Athough the principle of drifting and drift techniques are similar it is much easier to drift an RC car than a real car since a real car will not have special hard compound drifting tires on the rear to make sliding around easier.
The easiest way to get your car to drift is to do what is known as a feint drift. A feint drift involves several steps. The first is to get your car up to a fast but comfortable speed as you approach the corner. Once you are about to where you need to begin turning, flick the car wheels out away from the turn. This preloads the suspension and cars weight so that when you turn back the car will easily break grip. Once you have flicked one way, slam the wheels hard in towards the inside of the turn. The car should quickly flick sideways. As soon as your sideways you need to begin to make a ton of small adjustments to the throttle and countersteering. By countersteering you prolong the drift much further than it would be if you just steered into the turn. This is the part of RC Drifting that requires the most practice. The better you get at throttle and steering control the longer and more precise you can make your drifts.
So from a drivers point of view, albeit via remote control, this is what you need to do.
1. Approach the corner as if you were following a racing live, leave enough room for the rear of the car to come out.
2. Turn into the corner very early and maybe dab the break to help break the rear traction.
3. As the rear starts to slide, squeeze the throttle and turn into the slide (this part takes a lot of practise)
4. Once the drift has started you should be able to keep the steering centered and use the throttle to invoke over or under steer, you will still need to use the steering to keep your angle perfect and also you need throttle to control your speed, in which case steering is necessary to control the rotation of your car.
5. If you can drift a course by just invoking a drift then steering with your throttle this makes for an incredibly smooth drift, if you can couple this with a few passes with your nose and tail a hairs breadth from the curb, then you got it.
6. It’s considered by most that you should be counter-steering through the corners, i.e. your front wheels should be steering into the drift at all times, while this is true for D1 drifting, with RC it is a little different, for one we are 99% four wheel drive, and secondly the weight distribution is almost always in the middle or back of the chassis, which means when the car slides the inertia pulls the more heavier rear around automatically.
The transition is the most difficult part, it depends a lot on your car, but a good place to start is by understanding weight transfer. When you brake the weight transfers forward, when you floor it, it goes backwards and when you turn it goes to the opposite side, turn left, weight goes right. To transition smoothly from one drift to another you have to shift the weight of the car to get it to do what your want, your can’t steer it, that’s called racing.
Okay so we are in mid drift and clip the apex while holding a huge angle, we exit the right turn, turn slightly to the right and floor it to keep the drift going, over rotating slightly to induce a good angle on the exit. You now need to turn into the drift (turn left) very slightly and hold the angle, the car should move straight down the track, with a big drift angle, while slowly making for the right side of the track (we have a left turn coming up). About 2-3 car lengths before the next corner back off the throttle ( now the weight transfers to the front, pushing the front tires into the asphalt and lifting the rear slightly, this give good grip on the front and makes the rear slide like mad ) Turn to the left, the rear will respond by swinging around, as it’s doing this turn into the drift and give throttle. The four wheel drive will stop the rotation as the weight transfers to the back tires and they get more grip. Hold the drift, adjusting it with throttle and steering until the next corner.
To exit the drift smoothly and drive away quickly (like the street drifters escaping the from the cops), press down on the throttle. This will cause the car to accelerate forward out of the drift. Another way to do it is just use extreme countersteering till the car rights itself. If you have an S-curve turn to navigate though, do not do this as you will crash. The aim is to link both drifts together into one seamless drift. This skill is vital in learning to drift and essential if you wish to compete in professional rc drifting.
If you still need tips and advice on how to drift rc then check out this great video from HPI:
Drifting isn’t easy when you don’t know how! Just keep practicing at home or in the street and the art of drifting and it will become easier over time. In competitive rc drifting, don’t be put off if you are not as good as other drivers, they may have been drifting for years!
If you choose to enter the RC race circuit it certainly helps to know the tracks on which you race. Some surfaces will have a different effect on you when you slide sideways over them, it pays to learn where these are. If you find there is a section you 180 on, go see if there isn’t a slight change of gradient or a small defect in the road. Often during competitions there will be a section of the track that a lot of people struggle with.
Most of all remember that RC drifting is supposed to be a fun hobby. Don’t lose sight of this as if you stop having fun then it’s not real drifting.
