Most car meets ban hoon behavior for one reason, and that’s safety. We’ve all seen it happen a million times—a crowd gathers at the exits, phones raised in anticipation. Like a red flag to a bull, the driver sees this, smashes the loud pedal, and ends up binning the car in a ditch mere seconds later. There are two ways to avoid this, and today, I’m going to teach you about both of them.
The first way is simple—stop driving like a hoon on public roads! Just about every meet explicitly asks drivers to avoid revving their engines, doing burnouts, or anything else that could piss off the public. And for good reason!
Of course, that goes without saying. But let’s say you’re off the street, and you want to launch your car safely. You don’t wanna lose control, or end up sideways in a barrier. How do you avoid the Mustang curse and leave with tires smoking and your dignity intact? We spoke to race driver Parker Kligerman and the rally school experts at Team O’Neil to find out. If you wanna learn what to do, and what not to do, read on.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5wDbzZP2fx/?igsh=MXdmcHdmOHBiMjhkbQ%3D%3D
It Happens All The Time
For the purposes of this explanation, I’ll stick to talking about rear-wheel-drive vehicles. These cars are the ones that we see crashing the most often after peeling out of Cars and Coffee. It can be a Camaro, a Mustang, a Viper, heck—even a McLaren Senna can end up in a crash like this if you’re not careful. Big power, rear-wheel-drive, and a lack of skill are a bad combination.
Typically, the driver wants to look like a big hero. They switch off traction control and launch the car hard with plenty of revs. It gets sideways and they panic. They jump off the gas, the car hooks up, and veers straight into a wall. Or a series of parked cars. Or, in extreme cases, the crowd of spectators that was waiting for this to happen.
https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1785197212236140623
In a lot of peel-out crashes, the driver mats the gas pedal while they’re turning out of a driveway. When the rear wheels break loose, the rear end swings out like a pendulum and if you’re not quick, it can be very hard to overcome at that point. Starting on the straight and narrow can be a big help if you’re inexperienced.
Furthermore, it’s important to know how to control the car properly when the rear wheels break loose. Even if you start out in a straight line, the back end can still step out if you’re giving the car a ton of welly. Often, that’s what people are going for, because it looks cool! But you need to be able to control it to avoid crashing.
Let’s take a video where we see a rear-wheel-drive launch, where the back end steps out to the left and the car ends up pointing to the right. The driver inevitably countersteers to the left to try and bring the car back into line. With heavy throttle application, the angle of the slide increases. At this point, the driver panics, and comes off the gas. This usually causes the rear wheels to stop sliding and grip, and weight transfer increases the grip over the front wheels, too. The front end bites, and suddenly all that countersteer is too much, and the car spins in the opposite direction, out of control.
In this classic video, we first see an Audi leaving fast and clean. The driver gets the car straight and accelerates away. In contrast, the Mustang driver that follows does everything wrong. He’s got the wheels spinning before he’s even left the driveway. He keeps it in check, but then he dumps the clutch with too many revs as he shifts into second, and the back steps out hard. Watch it in slow motion, and you’ll see that as soon as he comes off the throttle, the car turns in the direction the driver was countersteering. He’s too slow to catch it and he slams straight into the white sedan.
We asked resident race car driver Parker Kligerman to watch the above and try and explain what he sees:
“So [it’s] a little hard to tell, but mostly it seems like he mistimed the shift and when he dropped the clutch into (I’m guessing) 2nd, it lit up the rear tires, then he fell behind on the steering and it was all over from there.”
Launch It Properly
Want to launch properly without losing control? You could do a lot worse than taking a lesson from Wyatt Knox. He’s a US rally champion, a tactical driving instructor, and the guy who created Team O’Neil’s successful YouTube channel. Who better to ask!
Team O’Neil’s recent video on the topic is a great guide. It teaches basic burnouts as well as how to leave a T-intersection in a big hurry. But I wanted to get the whole scoop, so I got the lowdown from Knox himself.
As far as the classic Mustang crash goes, he’s seen it all before. “This is what we call a counterskid, when the car oversteers back and forth, usually getting worse until it spins or hits something,” he explains. “It’s caused by the driver not looking ahead far enough and not countersteering quite right.” This is where the panic comes in. “Most drivers can fix the first slide ok-ish, but when the pendulum effect happens they’re caught off guard… Then they usually look for something bad to hit, freeze up and hit it,” he says.
