[rage2]

I've taught drifting, and do a lot of autox and hot lapping in my car, so I've seen some of the drivers out there and their techniques. 944drift is using some agressive techniques which really aren't required with the 944, but I'll try and explain what he's doing.

Originally posted by Z-man
Heel and toe should NOT do anything to the handling dynamics of the car. The purpose of heel and toe is to get the car into a lower gear without upsetting the current attitude of the car while under braking. It sounds to me that you are using the lower gear to slow the car down. This is NOT the purpose of heel and toe.

Like you said, a proper heel and toe downshift is done to maintain balance under braking. What 944drift is doing is purposely not matching revs, so he's heel toe'ing and trail braking into a corner then using the mismatched revs to nudge the tail out and cause a slight oversteering condition. If matched with proper amounts of throttle, it induces a controlled oversteer condition, or the drift. It's called shiftlocking, and the amount of rev mismatch is determined by how much initual kick you'd want out of the corner, or the level of grip of the tires/track surface.

Now, on a 944 (NA or turbo), you can induce oversteer easily via trail braking alone, so there's no need to use shift locking. It's very hard on the LSD and tranny (driveline shock) especially if there's a high level of grip. Most drifting is done in 2nd gear, and with 1st and 2nd being the weak link on our trannys, it's not a desired way to initiate a drift.

Originally posted by Z-man
Actually, you have the two (understeer / oversteer) reversed.
Hitting the brakes will cause the weight to transfer to the front of the car. Thus, there is more grip up front. This results in more of an OVERSTEERING attitude. (Oversteer occurs when there is greater slip angle at the rear of the car vs. the front of the car)
Letting off the brakes and appling throttle will cause weight transfer to the front of the car. Thus, you have greater traction at the REAR of the car. This causes more of an UNDERSTEERING attitude. (Understeer occurs when there is greater slip angle at the front of the car vs. the rear of the car)

What he's doing (based on the fact that he said brake for a split second really hard) is actually locking the fronts. It's not really understeer, but straight lining. When he's off the brakes, the fronts bite hard, and gives the same effect as jerking the steering wheel towards a direction quickly, which induces oversteer. It's a very poor technique to initiate a drift... but it's pretty much required for changing directions in between 2 corners where radius increases substantially while being completely sideways .

If he's using that technique to initiate a drift into the first corners, it's much easier to transfer weight by steering into the opposite of intended direction then hard into the direction of travel, much like rally drivers.