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Drifting |
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Drifting: Some History
For decades people have intentionally used oversteer in many levels of motorsports. Some motorsports, such as dirt track racing, rallying, and other forms of motorsports on low-grip surfaces have taken advantage of oversteer. Early Grand Prix drivers such as Tazio Nuvolari also used an at the limit form of driving called the four-wheel drift[1]. It has also featured prominently in stunt driving and other forms of exhibition.
Modern drifting started out as a racing technique popular in the All Japan Touring Car Championship races over 30 years ago. A motorcycling legend turned driver, Kunimitsu Takahashi, was the foremost creator of drifting techniques in the 1970's. He was famous for hitting the apex (the point where the car is closest to the inside of a turn) at high speed and then drifting through the corner, preserving a high exit speed. This earned him several championships and a legion of fans who enjoyed the spectacle of burning tires.
The relatively low grip of even the best racing tires of the 1960s and 1970s lent themselves to driving styles with a high slip angle. As professional racers in Japan drove this way, so did the street racers.
A street racer named Keiichi Tsuchiya became particularly interested by Takahashi's drift techniques. Tsuchiya began practicing his drifting skills on the mountain roads of Japan, and quickly gained a reputation amongst the racing crowd. In 1977, several popular car magazines and tuning garages agreed to produce a video of Tsuchiya's drifting skills. The video became a hit and inspired many of the professional drifting drivers on the circuits today. In 1988, alongside Option magazine founder Daijiro Inada, he would help to organise one of the first events specifically for drifting.
Drifting outside Japan "officially" began in 1996 with an event at Willow Springs racetrack in California hosted by the magazine Option. It has since exploded into a massively popular form of motorsport in North America, Europe, and Australia.
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