Drifting...... Why? It looks, odd.. I just don't see the draw of drifting.. Anyone care to show/tell me what I'm missing here? (This isn't criticism, so keep yer flames to yerself)

Thats understandable.. but also.. for people who love drifting/street sports.. drifting is just a challenge.. its something that is hard to do in a real car.. Taking a turn that you should normally do at 25-35mph and taking it at 75-100mph is insane and very fun.. the !QUOT!goal!QUOT! is to go into the turn using what ever technique you prefer. some pull the ebrake, others pop the clutch its just a matter of getting the back tires to !QUOT!slip!QUOT! and start a controlled slide.. the more sideways you get and come out okay the better the drift is... but at the same time keeping a good style.. adding a little flash into it or like i saw some guy do in cali.. hanging out his window while he drifts. its the same with RC cars.*not the flashy part.. u cant hang out of an RC car window*. just driving them normally.. or even off road would get boring..then switching it up to drifting, where the goal is to get the car to slide around a corner.. but taking into account your line.. making sure the enter/apex/exit line is consistent and smooth.. one little mistake and u will spin out/crash or have a bad drift... but its all personal preference.. you either like it.. or you dont..

i have the same qualm when it comes to nascar i dont understand driving in a circle for 500laps....


thats my view/explanation of drifting.. others may see mine wrong, but i can drift in both my rc car and my real car... so i have to be doing something right

I guess if you are just bashing, then drifting would be a decent distraction from jumping over curbs.. But as a racer, I see no point nor thrill in it.

The best explination: "Drifting is a combination of ballet and rice." (I use the word "rice" without reference to any ethnicity, only the "style" of car that it has been popularly referenced as).

Basically, it's car control. On a higher level, it's showing off. That's it. Just like a ballet, you're trying to take graceful lines making the car "dance" through corners. The "rice" aspect: you're just showing off (although all the "serious" drift cars are "riced out" as well). I guess the "dancing" part mostly applies, though.

So, my attraction to it??
1: it looks cool
2: it's a form of car control
3: it's something fun to do while not working on/ driving my SCCA racer (1:1).

well said, i totally agree.

for me it is just getting to race my friend, we both have Tl-01s with a Stock turn modified motor, we can get so close(within cms) and not crash, also trying not to spin out around turns.

It's something else to get use to and some where else for me to spend money on I only started drifting my TL-01 today and I am hooked on geting better

Drifting 0wnes.

all i gota say is try it and you will understand y it is so funn and cool

people have explained it, but my way -
Example: Rally car drivers know that it takes to long to get around a courner the touring car way (brake, turn, accelerate) so instead, they drift. its all about control, and the more control your have the more skill you have in overal rc racing. its about entering a turn at at full speed and take the exit point earlier like in a drag- the slower the reaction, the bigger the time. to do this you have to slide so much that your car is paralel to the exit straight. normal rc car drivers may use the out-in-out tecnique while drifters will use anything more inwards like an in-in-in sorta thing or middle-middle-in. there are many different ways.
Most common reasons for Drifting:
1)Its fun
2)its about tecnique and style
3)it looks good and has better advantages
4)its faster that normal racing

For me it's all about bashing and having fun. I run touring car, that's it. My race car only runs indoors, so when I want to bash I have a TL01 I can go cruise the parking lot with. It's not much fun just driving around an imaginary course in a parking lot. You can't exactly jump curbs, do hill climbs, or go off road with a car like that. Drifting is the best alternative and it's mass more fun to watch.

There is something entertaining to watching your car do a 30' sweeping turn with it's nose pointed in towards the apex the whole time. Or flying up on a curb, sideways, and sliding along w/ the rear parallel to it for twenty feet while the rear of the car is only 4-5" away. It's just more fun to watch, especially if your down low with the car. If you get a few cars together on some form of course it's a whole lot of fun.

It's also more fun driving the car like that because it takes more input from you rather than just your typical full throttle bashing. It takes way more finess. I drive with a couple of guys, one hasn't been driving long - and it's obvious - he can't control his car. It actually takes some skill to drift well. Not to mention you can do some wicked bat turns.

As far as RC Drifting goes, I'd have to disagree with it being faster than normal racing. I think it's much slower in general when your talking about ABS wheels that get little to no traction, so your acceleration sucks. Most of the RC drift racing I've seen has been a much slower pace, but I could be wrong.

Well put Desolas, I feel almost the same. I drift for the pure FUN OF IT i drive a touring car (Yokomo MR-4TC SD SSG Special chassis) and with my set up i can only program my remote for a peak throttle of 60%. because the car gets there in a hurryand anymore is too fast for the tracks i race on. but when i'm not practicing and just want to drift and have some fun i swap out my wheels for the ones with the ABS on em and throw on my Nissan Silvia body go out and have some fun. I drift for the pure enjoyment, I laugh when i make mistakes because it is funny. when i make a mistake with the rubber tires on it...the mas of that car causes some serious damage both physically and monetarily. the drifter car just sortof rolls off the hit and continues on its way.

