For a great number of auto fanatics around the world, there’s no better car movie or better yet, series of car movies, than the three installments of the cult movie series, “The Fast and the Furious”. Of course, if you happen to prefer “Herbie Fully Loaded” then whatever floats your boat—for all I know, you might actually be 10 OR you think like you’re 10 OR you’re a big fan of La Lohan from her Parent Trap days or her rehab stints. (Although, seriously, the movie wasn’t ALL that bad…I’m thinking it could have been worse.)
Anyways, back to “The Fast and the Furious”. In “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”, we saw the protagonist racing against a bunch of wannabe Yakuza members in what can only be described as an “honor race”. In short, the one who loses must leave the city… forever… Okay, so although I didn’t really like the plot, I have to say that watching those cars “drift” was just incredibly cool and entertaining.
So, What Exactly Is Drifting?
Drifting basically refers to a type of cornering technique where your car’s front wheels semi-lock and point in the opposite direction of where you’re turning. As a result, your vehicle slides along the corner at an almost-right angle from the turn. While most racing sports are all about controlling the movement of the vehicle, this sport focuses on losing traction and controlling while maximizing the skidding motion of the vehicle.
Although drifting may not be anything new in the motor sport racing world, since this practice has been done by racers from the early Grand Prix, this technique was popularized recently by the highly talented racer, Keiichi Tsuchiya. Since he first entered into the motoring world, Tsuchiya has gone on to win several major motor sport titles, while landing the title of being a “drifting legend”, even after he had his license suspended for participating in street racing. Although Tsuchiya is now a retired street and professional racer, a lot of people still look up to him as some type of “drifting god”. (The word “god” might be an overstatement—but this guy seriously has mad skills.)
These days, drifting is still very much popular and is considered a major part of the motor sports and street racing, and not just in
How Do You Know If You’re Already “Drifting”?
As I said before, the actual act of “drifting”, really isn’t anything new or extraordinary. What’s extraordinary is being able to drift when you want to, and being able to retain control of your vehicle as you drift—now that, requires skill. But if you’ve been driving for a while, and if your vehicle’s rear end, at one point, swung around while you’re on a wet road and you found your heart pumping really fast as you struggled for about
In the early days of automobile racing, vehicle tires didn’t have much grip in them making drifting an effortless and sometimes unwanted vehicle occurrence. These days, even with better traction and grip, great racers or drivers can still “drift” and control the drift to their advantage.
“Drifting” Today
Today, the interest on the sport of “Drift racing” is rapidly spreading from
