Stephen and Layla Drifting

Stephen is my 23 year old son with an interesting “hobby,” called drifting. People ask what that means, so I thought I’d post this explanation (below) and a video of Stephen in action. He built his own high performance car (Layla) over the past few years and participates in drifting events, his favorite right now is at Summit Point in West Virginia.

Drifting might be described by most people as going through a corner with your car sideways. While the sideways part is obvious, there is more to it. It’s not just flooring the throttle; it takes a delicate balance to “keep” the car sideways.

Drifters use the term oversteer to refer to going sideways. This basically means steering too much. The car has a natural tendency to oversteer, like when you steer the car either too hard or too fast into the corner and the rear starts coming out. In no time you’ll lose the back tires from gripping to the surface, but there is a way to still be in control when you’re sliding.

The solution is to “oversteer,” and keep the front tires going in the direction you want to go and then to throttle your way out of the corner.

It’s a precise balance of steering, accelerating, braking, shifting and pulling the e-brake to remain in the state of oversteer, or as it is now known; drifting. It really is driving almost beyond the limit of control, right on the edge!

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