I’ve already gotten a couple wtf emails in response to my last entry, telling me I can’t drift a FF car. Whether it is possible or not to drift FF, I don’t really care. I guess I wasn’t clear. My objective is not to drift my FF car all winter long, but rather to learn to drive around the inherent understeer of an FF car. In doing this, hopefully I can learn some basic things that will help me in other driving ventures. After a few days… how are things going? They certainly are challenging, but already I’ve been reminded of various difficulties in driving which I had forgotten some time ago.
For instance… the importance of good footwork. I have always thought one of my greatest weaknesses as a driver was my working of the clutch and the gear box… most important here is the heal and toe. The fact that I got it wrong is blatant when I shift lock slightly on corner entry and can’t turn in like I had planned. Or likewise… over rev. This is why I love the snow and ice so much… it makes such mistakes hugely obvious.
As a bigger driver trying to initiate oversteer, I often tried so hard that I ended up overdriving the car and causing understeer instead. How does this work? If I’m entering a corner and I want to drift, I used to think as follows… First: I have to be going fast enough that I’m beyond the limits of my car. Second: I have to brake really hard to transfer weight to the front tires. Third: I have to turn in really hard so that the light back end swings around.
When I used to do this… the only time oversteer resulted was by fluke. I could never figure out why, but I always blamed my car. Shitty stock suspension AE86 or, I need an LSD, or If only I had a GZE. Dumb stuff like that, which now I know is all wrong. Now… I also know what was wrong with my driving. First: Do I have to going fast enough that I’m beyond the limits of my car? Not necessarily… in fact, I eventually found it easier to create oversteer at lower speeds. Second and Third: I learned that I don’t have to ease up again… by doing everything as hard and fast as I could, I often just ended up exceeding front tire grip and thus ran into perma-understeer before I ever managed to load up the outside rear tire. I’ve come to think of front grip like an elastic band. If I only stretch it enough, the load transfers at the front and then, at the rear, but if I stretch it so much that it breaks, understeer results and the attempt has failed.
In snow and ice now, I’m reminded of my early days when I made such mistakes because there is so little grip available that it’s very easy to exceed my front tires grip just on turn in. The “elastic band” gets thinner, and brittle. It’s much easier to break. And now… being in a FF car, if I understeer on turn in it’s just going to continue through the whole corner, unless I put my left foot in the middle or grab the hand brake. If I let myself resort to such things… I’m not learning anything new so… NOT ALLOWED!
Done right… I entry the corner, braking to transfer weight down, shifting without locking or over-revving, delicately turning in… the read end steps out, I roll back on the gas, steering and pulling the front end around to straighten out. Done right, it’s magic, and for the first time ever, I can see why FF cars often fair better in poor conditions than their FR counterparts. The movement of the FF car is all business, coming out of the corner straight and hard rather than all loose and showy.
The game now, will be turning in more and more sharp and hard to create more angle, sooner. This however, isn’t really something I can practice on the street. For the first time ever… winter auto-x is coming.