Drifting and why I love it

Ever seen cars race? If you take a look at their tires, all four of them are technically 'glued' to the surface of the road. The tires never lose grip. The drivers try their best to not let the car skid while pushing it to the limit. This is called grip driving. Drifting however, is the direct opposite of grip driving. The drivers intentionally make the tires lose grip to make the cars skid.A car is said to be drifting when the rear slip angle is greater than the front slip angle prior to the corner apex, and the front wheels are pointing in the opposite direction to the turn (e.g. car is turning/drifting left, wheels are pointed right or vice versa)

So who dominates the drifting world you ask? It's this guy:
 
Keiichi Tsuchiya when he was younger.

I think this is his coolest pic.

Keiichi Tsuchiya (土屋 圭市, Tsuchiya Keiichi?, born January 30, 1956, Tomi, Nagano, Japan) is a professional racing driver. He is also known as the "Drift King" otherwise as Dorikin (ドリキン) for his nontraditional use of drifting in non-drifting racing events, and his role in popularizing drifting as a motorsport. He is also known for touge (mountain pass) driving.
The car he drives has become one of the most popular sports cars these days, the Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno, the car also known as "Hachi-Roku" in Japan (hachi-roku meaning "eight six"); his car is also called "The Little Hachi that could". A video known as Pluspy documents Tsuchiya's touge driving with his AE86.
(source: wikipedia)

Why do I love drifting? I personally feel that drifting is more fun, exciting and challenging as compared to grip racing. If there's a chance, I would want to experience drifting. Either by sitting in a car of actually driving it.  I play racing games all the time. I literally fall asleep while playing racing games what use grip driving. Most of the racing games I own for ps2 have drifting in them. One of my favorites is Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2.

Anyways, here are some pictures of cars drifting.

 
 (http://ahtf.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/drifting731tm8.jpg)
(http://www.sromagazine.com/japan/drift/drift1.jpg)
(http://www.secretdrift.com.au/luke/blog/wearedrift/part_3_1.jpg)



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Keiichi even teaches the Japanese police how to drift
http://www.japansugoi.com/wordpress/okinawa-cops-learn-to-drift-from-keiichi-tsuchiya/

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