Drifting: everything is more fun sideways

Drifting. Most car enthusiasts or motorsports fans have heard of this legendary and flashy way to navigate turns more quickly. For those of you who are not familiar, drifting is a driving technique in which a driver intentionally applies more power than is necessary to a car when turning and induces oversteer. There are various ways drivers can induce drifts, but the end result is always the same when performed correctly. The various techniques result in the car turning sideways laterally while still moving forwards on the road or track, creating a way to keep speed through a turn with a showy display of driving aptitude. In the past 10 years drifting has become wildly popular among fans and racing drivers alike.

The first professional driver to popularize the drifting technique was now-legendary Japanese racing driver Keiichi Tsuchiya.

Tsuchiya is now known as the "drift king" and has appeared in hundreds of motorsports movies, magazines, and television programs. Starting out as an underground street racing legend in Japan, he honed his skills and graduated to the level of professional racing circuits. Due to the illegal nature of the street racing he was involved in, Tsuchiya was suspended multiple times from professional racing circuits and eventually left the underground illegal scene to further pursue his professional career.

Drifting started out because Tsuchiya was looking for a way to exit corners faster while racing. Turning is what slows a car down the most on a racing circuit, and any way to improve speed while still maintaining control would give him a definite advantage. He found that by intentionally inducing oversteer and powering through turns he could maintain a higher entry and exit speed through turns, therefore coming out on top in races.

The drift technique made Tsuchiya wildly popular due to its flashy nature, and he began to win races due to the fact that he was the only driver using it. Keiichi once said, "I drift not because it is the fastest way around corners, but because it is the most exciting." Before long, people began to copy and reproduce his driving techniques, and today there are individually sanctioned professional competitions just for drifting around turns.

Drifting became mainstream in the West with the advent of the 2006 street racing movie The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Ever since then, it has rapidly grown in popularity in the USA and surrounding countries. Drifting may be difficult, but when done properly in a race car it is very efficient, and frankly, a hell of a lot more fun than driving in a straight line.

-MW