How To Drift, BMW M235i - /Chris Harris On Cars

well I hate to disappoint you but we're not in sunny South Africa Sydney because I have an m235i outside my front door and have done to the last two months a cracking little car I'm the perfect car for the purposes of showing you how to drift a rear-wheel drive machine it's a video I've been asked a thousand times to produce although I did actually do one many years ago Neil cut to the footage of the e39 m5 of me but the beard all that okay do that I had a conversation with jf about how it wasn't really reasonable for me to fly to Cape Town just for the day driving a car which was actually outside my front door that seems a bit silly now because I love Cape Town look how beautiful that footages and those red cars drifting around the town and the sunshine we're in North Wales at angles a circuit you can hear that squeaking that's the 50 mile an hour wind coming in at the doors but that shouldn't matter we were going to be inside the car I am anyway drifting and showing you how to go sideways safely in a sensible place like a racetrack now this whole drifting lark begins before you even drive the car so let's start sensibly first of all you'll notice we're not on a public highway I can't stress that enough if you want to learn how to make a car go sideways don't do on the public highway go to a circuit go to an open-air field go to somewhere where you can rent the space and do it properly the next thing make sure you're sitting in the correct position for me personally get nice and low in the Kyle you have a better feel for what the car is doing around you if you're low so the first thing I do is I get in the car and I move the seat to the lowest possible position I then get my feet just right on the pedals this is an m235i with the manual gearbox I've got three pedals perfect for skidding about and make sure that my left leg is not quite at full extension on the clutch not quite but almost at that point I work on the wheel okay the wheel needs to be quite far back towards my chest not too high not too low if it's too low I'm obviously going to struggle navigation the wheel down though here because I've got some important apparatus down here that I don't want to get damaged okay if it's too high I'm reaching too high and I can't get to the top of the wheel again it's all about comfort get it somewhere about the middle the way to test is that you should be able to rest your wrists on the top of the wheel with your arms with a bit of a bend in them okay that's about right this m235i has a great adjustable driving position is perfect for this we cannot sadly do oversteer with all that lovely traction control and stability control mechanism working so let's end off as a button hence as off it now says DSC off on the dashboard so we're without assistance next thing roll forwards now when I shot this video before in the old m5 that was my Empire that's quite brave thing to do wasn't it to break my own ties I acknowledged three points of the drift making the drift happen sustaining the drift and then gathering up from the drift and you know what even though that was five six years ago fundamentally and I asked you towards it hasn't changed so I'm still going to work according to three elements of the drift and the first one is making the car oversteer making it go from a normal cornering stance to make the rear axle carve a wider line on the front axle it's what we call oversteer okay the first thing about making car oversteer when it's rear-wheel drive when it's got a limited slip differential and quite sticky tires is it needs more throttle than you think okay I'm going to pitch the car in now to a second gear right hander full throttle now look at that still gripping still gripping and then it goes into oversteer okay so the first thing you have to remember when you're doing this is that you have to use loads of throttle okay so big on the throttle and then see what we did with the hands then we move very quickly to counter the oversteer with what we call opposite block I'm gonna do that again for you we're going to go through it we're going to go full throttle and then I want you to watch how quickly my hands change on the wheel to catch that oversteer here we go full throttle watch how quickly you have to catch the oversteer with your hands okay let's across my hands too much but I'll take the first amount of lock with one arm full of lock okay at this stage when you're starting out don't try and just let go of the wheel it feels comfortable to do that way and allow the caster effect of the front wheel just to wash away until it hits the lock stops you might see we do that on my videos it's lazy it's not correct but oddly enough you earn the right to do it once you've learned how to do it the hard way that's what I've always viewed it you can let go of the wheel once you've learned to navigate the wheel first it's a bit like learning to add up when you're a kid they wouldn't let you use a calculator until you could do it properly okay so let's have a look at that again lots of power and then equalize it with the steering and the common mistake is that people are too slow with the throttle and too slow with the steering it's quite a violent aggressive activity this you watch me I have to really move quite quickly see there we're quick quick quick quick quick quick quick quick so we've used the throttle quickly and the reason we've done that is we don't want understeer if you blend the throttle in nice and gently what you do is you make the front acts of the car push and what we're trying to do is excite the car quickly get into that oversteer as soon as possible if we allow the car to understeer by blending that throttle in what happens is we have some understeer coming we have lock-on countering that and when the oversteer comes we're already half a lock round and we've got to catch that extra half a lock that's just ugly and the only way really to do it is to let go of the wheels we don't want that at all so we're fast on the throttle and we're fast on