[(H)]

Dear All,

Once in a while, and when road conditions and traffic allows (for example on large private industrial parking lots etc.) I like to hone my driving skills. Part of that is mastering sharp turns with an occasional drift. I grew up with manual transmission front wheel drive and parking brake drift approach. You can imagine how much I have to get used to just creating enough spin on the rear wheels to create the same smooth swing of the rear end. Will need a lot more practice.

Now the drifting out of the rear end of the car feels fine and not to rough on the vehicle over all (other than the audible loss of rubber and the idea of a set of spare tires approaching fast). However, after counter steering it feels rather rough on the wheels, suspension, trim and chassis when the car gets a firm grip on all four wheels again. You can obviously feel your body being tossed around quite a bit when that happens. I am trying to compensate that with a bit more throttle but there is always a remaining strong side force on the vehicle.

So: How detrimental is such driving practice really?

H