If you think you’re gonna crash, you probably will, but the reverse is true as well. “Optimism and denial cannot be overstated,” says Knox. “If you look optimistically down the road for the best possible outcome, your fight or flight instinct will go into fight mode and the hand-eye coordination that you’ve developed your whole life will do its best to save your ass.”
Step By Step
If you start your slide with a reasonable amount of throttle, you probably won’t get an excessive slide angle to begin with. Don’t just go full-in on the throttle — use some of it, not all of it! Better to do a small slide or none at all rather than crash your car. Under these circumstances, minor countersteering should help you control your slide. You can exit smoothly by easing off the gas, or even left-foot braking if you’re so inclined. Keep your eyes focused on where you want the car to go, and as the rear wheels grip up, you’ll naturally reduce the countersteer to bring the car back in line.
Let’s say you do go too hard though, and your car is pointing a bit too sideways. In that case, you need to act quickly but don’t panic. Look in the direction you want the car to go, and your natural countersteer reaction should help counter the slide. Come off the gas, but do it smoothly. As you’re rolling off the gas, let the countersteer wind off as the car comes around. This should be instinctive if you’re looking where you want to go. If the front end grips up suddenly and the car rotates hard in the opposite direction, use your fast hands. You might have to quickly countersteer in the opposite direction to catch the car as it snaps back around.
Another important tip is to understand your transmission. If you’re in a manual, it’s very easy to kick out the tail by dropping the clutch with the engine at high RPM. It’s a great way to initiate a controlled slide, but if you overdo it, you’ll lose control virtually instantly. A lot of Cars and Coffee crashes happen this way. A driver shifts from first to second with too much throttle on, the rear end steps out, and it’s all over as Parker notes above.
It happens so often that Mustangs plunging into crowds has become a meme.
An automatic transmission can also catch you out. You might be holding a nice controlled slide when the gearbox suddenly decides to upshift. This might cause the rear end to suddenly grip up, flicking your car in the wrong direction. If you’re prepared for that to happen, it won’t surprise you, and you can hopefully react in time.
The Real Trick To Avoid Disaster Is Practice
Launching a car and holding a slide is a skill, and it’s one best learned on the skidpad. On the pad, you’ll quickly learn how to modulate throttle and steering to hold a slide and exit one carefully, without overcorrecting or ending up in the wall. Perhaps most importantly, you’ll learn about using a sane amount of throttle to initiate a slide, and how much room you need to do one. You’ll soon realize the folly of those people who smash the accelerator to the floor in crowded downtown environments.
Don’t let the situation get to you, either. It’s easy to give the car too much sauce when there’s a waiting crowd jiggling with sheer anticipation. Don’t forget your training, and do not attempt anything if it’s not safe to do so. If you are at a track event, though, and such tomfoolery is allowed, just keep it controllable. Better to fumble a small slide and have people laughing at you for a few seconds. If you bin the thing in the wall, the whole Internet will be laughing at you for a few days.
Some drivers can actually handle their shit.
Seriously—drive within your limits. I’ve driven powerful rear-wheel-drive cars myself. As an auto journalist, I’m well aware that I won’t have a long career reviewing cars if I start putting them into the wall. I never just jump in a fast car and go flat out from the get-go. I know I don’t have the experience and skill to drive like that. Instead, I take my time learning a vehicle and seeing how it responds. Then, if I decide to try anything—in a safe location, of course—I have a good idea how the throttle and steering will respond. By feeling the car out first, I’m rarely caught by surprise. You gotta work your way into these things.
Hopefully, this guide will help you enjoy your car without making a fool of yourself. Don’t muck around on public roads, don’t go ham, and keep the car pointing where you want it to go. And remember—that cheering crowd doesn’t actually want to see you succeed. They’re hoping you’re gonna fail as hilariously as possible. Don’t give ’em what they want.
