If you've ever been
in a rear wheel drive car when the driver stepped on the gas
a little too eagerly, you have experienced that feeling
of sliding sideways, almost as if a rug is being pulled out from under you. What you feel in that moment is actually the first part
of a multistep process called drifting. The act of balancing a car in that moment
between having traction while turning and spinning out. You may have even seen someone
slide a car around a corner on purpose. The question is what are these
skilled drivers doing to control the car in this
seemingly out of control situation? Just how do they do that? Today we're talking about
the most fundamental aspect of drifting cars,
which is how to perform a donut, but not just any donut,
specifically a counter steer donut. You see, a basic
donut is incredibly easy to do. Cut the wheel all the way to one direction
and floor the throttle. If the car has a locking differential,
it will go into a slide and start spinning around. But there's no real control
being applied here. The car is alternating
between a burnout and a spin out. While it may feel cool to do this in a dark parking lot at 2 a.m.,
it doesn't take any skill. A brick and a roll of duct tape
could do donuts just as well as a person On the other hand, A Drift Donut is a skill-based
driving technique where you begin from the same starting position,
but when the car goes into a slide, you steer into the skid
to keep the car from spinning out. Then you use a mix of throttle
and counter steer to drive the car
in a smooth circle while sideways. With this technique, the driver is
constantly monitoring the car's traction and making small adjustments to actively drive
the sliding car around a fixed point. Unlike holding the controls at max input.
See the difference? To demonstrate How to do a Drift Donut, we're going to suit up,
wet down the concrete, and I'll show you the three key steps required
to control your car in a simple drift. Let’s go to the track! So we're going to start out by talking about how to do a drift donut. And essentially what you're going to do is you're going to
come around on your turn and you're going to roll into the throttle. And when you roll into the throttle, the car is
going to slip out into a drift, okay? So we'll do that now. And see, if you do nothing,
the car is going to roll around and it's going to go into a spin. That's the first step. It's called initiating the drift. The second thing that we're going to have to do
is apply counter steer to catch the drift. So after we initiate the spin,
we counteract it by using counter steer. So now we’ll try that again, Watch my hands on the wheel here and you'll see that if I let go
of the wheel, it'll self steer. Now look at the difference
that just happened. We let go of the wheel. It counter steered on its own
and instead of spinning around into a spin out,
the car drifted out. And it's basically facing ahead. And we didn't have any issues
with spinning the car. This is how you catch the drift. We kept the car from spinning out. We arrested its angle at,
like, 45 degrees, which is what we wanted. Now, after you catch the drift, you have to maintain the drift and that's
where you come back on throttle. And then you use a balanced amount
of throttle and counter steer to hold the car in a constant radius
drift around the turn. All right, so let's do
that. We're going to apply throttle Countersteer and catch the drift. Now we're applying a balanced amount of throttle, and we're basically holding
the car steady in drift. So we can just hang out here. We’re just gonna go around and around. And then when we’re ready to stop drifting, we start
to release the throttle. And unwind the wheel and you'll see that it will grip back
up, and start going straight ahead again. Most of that is initiating with throttle
to spin the car, then releasing the wheel,
or you can manually counter steer it. It will steer to the right amount, assuming your car has a decent
alignment though. And then once you catch the drift
you keep the car from accelerating into any more angle. Then you lay back
onto the throttle gently, but enough that you can balance it. And then as far as how throttle works, it's essentially a scale:
as you add more throttle. if you want to stay on the same line,
you need to add more steering angle. While it's difficult to show in videos, take a close
look at the throttle control we're using. The less traction a surface has, the less throttle is required
to balance the car in drift. And as you can see, we used a big power
input to start the car into a slide followed up by detailed throttle control
to balance the car in coordination with steering work to control the line
the car takes as it goes around the circle. We started by simply asking the question
How do you do a counter steer donut? And by taking the time
to try it out in a real car, We learned that a flawless drift
donut is a balancing act between throttle and steering and that the end result
is a beautiful display of car control. After getting comfortable
performing a drift donut, this video is your next step
to grow your skill as a driver. In it, I'll show you how to use throttle control
to modulate your line while drifting. So click into it and take your driving
skill to the next level.
