Most Applied Drifting Techniques in Formula D Racing

How does a driver make his vehicle lose grip of the race track and still navigate the course at high speeds? Simple. He has attained the required skills of drifting techniques. It intrigues a fan how exciting the move is and yet it is seemingly unexplainable.

The criteria, which the judges will be basing on, are the expertise of drivers in sliding their cars on the track at high speeds. What is Drifting? It is defined as intentionally allowing a car to go past the car tires adhesion to the ground surface. The vehicle is basically traveling sideways. Difficulty is encountered in maintaining a high speed and negotiating the turns. Professional drifting drivers make the very difficult moves seemingly ordinary. Most of the time, they retain control of their vehicles.

The list of drifting techniques has expanded from the original 4 basic moves to 12 skills. The source of this data comes from the organizers of Formula D. They may look very easy to follow in writing, but they are definitely very difficult and gut wrenching to perform. The drifting techniques are the Kansei, Faint, Braking, Shift, Clutch, E-Brake, Dirt Drop, Jump, Long Slide, Swaying, FF, and Power Over Drifts.

At race speeds and entering a high-speed corner, the driver lifts his foot of the pedal to create a mild over steer and then balances the drift by throttle motions and steering. This is the Kansai Drift. This only works for cars that are neutral in balance.
 
A braking drift is employed in corners that are identified as low or medium speed corners.  The driver will use their trail braking just as they begin entering into the corner. The use of this braking will often result in the loss of grip, from the car to the car tires.

Used mainly for tight mountain corners is the Faint drift where it is performed by rocking the car towards the outside of a turn, and then by the rebound of grip, the car recovers into the normal cornering direction.

An E-Bake Drift uses of a car’s emergency break to lose traction. The Dirt Drop is done by dropping the back end tires off the road into the dirt so as not to lose power or speed and to set up for the next turn. The Jump Drift involves bouncing the rear tire over a curb to lose traction while the car is on the inside of a turn.

A Long Slide Drift is pulling a car’s emergency break on a straightaway.  It starts to angle the car in a direction that is needed to successfully make it through a number of corners.  It can only be used at high speeds. A slow side-to-side faint like drift where the back end of the vehicle swings back and forth is the Swaying Drift. The Power Over Drifts is performed with required high car horsepower performance along a corner and
full throttle is engaged to produce heavy oversteer through a turn.