the steering so that's the entry to the drift let's move to stage two of the drift process maintaining that slide this is the good bit this is the really really fun bit if you ask me get the car into the drift to sustain it it's all about power as mr. Carson would say you have to throw listen to that I'm flat out there nearly 7,000 revs the common mistake is that people try and hold back on the power because they can't believe you need to throw so much power at the problem but you do everything your disposal just throw it at that back axle and keep going this thing's got well over threaded horsepower only a 245 section at the back is quite a light nimble car relatively and yet you still have to throw so much power to sustain that drift so keep throwing power at it with a locking differential at the very worst you'll just blow most of it away in vaporized tire but if you try and hold the throttle back the car will straighten up so even the first stage of the drift the most common problem is that people aren't brutal enough with a throttle it's almost the same in the second stage maintaining the drift where they don't quite throw enough power but the problem I'll show you again then I'm now flat out that's registering six-and-a-half rpm to maintain that drift okay okay when you're in the drift in Stata - for me that's really the point of utter joy because the car becomes hypersensitive at that point a little bit more throttle adds more angle backing out of the throttle straightens the car up the steering's loaded up so you can really feel what's going on there's a tension about the whole car that's super enjoyable so when you're in the drift you can play with the car a bit you can go a bit more angle a little less let's try it so let me go for a slightly smaller angle that's fun a bit smaller less steering angle I was controlling that on the throttle thereby using a little less but it's still almost full throttle so that's the key thing lots of throttle to sustain it and then it's just a millimeter or two back will suddenly change everything about the car the pitch the amount of torque going to the back wheels it's lovely you feel really in control so the final stage and this is the most difficult bit if you ask me gathering it all up getting it from oversteer back to straight and that's all about your throttle control so a lot of this comes back to your seating position I feel you can't actually come off the throttle neatly and accurately unless you're properly located in the seat because you're bracing your leg against the door or the transmission tunnel or something you're never gonna get it right so when we get the car into the oversteer to come back out again we're looking to lead with the throttle blend out of the throttle and then use the steering to equalize that back so here we go into the corner now we're going to try and blend now to this one and make it neat so we go full throttle to get slide and then it becomes the exit I'm going to back out a little bit there now and then it sleet is lovely and then it's just a question of winding the lock off to meet the car as it straightens out I say just a question of that's the difficult bit okay it's balancing the throttle coming back and the lock coming back at the same time they have to happen in harmony if you back off the throttle too quickly and don't match the steering that's a real problem that's when you get what we call a tank-slapper because the car straightens up violently and quickly but the steering angle isn't right the front wheels are not pointing the direction that you want it to be and the car will sphere back the other way that's the most common cause of the drifting accident they tend to not happen in the first two phases they happen in the last phase okay we'll try one more time have a look at the steering and then straight now what happens quite quickly doesn't now as with any decent academic paper there has to be an appendix and in this case it's the transition making the car go one mile in the other that's one of the great joys of drifting so let's quickly show you that before the end okay so we're going to go around the left-hander and make you go into a right-hander okay so here's the left-hander so we use come out of the drift now to make the car back round the other way okay so really what I've done there it's at point three the third stage in the drift when I wanted the car to go straight I've actually been really aggressive on the throttle to pop it the other way I've gone over the perpendicular and taking it into another drift and that sort of transition and that's one of the great joys it's tricky and it's a real test of your throttle control and you'll see I was letting go of the wheel because to navigate through that when it's spinning so quickly it's quite difficult so what I would say is learn stages one two and three and then when you've got the throttle control for three have a go at a transition because that's a thing of real joy and this car with this dip in is a little drift monster I have to say purely in the interest of filming I have another girl that sour and that children is how you drift okay but there is a serious message behind this and I've been hinting at it you don't do it on the public highway you make sure your cars in good mechanical condition you don't do it with people on board you might be scared just use your common sense and have fun most of all have fun

Channel: THE DRIVE

Views: 1,844,590

Rating: 4.9171672 out of 5

Keywords: bmw, drift mob, racing, race, m235i, drifitng, south africa, how to, how to drift

Id: -LpPc8qutCA

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 30 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/ontbijtkoek]

Ok I get it, so you start with two circles and then just draw the fucking owl.

[u/bigtuuuna]

POWWWAAAAA!! Man I enjoy Chris Harris and his recognition to jeremy clarkson

[u/ninjagamr69]

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe what he's doing is technically called a power slide...right? Not drifting, there are key differences.