Image credits: via YouTube Screenshot
WOW That’s alot of words to say don’t do nothing without learning how to do it. You can’t learn from the internet. Basically keep the front wheels aimed where you want to go but you need to know where your front wheels are aimed. Not just steering in the opposite direction. And no professional driver would ever put an uncontrolled crowd at risk. So none of these idiots is qualified. Let’s not pretend the average moron can buy a 1,000 hp car and learn how to control it from watching a 90 second video. It is what is making society stupid. You can learn how to do some basic stuff from video but not control a 1000 hp car or mustang because that isn’t a car.
Did you even read the article? You come here to say it’s a dumb article and then restate everything in the article? Perhaps it would be worth your time to watch Wyatt’s video. Yes, you can learn from the internet.
This is one of those scenarios where the safety systems are making things worse, because they can be easily disabled.
My truck is too old for traction control. When it’s wet out, I refer to it as the SS AssFirst, because that’s how it’s approaching everything if given the chance. That’s despite a limited slip and (relatively) low HP. When you have to carefully avoid wheelspin all the time, you get used to it happening.
When cars are sold they should either have traction control permanently on or off. You shouldn’t be able to switch it off at will, because then you’ll just prove how often it saved your ass previously.
There are a lot of situations where TC is a problem, cutting power right when you need it, not least of which is simply snow. I can’t recall a scenario where TC did anything but hinder, but I don’t have a supercar or an old truck.
My ’02 Mustang’s can be fairly touchy, and it can easily turn a slight loss of grip for a split second into a multi-second loss of power, which I don’t need when say merging onto a fast moving highway.
My first car was a ’66 Ventura with an open diff, 2.96 gears, a worn out 3-speed auto and the steering ratio of a bus. The first time I tried showing off for a friend in a rainstorm we ended up 20′ off the road in a fence. I lost 3 hubcaps in that car over the years trying to slide it around corners, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.
After years or trying to wrangle one of the least slideable cars you can imagine, I suddenly was a sliding god when I upgraded to an ’05 GTO. Turn, tap the gas, let the wheel slide through your fingers, modulate the throttle, and catch the wheel when it’s pointing where you want to go. Continue modulating the throttle until you’re through the turn/slide.
I think the biggest one (aside from practice) is to never put the throttle on the floor unless you know you have enough traction. Once it’s on the floor it’s a lot harder to modulate it. Just give it what it needs to step out, then back off a bit. If you’re pressing it into the floormat with 100lbs of force you’re not going to have any kind of control other than sawing at the wheel.
And even if you can’t access a skidpad, for hell’s sake at least explore the limits on empty roads or big parking lots where there’s no one around to hit.
This is partly why I have no interest in today’s high power vehicles—where does one practice to get truly comfortable at high yaw angles and the variable conditions of roadways with 500-1000 hp? How much money in tires goes into doing so? Even if “comfortable” with it, the speeds attainable in such short times still make them a menace on any kind of public road. Plus, at some point, the performance numbers are all so good that the differences are academic outside of a track.
I don’t pretend to be a driving god, but I at least like to think starting out with RWD in a battered Chevette on bald tires in the snow helped me get more accustomed to how things can go wrong in an incredibly low stakes way.
The low stakes thing is key here. I learned to be my own traction control in rwd VWs and a beater Mazda truck in the snow.
And thank you for making me chortle this morning.
-someone I’d like to meet has a glorious goldish-brown Chevette near me. Perfectly mint—and slightly jacked up old-style on 4-spoke Cragars. I smile every time I pass their house
Can’t Control Cars and Coffee Crashes?
Miata
Is
Always
The
Answer
Maybe you didn’t watch most of the video (Mustangs leave the…) above, the one car I saw that actually spun out was a Miata. Go to the 1:45 mark for some fun and for evidence a Miata can do the unthinkable, it can bite you!
When it comes to sailing backwards into a tree in front of gleeful spectators, Mustang Is Always The Answer.
Step 1: Don’t launch your car out of a Cars and Coffee.
Side note: The crowds are kind of the worst at these things, egging on people with egos.
I got some pretty funny revenge on this crowd once. Went to a C&C in my 4wd Tacoma and parked it in the dirt lot near the show to spectate. It had rained the previous night turning the dirt lot into a slick, muddy mess. When I left the event, I probably had 1-2″ of mud caked onto my tires. Left the lot at speed and watched the crowd disperse as mud flew. Gave me a bit of a giggle.
