You can probably tell someone’s attitude towards drifting from the way they spell one particular word. That word is ‘school’. If they spell it ‘skool’ then they’re likely to be a fan. But if they’re a stickler for the ‘ch’ approach then the chances are they’re the type that wonders what all the fuss is about, the type that perhaps thinks it’s all about showing off and a heavy right foot, the sort of antics that usually belong in a Maccy-D’s car park on a Saturday night, in fact…
So, confession time, then. You see, I’m old school (see how I’ve spelt that?), and to be honest I’ve always seen this modern drifting lark as nothing more than a bit of a fad. Anyway, a true drift, for an old fart like me, is something Fangio used to do at the wheel of a Maserati 250F, with all four wheels sliding. Surely, what these modern ‘drifters’ are doing is simply power-sliding, and how hard can that be? The question was this: would a visit to Driftskool (now see how they’ve spelt that?) go any way towards changing the views of this old codger?
Driftskool was set up in 2004 by Terry Collins, a true petrolhead with a background in oval racing and the man who did much to raise the profile of drifting in the UK. “We were actually the very first school dedicated solely to drifting in the world, even Japan didn’t have one when we set this up here, and the methods we use have been approved by D1 [the top tier of drifting from Japan, a sort of F1 of drift],” Terry told PT.
Now unless you’ve spent the last five years or so on Neptune you’ll almost certainly be familiar with what drifting’s all about by now, but for the Neptunians, here’s a brief recap. Drifting started in Japan, and basically involves driving a car as sideways as possible, although there’s a bit more to it than that, as Terry explained. “It’s car control taken to the extreme, but it’s also an art form. Some have likened it to figure skating on four wheels. The winner is the one who is able to drive with the car sliding at the greatest angle, with the most speed, and also grace [it’s judged by a panel of experts] and when you see some of the top drivers in action it really is very graceful stuff.”
It’s not all slow action either, for although the series Terry runs – Eurodrift – tends to run at 70 to 80mph max, he tells us that A1 star Ken Nomura has been clocked at 103mph… sideways. Gulp.
Obviously, then, this drifting lark is very different from most other forms of motor sport and completely alien to the circuit racing and track day background of this particular writer. “We do find that racing drivers struggle to do it sometimes,” Terry said, “it’s so different from everything they’ve been told before.” Oh dear. Time to get back to school then…
Skid marks
Driftskool operates from a couple of locations, including Chepstow Racecourse, while there are new venues at Norfolk Arena and Teeside Autodrome to be added later this year. But PT’s venue of choice was Finmere Market, near Bicester, and we were joined by quite a cosmopolitan set of tyro drifters who had each forked out £200 for the day, including a pair of German students, a Hungarian and a 13-year-old getting a run for his 14th birthday – I only got an Airfix model of a Messerschmitt for my 14th… ’s’not fair!
“We get all sorts of people coming to Driftskool,” Terry told us, “and it’s not just people with an interest in drifting. We also get people who have done lots of track days, too, and many of those who do come stay with us, in fact I’d say it’s as many as 95 per cent. And while not all of those will buy a car and compete, most will come along to the school again, or come along to the practice days we run.”
It’s easy to see why, as they’re a friendly and welcoming bunch at Driftskool and it’s all nice and laid back – certainly a lot more laid back and less intimidating than your average racing driver school, at any rate. With that in mind you won’t be surprised to hear that there’s not a great deal of blackboard work at Driftskool, which is just the way most like it. After all, you can learn far more at the controls of a car than you can from a classroom session.
The cars in question were a pair of seemingly bullet-proof Nissan 200SX S13s, a drifting favourite. They’re rear wheel drive, of course – that’s pretty much a prerequisite for drifting – and each had been fitted with locked differentials. There was also a BMW 325 on hand, too, the first in a fleet of Bimmers Driftskool is putting together for its new operation at Norfolk Arena.
So, time for the hooliganism then… er… I mean, time to get to grips with the delicate art of drifting. The first lesson involved controlled donuts around a pair of bollards. This wasn’t just about welly, though, the important thing was delicate throttle modulations and subtle shifts in the steering. Instructor and Mazda RX-7 drift competitor, Pete Barber, first talks you through a donut from a standing start. Basically it’s a quarter turn of the wheel, five to six thousand revs, and booting it. All that’s simple enough and quite soon you find you can easily circle a cone with the nose of the car within inches of it while the tail is sliding on a much, much wider arc.