For me having the same chassis, Rubber means business. Plastic means playtime.

just thought i'd add a little.

btw drifting is slower than grip racing but it is fun, yes i did say fun four times in my post because it's true.

Keep it sideways,
Too Slow

Drift cuz its fun! It just looks too damn cool. It also requires a lot of skill as well. Lately instead of BMX and Skateboard videos me and my friends have been shooting R/C Drift videos heheh.

I like drifting because it's a great break from my BL Rustler which I drive pretty hard off road. I decided to get a TC3 and try drifting because I do a lot of my driving at night and the only well lit places are parking lots. Driving a stadium truck in a wide open parking lot just isn't as fun as holding long drifts across the lot. I do like to run rubber tires there but as others have mentioned, I usually break something pretty quick. I've only broken one thing while drifting and I was barely even moving, so I think it was fractured in a previous crash with rubber tires. Not to mention drifting only requires about 1/3rd throttle, and with a brushless motor that is real efficient with power, I easily get 30 minutes per battery. That's about 10 minutes longer than I get with normal tires. Two batteries lasts until the fun dies off, then I head home.

It's real hard to explain the appeal of it all. It's just fun. From the moment I put PVC tires on and managed to get a drift, I was hooked. I don't think there's words for it, it's just something that has to be experienced.

Wow... I'd just like to correct some statements here before someone goes off spreading such "info"
rally drivers "drift" because of the need to rotate the car with limited traction. or... are you implying that rally drivers are just smarter than say... F1 drivers??

Normally a reported 1/4 mile time does not factor R/T.

best line is still out-in-out. early/ late apex changes slightly.... but the ideal lines are very similar. a "good" rc drifter should be able to closely follow the ideal line.

slower. much... much slower....

i think people drift rc's because like all other rc fields some people cant afford to do it on a 1:1 scale. like rock crawlers for instance, im sure theyd love to afford exo cage, big block, beadlocked buggies but they cant so the do it on a smaller for affordable scale. but i may be wrong.

to me i think being attracted to drifting comes naturally..you cant make anybody like drifting and i think you can explain all you want but it all comes out on how people think what drifting is. me personally the only kind of style bashing i do is drifting..i have one whole rc car juss dedicated to juss drift all day n everyday.

I'm looking forward to having some fun with my car.
I've been racing for over 16 years and frankly am now getting so little from the racing itself that it's going to be a nice change to have a bit of fun.

[quote]ORIGINAL: TooSlow2Care

"...i drive a touring car (Yokomo MR-4TC SD SSG Special chassis) and with my set up..."

dear sir,
kindly advise your set up. need help on setting up mine. sure the out of the box will slide sideways anyways. but just not satisfied. droop? slip diff? any toe infront? shock oils? spring rate? ride height? pinion size? gear size? motor wind?

please advise. thank you very much!

[quote]ORIGINAL: AceInHole

Wow... I'd just like to correct some statements here before someone goes off spreading such "info"
i guess i should do the same. it depends on racing. drag? pointless. stupid oval course? pointless. now on a technical course, it is much much faster. drifting is the fastest way in and out of a turn (to a certain degree). i drift in my s14.5 all the time. (haha...i named it myself....its an s14 converted 240 with an s15 front end). anywho...point is when im driving through my usuall prowling spots, i can take turns marked at 30mph at 80+. same is true with an rc car. oval course its useless, but if you go to a course that has alot of technical turns involved than its the best way to go.

so....next time you go out, take a car that you dont drift with. meet up with some rc drifters. go to a technical course that ALSO includes long straightaways and some easy turns, and see who spanks who. your touring car may beat the pants off the drifter through the straights, but the drifter will flat out pass the touring car.

to me its fun because all night long i drive around looking for newly paved parking lots with tight turns..then i sweep the corner with a broom and start drifting..sometimes i find a sweet corner thats easy to drift right away and im only there for 1 tank of fuel...other corners take me a while to get the hang of because they are real tight or real long and its sometimes hard to find what speed,gear,pitch i should be at when entering the corner and what spot do i want to exit the turn at...usually those turns take a few hours or days to defeat because i end up breaking the car, run out of fuel in my fuel bottle, have do do extra tuning to the suspension to get the car to handle the turn and pitch faster..i guess to me each turn i find is a game/learning lesson...i learn from each turn another thing about drifting/car setup and i walk away happy because i was able to make the car do what i wanted to do in a certain condition..its very rewarding knowing you can do somthing like that

tonight i found 3 great corners all in the same freshly paved parking lot..i was there long enough to defeat all corners,burn 2.5 tanks of fuel,cause a fuel leak,and scratch up my new drifting body..all on rubber tiresin all id say it was a GREAT night..lol..now i have some more things to setup before tomorrow's bash battle

thats why i drift