I get the gist of the conflict over drifting in the car community. It looks and feels like it could be fast, which is probably why street racers in a certain geographic area are said to love it, but apparently, even if your car doesn't have enough grip to corner quickly in the conventional manner, drifting is just going to slow you down. I even get why - once you pass the ideal slip angle (which ranges from 15 degrees for a bias-ply street tire to 2 degrees for a radial racing slick) and go into a skid, you're just turning precious momentum into heat and noise. I assume that even if you could find some sort of alien witchcraft technique to cheat these physics during the first part of the corner, any extra speed would "come out in the wash" and you'd probably still be slower on corner exit. And yet, rally racing shows that there are some situations where sideways is fastest. Heck, that's what originally made me think about drifting being a method for cornering with ultra-hard tires or a hopelessly gripless setup. Is a higher ideal slip angle just something peculiar to a lose surface, or are there situations on tarmac where seemingly excessive oversteer might actually be fast? This is actually starting to bother me. Help please!
Well there are so many different things to talk about, awd vs fwd or rwd, the type of surface, the tire etc. Some thoughts: On pavement its almost never wise to slide the car, even in rally, but it is maybe more the sort of unintentional consequence of erring on the side of too fast, and maybe that works out for the better overall on a rally stage, even if some corners aren't taken ideally. In this sense drifting is used as a way to control loss of momentum in the corner, rather than braking before it. On a hairpin its quite possible that the car will not want to rotate fast enough for the tight corner due to setup, so its better to get it sideways and pointed the right way as soon as possible instead of trying to carry momentum into the gaurdrail. Dirt is a different ball game, because grip levels do not really reach a peak and go down, they really tend to keep going up because of the nature of the gravel being pushed around. Drifting around a gravel corner means gravel is building up against the sidewall of the tire, as well as being shot out the back like a thruster. From my experience, when drifting there is some "thrust" response to throttle input created towards the inside of the corner, but it is a fleeting thing on a rwd car, because you are balancing that thrust against the lateral force and the attitude of the car. But I think overall that can make drifting a bit faster than it should seem academically. It's also something rarely simulated. In most driving games more wheelspin = more sideways and more lost speed, whereas my experience with tandem drifting is that application of throttle, even when very sideways, helps push up to the inside of the lead car.
That's what I was thinking about low grip tires and using drifting to increase cornering speeds, but I guess I figured that would result in either a. going into the wall from not being able to alter the vehicle's heading at all or b. everything coming out roughly even due to loss of momentum from excessive friction (and the fact that the drive wheels are no longer propelling the vehicle entirely along its axis of movement), possibly with a lower exit speed as well. There are still so many things I don't understand about car physics. I'm in college, but not for that - I'm effectively a business major now.
well the way i see it, tires can put down roughly 1g of acceleration in a corner, but once you start slipping, it drops off abit, (it would be interesting to know how much) in a 45degree drift you would need to produce 1.4g to have the same inward force, (but that also gives you 1g of acceleration forwards so you may need more). and a 90degree drift you would have to produce 1g, now idk how much you can produce but i doubt you can produce 1g, (you would also slow down due to the side resistance), so like you said, the only time i can imagine getting benefit is if the corner is close to your minimum turning circle (or smaller).
