Turn your steering wheel into the skid. Aim for the direction you want your car to go. If the front end of your car starts drifting to the left, turn your steering wheel in the opposite direction – to the right.

To recover from a fishtail, drivers should stop accelerating and steer in the direction of the skid as best they can. The wheel should not be yanked or jerked, as this can cause the fishtail to get worse. Sharp or sudden braking should also be avoided as this can make the skid worse too.

Steer right. If your vehicle starts to skid on a wet or icy road, look and steer in the direction you want to go. If the rear of your vehicle is skidding to the left, turn the wheel to the left. If the rear of your vehicle is skidding to the right, turn the wheel to the right.

Regardless of whether the vehicle has front-, rear- or four-wheel drive, the best way to regain control if the front wheels skid is: Take your foot off the brake if the front wheels skid due to hard or panic braking. Ease your foot off the accelerator if the front wheels lose traction due to hard acceleration.

Recovering from a Skid

1. Take your foot off of the accelerator.
2. Steer in the direction you want the front wheels to go.
3. If your rear wheels start sliding the other way as you recover, ease the steering wheel toward that side.
4. If you have standard brakes, pump them gently.
5. If you have anti-lock brakes (ABS), do not pump the brakes.

Understeer is safer than oversteer. If the car understeers, and no correction is made the result is a wider corner than intended, but the car remains stable. If the car oversteers, the turn made has smaller radius than intended.

Understeer is “good” for production cars, in that it makes them inherently more stable and less likely to pitch into the bushes, if a driver gets in over his head.

Preventing & correcting oversteer – rules of thumb

1. Entering the corner too fast. Enter a corner too fast and you’re asking for trouble.
2. Accelerating into the corner, too early or too aggressively.
3. Lifting off the throttle mid-corner.
4. Braking into the corner or mid corner.

Oversteer – what causes it? Oversteer normally occurs on cars that drive the rear wheels and happens when the car is turning and the driver applies more power than the tyres can deal with. This makes the tyres slip and try to push in the opposite direction to the turn, kicking the back end of the car out.

Ways to Correct Oversteer

1. Lower front tire pressure.
2. Raise rear tire pressure.
3. Stiffen front shocks.
4. Soften rear shocks.
5. Raise front end.
6. Lower rear end.
7. Install narrower front tires.
8. Install wider rear tires.

When oversteer happens and the rear tyres break traction, it’s quite easy to feel. A driver will sense the movement – the rotation of the car – in their bum and through their body. When this movement happens, the driver will need to react quite quickly, as if there’s no opposite lock input, the car will likely spin.

The Effect of Car Design on Slip Angle Cars with the engine placed ahead of the front axles tend to have more understeer, including all-wheel drive Subarus and Audis. Rear wheel drive cars tend to have a little oversteer since it’s easy to break traction by stomping on the throttle.

Understeer and oversteer are vehicle dynamics terms used to describe the sensitivity of a vehicle to steering. Oversteer is what occurs when a car turns (steers) by more than the amount commanded by the driver. Conversely, understeer is what occurs when a car steers less than the amount commanded by the driver.

Initiating oversteer can be done through a few methods:

1. Kicking the clutch in a manual car.
2. Power oversteer, which just involves hitting the throttle entirely too much through a corner.
3. Scandinavian flicks.
4. Ripping the emergency brake.

Drifting usually involves revving the engine up into the higher RPMs to keep the tires spinning. Once the rubber exceeds its peak operating temperature, there is a STEEP decline in performance and longevity, so if you pass that mark you will be doing a lot of damage to the rear tires.

Technically, drifting involves the rear tire slipping at an angle between the car’s actual direction of travel and the direction it is pointing in. The phenomenon of drifting occurs because the rear slip angle is greater than the front slip angle. Maneuvering a car while turning is quite simple.

This video shows just how raw and exciting the night-time drifting scene is in Japan today. While highly illegal, these kids sure know how to control a car…

Can You Drift an Automatic Car? Yes. However, the task is not as easy as drifting with a manual car because of the lack of a clutch. Controlling an automatic car during drifting is somewhat difficult.

Drift racing is very dangerous, since there is little control available during the turns which can result in crashes or the vehicle flipping altogether. Drifting also damages the tires of a car quite a bit, and they need to be changed quite regularly due to the misuse.

Lack of hobbies amongst youth in the country, and lack of interest in the arts by mainstream society, has been cited as the motivation for youths to participate in drifting exhibitions.

In a track setting at a sanctioned event (whether by a local club or a larger governing body), drifting is as safe as any other motorsport. Being that drifting, at its core, is about car control, not speed, many events take place where no participant exceeds 100km/h (62mph).

In drifting it’s not uncommon to break parts, and also cause potential failures in parts like like axles, and drivetrain components. High rpm and abuse accelerates wear on the transmission, engine, and other various components throughout the car (brakes, tires.