So this is the second half to my beginners advice article. This is aimed for people who are still trying to get the ropes. Let us know if anything here has helped or is complete bullshit. I’m happy to change sections within reason.
Talk to people at the track:
First things first… This is one of these things that some people overlook and since drifting is about having fun with mates its a pretty key thing in my opinion. I admit my two drift days I didn’t really speak to anyone else and just hung out with my passenger and only spoke to the track owners for advice. Since I opened up and started speaking to other people I’ve met some really solid dudes and had some fantastic crack with people just from showing up somewhere to dick about in cars.
Benefits from this are kinda self explanatory but you can use other people for advice, borrow tools, spare pair of hands to help get you on track. Everyone I’ve met so far has been sound as fuck and has always been super helpful when needed.
This goes both ways, if you have any advice that may help someone, go over, introduce yourself, get the crack and offer your advice/help!
Another thing I can’t stress enough. If anyone gives you negative feedback, don’t take it to heart. Take it on as a positive, ask them for advice or more information. Maybe ask other people for their advice on it if you’re unsure about it. – I’ve never been in this situation, only been told negative things followed up with how to improve them, overall a positive light. If anyones straight up cunty about stuff like that or don’t want to speak to you cause your car isn’t/is cool (Seems being cunty is getting quite universal between “cool” and “uncool” people), just don’t give them the time of day in future. For every twat there’s 10x more sound folk.
Track time:
First things first. If its a circuit you’re probably going to be sharing the track with others. Don’t be a dick. If you see someone show up behind you (you should be trying to be mindful of this), pull over to inside of the track. Indicate to signal the driver to overtake/get past you. They are obviously going faster and unless you know them and you’re wanting to risk twinning, let them past. There is no point holding someone up, all you’ll do is piss that person off and they might try some dodgy manoeuvre to get past you.
If anyone more advanced comes diving onto your door and you feel uncomfortable with it. Come off drift as smoothly as possible and pull over to the opposite side of the track to them. People who are generally more advanced won’t do this but unfortunately it still happens when people think they’re hot shit and can twin with someone they don’t know.
Technique:
Right so this is a fucking tricky thing to give advice on. Go watch Drift Bible and on-board footage from your local track. My advice is fuck about with weight transfers, clutch kicks, and powerovers see how you get on. If you just can’t get it after solid attempts revert to a flick and handbrake jab (jab, not prolonged pull), then power. – whatever is comfortable to you – I can’t stress this enough. Do whatever the fuck feels good to you. Learn however you want and just focus on consistency. Once you have consistency under your belt you can start mixing up your technique and move onto different things and experimenting. – However I’d strongly suggest throwing it in with clutch kicks 90% on the time. You’ll learn a lot that way including keeping speed up and getting more angle than weight transfer/power overs.
If you’re really struggling to get it. Just come off track. Chill out for 5 minutes and then go back out and see if a fresh mind helps. If you’re still struggling maybe try speaking to someone and asking if they have the time to jump in and give you pointers. If they don’t have time (which is quite often, everyones paid and wants their fair seat time. Don’t take it as them being a twat.) see if they have any suggestions for anyone spectating/not driving to jump in.
Steering Control:
You see some people who want to hold onto the steering wheel all of the time and this can lead to flappy hand syndrome or the wheel not moving fast enough. Of course this is bad as you can’t control the wheel if you’re flapping about trying to catch it and if its trying to go faster than you can keep up you’ll spin out/slow down massively. Learning to let go and catch the wheel is definitely the best way to learn. It takes a while to get used to, I keep my hands around 10 and 2, catch before the car goes all the way to full lock and wind on/off lock. I don’t really have much advise other than give it a shot tbh.
Once you’re confident and get used to the wheel movements you can start bossing it and keeping hands on the wheel as you know exactly where the wheel needs to be etc. I’m still release and catching with subtle adjustments after catching but you see some people who never seem to let go which I suppose is the end goal!
Spinning out:
Alright so you’ve overcooked your entry/transistion, there’s no going back and you’re spinning out. Wind off lock and get the wheels pointing straight. Nothing is worse for someone following someone who has spun and then their car gets flicked in a direction they’re not expecting. As long as you’re not on full angle and are using the footbrake and handbrake the car should be relatively predictable and any imminent crashes from someone throwing it in with 100% commitment can hopefully be avoided.