SAL•LY
noun
a sudden charge out of a besieged place against the enemy; a sortie
Goose your pony into a power slide and you are performing a Mustang Sally. As the eponymous song advises, when you get into trouble, “you better slow that Mustang down.”
Motorcyclists are taught about this phenomenon known as ‘target fixation’ in safety training classes and it is real.
Recognizing target fixation and avoiding the consequences of it is a skill that you can practice. I practice it all the time when I am riding (and it carries over to when I’m driving a car). I see an object (manhole cover, pothole, etc.) down the road, put my bike in a location in the lane to ride past the object, then focus my attention down the road again beyond the object.
“No, officer, I’m not swerving because I’m drunk! I’m practicing!”
Great point. I think it’s esp. pronounced with bikes given how their operation is much more directly connected to our bodies and their motions.
The deal I made with myself when I started riding a long time ago is that at least once a month, I practice. Which means I stop off in an empty lot and spend 20 minutes – half hour doing the low speed stuff you do you in the MSF. I focus on figure eights, going for the tightest possible arc/lowest possible speed.
And it’s still amazing to me that simply looking way over, almost over my shoulder, at where I’m going makes ALL the difference between something smooth and controlled and putting a foot down.
Target fixation is very much a thing when skiing as well. Look at the tree, hit the tree. Always look where you want to go.
Even happens with animals. Almost hit a hawk once that was fixated on a squirrel and shot across the front of my car. I swear it looked at me as I braked. It still got the squirrel, though.
Same with mountain biking. Look far down the trail, where you want to go. Fixating on the tree or rock that you want to avoid is a near guarantee that you’ll hit it.
I can’t tell you how many times I have ridden off the side of a trail just because I saw someone else’s tracks that did the same thing.
Very true for bicycles; it’s a fun way to test it for yourself. Have been trying to bring the concept across to my daughter, but it requires a measure of self-control that is not super common in little kids.
I’d like to think that I did my drifting the right way. I found a class with professional instruction. Seat time with an instructor in the instructor’s cars. I can really recommend https://www.driftcontrol.ca , unfortunately they’re already sold out for this year.
I’d like to safely practice more but I’m having trouble finding a good spot to do so. So far as I can tell none of the tracks around here have a skid pad and I’m uncomfortable just finding an empty parking lot and going for it.
Yeah, same. Try to practice in an empty lot in Australia, and they’ll cut up your license and crush your car.
Half the problem now is that there are no empty lots to practice in these days. [Cue old man ramblings]: When I was learning to drive, supermarkets closed at noon on Saturdays, so Saturday afternoons and Sundays they were perfect for learning to drive in. And back then, VFL Park still existed (a big football stadium out in Melbourne’s suburbs) and had a parking area consisting of bitumen roads without kerbs, with the actual parking being smooth grass areas amongst the roadways. Perfect for learning to drive, with nothing to hit. One of the lessons my dad gave me there was driving back and forth along one of these grass sections, turning around in a big wide arc at the ends, and going gradually faster each time. His plan was that eventually I would be going too fast and spin out, and then he could explain why it happened and how to recognise the skid starting and how to steer out of it.
The only problem was, when the skid started I instinctively countersteered, and held the car in a perfectly controlled long drift all the way round the corner. He was both happy I knew what to do, and unhappy he didn’t get to teach me, but it was also an introduction to hooning, which has managed to get me in trouble many times, fortunately before smart phones and social media, and before the Hoon Laws and car confiscation!
Although there is still plenty of hooning going uncaught – we live just off a main road where the street opposite enters a small industrial estate full of automotive businesses, and Saturdays are usually punctuated with the sounds of blown V8s, turbo rotaries and sportsbikes launching sideways out of that street and leaving tyre marks often up to 100 metres down the road, somehow without ever having heard a crash or anyone being pulled over by police. As I am typing this, (11am on a Saturday) I can hear a VERY loud, likely peripheral ported rotary idling at the corner waiting to turn out into the main road.
Holy $&*%.
Honestly though, there’s a lot I like of what I’ve learned of Australian car culture. Staged licensing for example.
And we just learned that it wouldn’t be a problem for me…
“In a lot of peel-out crashes, the driver mats the gas pedal while they’re turning out of a driveway.”
Yeah, pretty apt typo there if one considers the unintended acceleration issues a few years back with Toyotas involving floor mats.
