lord, you said Initial D is drifting . Initial D is NOT drifting, its racing (touge, actually). Its also a cartoon. There is some drifitng in initial D, but thats theoretically for the same reason as drifting in rally racing (scandanavian flick). In any case, you shouldn't believe everything you see in cartoons.

I put a post up about this last summer, but I'll explain it again briefly. Competitive drifting is judged essentially on 4 things: Angle, speed, line, and overall impact.

Angle: how early you initiate and how sideways you get the car

Speed: How fast your turn entry is

Line: How good your line is (you must follow a racing line, usually out-in-out)

Overall Impact: How your car looks. This is where big useless wings come into play, fancy lighting, showcar paint, etc. Tire smoke also falls into this category.

Tandem drifting is judged by the same criteria, but also by how close together the cars are, and how well synchronised.

Tsuiso is the battle drift. In Tsuiso the following car is on the offensive. The idea, if you are following, is to pressure your opponent, take away his line, or disrupt his drift in some other way (without contact). The defensive leading driver must protect his line and try to trick the following driver into chasing after him and making a mistake. Each driver gets to lead once, and follow once.

There is a lot of confusion about Tsuiso, because people see someone pass and win and think "oh, its about who gets there first, so its racing" which isn't true. Its about pressuring the other guy into making a mistake. If you were able to pass him, its because his line went too wide or he lost too much speed, so you get the advantage, but you don't have to pass to make that point either. The idea is not really to get to the end first, its to make the other guy screw up.

Also, if you think taking one turn at high speed is harder than drifting a continuous CLEAN line around a road course then you have clearly never drifted a real course. High speed drift is hard because it takes guts (not the word I wanted to use there) to do it. Thats not the case with r/c. With r/c you can just throw the car around at whatever speed you like. If you happen to hit something, you fix whatever broke, and your maximum repair cost is under $1000. So r/c drifting doesn't take any huevos, its all about skill and style. Try setting up a road course with chalk, or better yet try drifting your local on-road track.


As far as accelerating out of the turns, let me make this clear: Drifting is slower than grip. In basically any case where you have a clean asphalt course, a proper racing line and good driving will beat drifting thru the turns. There are a handful of exceptions to this (super tight hairpins, like those found in rally and loose surface racing like rally and baja) but not many. If you think you are going to drift thru a turn faster, try racing a local racer and see what happens.