Getting your speed up:
I was dropped into Driftland full outer on my 2nd drift day. For a total newbie who’d never been to the track before I was fucking shitting myself. I spoke to Jeek before going out who gave me the tip of breaking the corner into two halfs. Skid one half. Come off drift, re-initiate for the 2nd half then eventually build up to doing it all in one. Few attempts of this in 2nd gear my mate in the passenger seat must have been getting fed up and told me “Just grip the corner and see how fast you can go.” – I threw the car in as fast as I could not breaking traction, around 60mph If I remember right, in third gear and instantly had the realisation “I can go way fucking faster”. Back round to the wall, fast as I could get again up into 3rd this time and clutch kicked and drifted right up to the apex of the “second” corner where I spun out. I then sessioned the rest of the day throwing it in using 3rd gear and eventually did an extremely ropey version of the big corner.
I’d always recommend gripping a new track/layout to anyone as its the best way to get a feel for the speed of the track and how fast you should be aiming for if you can’t gauge this from other cars/drivers. (For example 3 Sisters where you’re sent out staggered.)
Closing the Gap:
So you can do a comfortable skid at track and you can sort of link the track after a couple skid days unless you’re a fucking robotic Naoki cunt doing it on your first day. You should be focussing on getting more consistent but also you don’t want to keep holding up more experienced drivers. One thing that pushed myself to learn to keep speed up was to take a mental note of how far ahead a car is from me and try to close the gap, or keep the gap the same. Once you get more consistent and more speed you should be able to also follow other peoples lines, and get used to following another car. – I cannot stress enough that if you do not know the car in front do not get closer than 3 car lengths. – This isn’t just learning, stick to driving with people you know and have been invited to drive with.
Doesn’t matter what the car is you’re following either. I remember trying to keep up with a fairly big spec S15 in my mx5 but since the track layout was tight and he couldn’t just power off I was able to keep up (ish).
Lock Mods:
Right so, the minefield of Lock mods. Of course I can’t tell you what to do, I can only give advice here. I think that the best way to do it over your first drift days is to learn with what your car came with for lock. Once you are used to that and can control your angle, bang in some rack spacers to be able to push out a bit wider. After this point you can make a decision to put on lock knuckles and try to throw in bigger angle entries etc at the negative of potentially loosing a lot of speed whilst learning.- If you wind on too much lock you’ll slow down to fuck. I’ve been behind wisefabbed cars that looked like they have come to a complete stop before V8’ing off. Other option which I prefer is to keep just rack spacers and learn to keep speed up but have slightly shallower entries and angle etc. This may sound less appealing but when you go to lock kits you should be able to go straight to bigger entries whilst keeping speed up after a few runs. – Same end goal just different ways to reach it through preference I suppose.
Drift Fatigue:
I’ve no idea how to explain this properly, if anyone has the actual name or can describe it better drop me a message and I’ll edit. This is basically the feeling of not being 100% focused on your driving. Fuck knows what causes it but sometimes you’ll notice it happening by doing a couple stupid mistakes or just zoning out. As soon as you suspect this just get off track, sit down and chill out for 5 minutes.
I’ve tried to “Battle through” this because I didn’t want to cut my session short and smashed fuck out of my S13 on the first day driving it. This was about 10 seconds after doing a daft initiation, spun, laughed I wasn’t paying enough attention. Turned around then kept my foot on the accelerator too long and smashed into a bund. – Yeah, that extra 5 minutes track time ain’t worth fucking your car if you’re spending an hour trying to fix a punctured fuel tank is it?
Accomplishment/Frustration:
So yeah tracks closed and you’re packing up to go home. You can be in two moods, Accomplished and feeling great you just had an amazing skid day, or fucking raging or frustrated you had a shit day. Best thing to do with the latter is take the drift day as a learning experience. Accept what has happened to give you a “shit drift day” and try make measures/try to fix it.
If you’re not having fun drifting, it might not be for you as having fun is what its all about at the end of the day…
So thats pretty much it for all the stuff I’d like to have heard when I first started off. I do want to point out though that this is just guidelines and advice and I am NOT telling you what to do. Just hope this info helps some people at the end of the day! As always drop me a message if you want to discuss anything or change it. Cheers.
Insurgent 