how does "lift off oversteer" work?

[andylawcc]

i was watching the old old old Top Gear where Tiff Needle was test driving the Audi RS4, he complained that he cannot oversteer and "have fun" with it so he had to do two things,

1) Pull handbrake
2) Lift Off.

now I watched King Drift Tsuchiya's Drift Bible and it mentioned something about "Lift" but that was in Japanese and I didn't understand a thing he said.


what it seems like is full throttle accelerate into corner and let off the gas and turn, this should induce oversteer in a RWD car right. but how about on a FWD ?

 

[0roo0roo]

isn't it shifting weight off the wheels u want to slide?

 

[KokomoGSTmp]

Actually, its similar in a FWD vehicle. It is basically the shifting of the weight that induces the rear wheels to slide.

In a FWD vehicle, getting a car to oversteer is pretty much all the same except you don't have Tsuchiya's "shift lock" nor "power over" available.

Rather, a drift can be initiated by suddenly "lifting off" the throttle. The engine suddenly slows down and so do the tires connected to them in a medium/high speed turn. This abrupt weight shift makes the rear end VERY light and since you're doing it in the middle of a turn, you better get back on the throttle and possibly throw in some opposite lock to pull that tail back in. You can also apply the concepts of a kansei or pendulum turn to the ldea of "lift off."

For example, you want to go maximum attack at a slower speed chicane (ie quick right left). In a FWD car, you'd dive in with some trailbraking to rotate the into the right turn and as you feel the weight of the car rotating it to the right you hit the throttle enough to pull it in and that starts to swing the car around the other way. As the weight is shifting back to the left because your FWD is pulling the tail back, you can add steering input as you lift off the throttle. Your car will snap back toward the left pretty quickly but you'll have scrubbed off a lot of speed by now making it manageable to exit the chicane with your foot to the floor.

 

[andylawcc]

whao, thanks a bunch Kokomo, I just hope I understood what tsuchiya is saying...