Not a typo. Mats the pedal means pushes the pedal to the floor (mat)
Ah, okay, good to know. Presumably Australian slang then? I’d seen people type or write “mats” and then correct themselves by writing “mashes” so I assumed it was just a typo (goodness knows I make plenty of those.)
Mat the pedal and patch out has been in the American lexicon since the 70s at very least. Being bored, I just found reference to ‘He matted the gas pedal…’ in King’s The Stand published 1978
A few things to consider if you read this article and thought “duh, that’s common sense!”:
Elevation change can and will get you. Leaving a driveway is the worst place to initiate a slide, as you’re going through a sharp dip where the driveway meets the road, which loads up your axles one at a time, sharply increasing grip and then a crest, formed by the road crown, which unloads all four wheels simultaneously, causing the car to get floaty. Take it from someone who took an expensive, unplanned off-road excursion many years ago due to a failure to account for the road crown at an intersection, you do not want to underestimate a “smooth” road.
Do not rely on your car’s inherent performance. Grippy tires, all wheel drive and trick differentials can raise the car’s limit, but you still can and will reach it if you go looking, and when you do it’ll be all the more violent. My car slides quite happily and controllably on its Wintracs, but once the Direzzas are on, it’s ready to bite my head off as it takes twice the G-force, twice the weight transfer and twice the power to break loose. Likewise, AWD cars will break loose under very high power, and when they do, it takes a lot of precision to set straight. Add more power and it’ll keep sliding deeper, but lift entirely and it’ll spin like a top as the rear lifts and the fronts dig in. Like the article says, PRACTICE.
Simulators are incredibly helpful, they give you a strong base of knowledge that radically speeds up your learning when you get around to practicing in real life, but they cannot substitute real-life car control . If you’ve only used a simulator, especially with a controller, you may have learned all the theory, but you haven’t learned to apply it. Things I can do effortlessly in iRacing are challenging and scary in real life. You need to develop muscle memory and hand-ass coordination in your real vehicle, the amount of information coming through your seat is immense and can overwhelm you if all you know is the still, controlled environment of your simulator rig. Practice, practice, practice.
This.
Practice keeps you alive and sheet metal unwrinkled
The practicing is the problem. I used to be a much better driver when we got snow and nobody else went out in it and the cars were slow and the tires nowhere near as good, but dirt cheap.
This is true. Going to autocross or the track takes time and costs money. Sadly, our hobby is an expensive one, even after the entry cost of the vehicle itself.
I would urge anyone who wants to get the most enjoyment and learning out of a car to get a slightly cheaper one and spend the money on seat time instead. Look at your budge and consider the cost of 1 season of HPDE entry fees, 1 set of high-performance tires (may last 2 years), Winter tires if you can’t drive Summers year-round (should last several years), 1 set of brake pads, THEN a year of payments, insurance, maintenance and gas to determine the yearly cost of driving quickly. This will usually bump your car dreams 1 or 2 price brackets down (from Supra to GR86, for example), but you’ll be faster in that 86 than you would’ve been in the Supra with no practice.
This year is the first time that I’m listening to my own advice, and I can’t wait to see how much I learn from my first Autocross season. My “Downgrade” was from a 25k 2015 M235i to a 12k 986, which isn’t that much cheaper with maintenance but still leaves a lot more for event attendance.
Practice is critical, but as we see in art and music, there’s a lot of people who spend on top dollar equipment to look cool, and very few who are willing to put in the time to learn how to use it, and be cool.
Ain’t that the truth, my special edition Telecaster is still stuck playing overlapping, half-muted notes straight from online tabs, I really need to upgrade the fingers playing it.
I guess this is the pot calling the kettle black a bit as I own two Maryland made Paul Reed Smiths…but I can’t tell you how many nerdy guitarists I’ve encountered who have like $10,000+ worth of equipment to sit in their bedroom, chug on the lowest string, and get like 11 views on YouTube. Misha Mansoor isn’t going to notice you, sir. No one is impressed. Maybe try to develop your own unique sound and style rather rather than copying the 10,000,000 other virgins trying to play Djent and metalcore.
You’re ahead of me, I just think about taking guitar lessons.