But where it starts to get much harder is when you need to change the direction of the drift to describe a figure of eight around the two cones. It’s this ‘transition’ that seems to give many pupils the most problems, says Terry. It was particularly difficult on the morning of PT’s visit because – for the first time in a month – it bucketed down. This meant that the Nissans’ locked diffs tended to push them into understeer, but then again it was also a great opportunity to practice kicking the back out again and again and again…
It’s this initial transition to the sideways state that’s key to the art of drifting. “There are a number of ways to get a car into a drift [see panel],” Pete told us, “but the one we favour here, and probably the most popular method, is using the handbrake.” Clutch kicks are useful, too, that’s where you declutch and then let the clutch out suddenly.
All of this was easy enough to follow, and made perfect sense, but the one thing that this writer had trouble getting his head around was being told to let go of the steering wheel to allow the front wheels to straighten up quicker. On the track this is a real no-no, but to be honest it does make perfect sense in the drift environment. The thing is, as Pete explained, you’re not so much letting go of the tiller but pulsing it, allowing it its head when you need to – it’s certainly much quicker and more efficient than fighting with the steering. That said, it was a difficult concept to get to grips with, for me at least, but then old habits die hard.
Skid Marks
Now there are only so many donuts you can take in a day – unless your name is Homer – so it was refreshing when the format was changed for the afternoon, with four bollards now placed in a large square. Driftskool calls this element of the day ‘Freestyle’ and it’s exactly that. The great thing about it is they let you go out without an instructor riding shotgun, which means you can relax and get all creative in your drifting, with the instructors looking on from the side of the course, commenting or giving tips after the runs.
Personally, I seemed to have a thing about getting close to the bollards – probably because of years spent clipping apices on race tracks – and I found looping around one and then shifting the direction of the drift to go round another in the other direction particularly satisfying. It’s quite tricky, too, as you’re bound to be 90-degrees in the wrong direction before you switch and you often need to kick the tail out with the clutch to get the counter slide going. And that’s the thing, the point of drifting is that you always need to be sideways.
But if you want to get the most out of the freestyle element, and perhaps even get a taste of drifting as it is on the tracks, then the secret is to treat the four cones as a little circuit, and lap around the outside of them. It’s far quicker than the fiddly first gear turning required inside the box, though admittedly it’s still only second gear stuff. The best bit is when you’re able to keep the car sideways, almost on the lock-stops, from one cone to the next, balancing it on the gas, and still managing to almost clip the cones with the front of the car. Not that I managed that very often…
Oh, and it is bloody good fun, too, which should not be overlooked. Indeed, if there was one thing that was wider than the drift arcs out on the course it was the grins of those stepping out of the Nissans. And it’s easy to see why. For instance, I’m not sure if I’ve ever spun the wheels of a car until the tyre actually burst before, but at Driftskool I did – twice. In fact the school gets through up to 28 tyres on a typical day, and the sharp report of a blow-out is always greeted with a round of applause and cheers from the gleeful onlookers.
But if that sounds just a little bit like hooliganism then let’s temper it with a serious point. Because while learning how to drift is undoubtedly a great laugh it also gets you used to being in a car that is out of shape. So, when you hit that patch of January ice and the back suddenly steps out, then chances are you’ll know exactly what to do.
Yet while a day at Driftskool might help you with your driving skills on the road, as far as actual competitive drifting is concerned it’s just scratching the surface to be honest. It’s getting you up to speed on the very basic skills and there’s a lot more to be learned if you aspire to reach the top echelons of drifting. Indeed, we were told that the real skill of the game is keeping the car sideways along a straight, sometimes for as far as 150 yards and more – sounds mad, but it’s what these guys are all about.
But what about this guy? Has this old fart changed his mind about drifting? The short answer’s yes. Firstly, because it gives you a great grounding in the art of car control and that’s a very handy skill on both road and track. Secondly? Well, there’s obviously a lot more to this drifting game than meets the eye and it surely deserves its place in the wider pantheon of motorsport disciplines. Thing is, though, I had to go back to ‘skool’ to find that out – now see how I’ve spelt that?
