I'd define drifting your car for sport as a controlled slide or sliding due to loss of tire(s) traction.
It seems a little embaressing that some people here don't know the technical aspects of car drifts.
Without trying to sound like some sort of troll, I just wanted to say that understanding your car's handling and physical dynamics can very well save you from serious injury or death. If you like to drift, please do it somewhere safe (controlled) like a race track. Doing drifts on public streets only make the responsible individuals who drift on a track, look bad.
Every car has a different mode of drive. There is
Front Wheel Drive = Front tires are powered by the motor to move your car
Rear Wheel Drive = Rear tires are powered by the motor to move your car
All Wheel Drive = All four tires are powered by the motor to move your car
There are other factors that need to be considered when understanding how a car handles. Power of of the engine, quality of tires, suspension, chassis rigidity, etc. The weight distrubution of your car also makes a BIG difference in how your car handles in a drift. Center of gravity, controlled shifting of the momentum, etc. Most FWD cars are heavy in the front part because more weight on the front tires means more traction for them.
I noticed in the Mazda 3, for example, the engine is front of the front wheel axle, putting quite a bit of weight to the front of the car.
From what I see in this video, the guy is driving some sort of FWD hatchback. It looks like a Honda Civic hatchback. If you notice, the back tires stop moving (spinning) completely due to his using the e-brake.
My simple explanation:
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Now if you think about it, if he's turning the car slightly either left or right, the front of end of the car is going to naturally lead into the turn, then he suddenly locks his back tires. Well, the front tires are still spinning and receiving traction. But the back end of the car now has a lot less traction due to the fact that the tires aren't allowed to spin. Well, the back end of the car would naturally continue going in the direction it was originally traveling. This causes the back end to "swing out" because the front end is still traveling on it's curved trajectory, but the back end is still wanting to go in it's original trajectory, but because your car isn't a rubber band, multiple forces/momentums will act on the car. Simply put, one force from the front and the other from the back. The driver, in this case, controls the pointing direction of his car via the driving tires (the front) and the judicious use of the the e-brake. The driver will have to disengage the e-brake to unlock the back tires (to allow them to regain traction), otherwise, he would continue to swing the back end out (due to the loss of traction), causing him to "spin-out" the whole car (especially dangerous during a wheel to wheel race).
Rear wheel drive cars are a completely different story. vaBooM and gunmetal6i are right that a lot of "drifters" use a RWD car for drift styled racing. But the handling dynamics of a RWD are completely different. The car is being "pushed" rather than being "pulled" as in a FWD.
And if you get into WRC and rally racing with AWD monsters (Subaru WRX Sti's and Misubishi's LanEvo's), that's a whole other ball game. :twisted:
There's more than one way to drift a car. E-braking is one of the simpler ways to get your car to initiate a drift. But the Japanese got it down when it comes to showy drift racing. There are techniques such power sliding (what most Americans know from their muscle cars) there is also braking drifts (very advanced techinque) If I can find a Internet resource (hopefully translated) I'll post it here. There are plenty of videos out there for sale on VHS or DVD's.
Oh, and if anybody is a big fan of Japanese Animation (aka Anime) go look for a series called "Initial D" It's what caused me to get interested in learning about the car drift scene when I was a kid.
Stay safe you guys