Just buy a guitar and see where it goes. There are so many online resources at this point that I wouldn’t even recommend paying for lessons to be honest. Everything you need to get the basics down is out there in spades.
Every time I got in trouble in my Corvette(s), it started with turning off traction control. Never crashed, fortunately, but I did embarrass myself a couple times.
“We don’t condone this”
“You should never do this in public”
…but anyway here is a video of how to drive like an asshole when you leave a car meet.
Really?
Instructor: I’m going to start by saying, don’t act like a dumbass.
Dumbass: I would NEVER act like a dumbass, why am I even in this class?
Instructor: OK, so for the rest of you, here’s how to minimize the damage from when you act like a dumbass anyway.
Step 1: don’t turn off traction control
Step 2: see step 1
Step 3: see step 2
Step 4: practice in a controlled environment
Step 5: know your limits and what your car is capable of
Step 6: never, ever launch a car at Cars and Coffee. Ever. The end.
Counterpoint: Always drive with T/C off. This way you know exactly how the car will behave unrestrained and know just how dangerous the gas pedal can really be.
Of course, this is predicated with “make sure you’re not an idiot first”, but as long as you have some modicum of common sense, T/C is entirely unnecessary and should never be activated except in situations that you wouldn’t want it anyway.
Just don’t do it. Despite my username it hasn’t happened yet.
Suuuuuuuure it hasn’t 😉
Yet.
Question (I have older stuff, so be patient with me): so to turn traction control off, that now requires a push and hold for N seconds action?
Generally, but it depends on the car. On the GRZs, I can shut off TC by quickly pressing the no-nannies or track (reduced nannies) buttons, but it will come back on after 30 mph or something like that. If I hold either the no-nannies or track buttons for 5 seconds, it also kills/reduces the nannies (and changes to an annoying alternate dash display that’s mainly a bar tach with terrible lower rpm resolution and the rest half-taken by worthless lap time counters). The Focus ST was similar: one touch for TC off, hold for nannies off.
Thanks…that’s interesting. My stuff (Fords young enough to have it but old enough that it’s pretty basic) defeats with a single touch.
How to properly launch your car:
Step 1: Don’t.
I’m not the majority here but I will sing the praises of AWD all day since buying an S5 and a Q7. The additional weight isn’t that much and the additional weight that is there provides more than enough benefit to earn its keep. You can stomp the gas at any steering angle and it just goes. Sure, if you really want you can kick the tail out on both of them, but you’ve gotta be trying to do that or going pretty fast already. It’s a blast on the dragstrip and super fun as well. Unleashing 450HP all at once and having it instantly hook and rocket off (on all seasons!) is awesome. Torsen based Quattro just provides too many benefits compared to FWD/RWD for daily driving. After coming from a FWD SRX and a RWD CTS V Sport, I was hooked on AWD from the first drive in my S5.
I’ve been a sucker for AWD since my ’91 AWD DSM. I’m back in a RWD car now and admittedly enjoy turning off traction control to get sideways from time to time but I miss the sure-footedness of AWD.
I feel that. Not because I like AWD (my least favorite), but as someone who likes good FWD (I think it’s better than mediocre RWD), I’m in a very small minority.
An individual of distinguished taste, I see.
Not sure if sarcastic, but I’ve driven a lot of cars and RWD doesn’t automatically convey a great drive just because it can peel out or kick a little sideways leaving the high school parking lot nor does FWD negate it. I’d rate good RWD as top, but good FWD as above average RWD and there’s more that goes into a car than drive wheels contributing to enjoyment. It helps that I like cars with moderate power and FWD isn’t the hindrance at those ratings as they would be with higher powered vehicles and, as a benefit, there’s less drivetrain loss and weight (unless talking about a mid or rear engine transaxle). I also have no interest in racing, but in tactical driving, and going sideways around corners in those situations is just in movies (and good FWD will also go sideways, just a bit differently). Granted, AWD is best in those situations, but I hate the feel.
I was being 100% serious, my dream car is a Fulvia and I regret buying a 2-series when I had the chance to get a GTI. My current goal is to get more space so I can import either a Peugeot 205 GTI or a Citroen CX as a classic weekend car.
I would go one further than you, that good FWD is better than solid AWD for fun driving, my WRX and A4 were both fun in the snow, but never wanted to do anything fun in the dry, a car that needs bad weather to become playful is a bit frustrating.
As it stands, even for the same money I’d much rather have a Golf GTI than an R, a Veloster N than an Audi TT and a Civic Type R over a WRX. There’s just a bit more fun in a good FWD chassis.
I’m personally a roadster man, if rear seats aren’t strictly necessary I’ll stick with a RWD 2-seat convertible, but when you need an extra row, I’ll take a great hot hatch over an ok sports sedan any day.
This is easy. Know your limits.
People who does anything proper and successfully know what they can and can’t do and don’t try stupid things around others.
If a person without proper driving skills, and have a powerful car (+250HP) leave traction control on all the time. This person should not try do stuff that may her/him/itself you or the others or damage someone else property or good.
If such person *think* that have enough skills, go to some empty lot and practice until this person is 100% SURE about her/his/its skills.
This. If you’ve never tried it before, don’t try it for the first time in front of a crowd. I guarantee 90% of these crashes we see are the first time these people have turned T/C off in their car.
This is the #1 thing really.
What is the best thing that can happen if you pull off the perfect slide? Some people you’ll never meet again will upload the video and some other people you’ll never meet might give you some thumbs up.
What is the worst thing that can happen if you don’t pull off the perfect slide? Well, that should be obvious. And the video is still going up.
The “practice” part can’t be overstated, at least in my experience. I think tv and movies, combined with how docile even high power stuff feels around town these days, lulls us into a false, yeah I got this sense.
When rear ends come around in cars, even stuff people would consider slow, they do so way more violently than you’d expect.
“Look where you wanna go & let off easy” saved my arse from either flipping or spinning an old Formula Ford into my daily driver a few years back. It’s a mantra worth repeating.
Father made a point of showing me how quickly a Beetle would come around in the snow: that has saved me some embarrassment/wrinkled sheet metal
I remember doing donuts on winter nights in the high school parking lot with Malaise-era stuff; even that was plenty scary for me and really showed me how much force comes with those kinds of rotating masses.
Decades later, spinning a 911 into a ditch was a nice booster shot for that caution!
In a 911? Ouch! <sympathy cringe>
Starting when she was 12, my boss knew I would take school snow days off to take my daughter out & teach car control. Years later, I got a babbling call from her: she had hit an icy patch early am with a carload of fellow swimmers. “Daddy, Daddy! I hit ice with Betsy and we were sideways and all the girls screaming, and I just said what you told me: ‘Feed it, don’t brake, look where you wanna go. Feed it gently, talk to her, bring her back!’ It worked, Daddy!”
Proud Papa moment 🙂
Great tale, and the best part is she’ll keep that the rest of her life; she’ll be on autopian 3.0 (brought to you by Torch’s choice neutron capacitors) telling everyone that back in her day, there was no built-in AI to handle bad weather, you had to learn to do it yourself.
What made me feel better about my 911 foolishness was that at least I remembered my instructor’s dictum of “when it spins, feet in”; so when I came to rest, she was still running.
Awesome! I think this practice is highly underrated. My dad did the same with me when I was a kid, in the fwd family station wagon.
Once I was out driving on my own I was very confident, and never had any wrecks, even though my first car was V8/RWD.
Even had a local police officer say he saw & approved of me teaching her that stuff—but to move along, please, as people might not understand. I was teaching fwd maneuvers that day: he might not have been as understanding if he saw us in the mini-truck
I drove a rwd with old summer performance tires this winter. No traction control, and I learned really bad habits in my under-powered fwd shitboxes, so it was definitely a learning experience. I could pendulum it back-and-forth just breathing on the go pedal in 1-2-3. Never tried 4th as I don’t want to be sideways at those speeds with my inexperience level.
An industrial park on the weekend is a good place to practice (“Honest, officer, I’m just trying to figure out how to control this thing!”). I also don’t do it with people or traffic around: it doesn’t impress normies. And, when I play hard, it’s on remote mountain roads early am on the weekends.
One thing not mentioned is how a car can suddenly find traction if you hit the rev limiter while slideways 😉
My nephew has a model Mustang to match his dad’s 2018. Being only 18 months old, he was smashing it off the table, which made me think of the old phrase, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” In this case, when all you have is a Mustang, everything looks like a crowd.