lol okayyy then, if you really want to know, I figure it's like this . . .
the reason I said comfuh hawd was great for learning how to exit a corner with speed is because it is somewhat difficult to do this. I believe that the things you learn from preventing and recovering from slides are the same skills you use to controll and extend them. entering/throwing/hucking drifts is a separate skill from maintaining and exiting and transitioning. if you can get very good at non-drift racing on comfuh hawd, you'll have that much more understanding of weight transfer, throttle control, steering input, the whole deal.
when you really know what is going on in the last 7/8ths of a corner, THEN you go work on your entry.
now about the suspension . . . to non-drift race on comfuh hawd, you need to tune the suspension.
- springs - they SUPPORT and TRANSFER the weight of your vehicle
- dampers - they regulate only how quickly this happens.
just imagine dampers as a tube of fluid and you are trying to mash a disk at the end of a rod down it. . . the lower the damper settings the bigger of a hole is in the disk, and the faster you can push the disk down the tube, yet, without springs, a vehicle would simply bottom out.
Now.
if you have a sticky tire and you turn, what happens ?
well because of INTERTIA, (tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion) your car's body will attempt to continue travelling in the direction it was going, prior to your steering input.
as you (should) obviously know, the car can't simply separate from the wheels and keep going, even though it is trying to, so it presses into the springs.
the inside springs extend as the car tries to move towards the outside, and the outside springs compress as they restrain the car from flying away into a pile of twisted burning wreckage. ALL the while, the grip of the tires (&mu
is not exceeded and they are able to keep everything on the road.(because I said "if we have a sticky tire")
What I am trying to say : the body roll you experience is directly proportional to the grip of your tires and inversely proportional to the spring setting. you could represent it like "BR = grip/springs" -> if you have a high grip / low springs = you get a big number for body roll. if you have a low grip and high springs you get a very small fraction (which is a low number . . . .)
which is another way of saying, the grippier tires, the higher spring rate you will use to experience the same ammount of body roll
OR
the weaker your tires grip, the weaker springs you will need to still experience body roll.
OR
what we are more interested in is:
the weaker your tires grip, the less spring rate you require to prevent extreme body roll.
if you're still reading but think this is all stupid, I AM getting to a point . . . here it is :
a great drift car is a great track car. because of the unique demands of drift-style driving vs race-style driving, your great track car will need to have certain suspension/handling characteristics that non-drifting track cars may not have/want
1. any corner you want to drift, you want to be able to initiate teh drift without hassel, simply steer away quickly and steer in sharply, throttle and counter steer. if you have too much body roll, your car will either not break traction at all, or it will break traction abruptly springing into a spin when you steer in sharply.
if you want no body roll in this scenario(initiation), you can either slam your car and crank the springs to the max . . . or you can just increase the dampers so that when you do quick inputs, the suspension does not react.
a non-drifting track car would likely use somewhat lower damper rates to NOT have this effect, especially in curvy braking zones ;p
2. exiting a corner with speed, under power.
if you chose to:
slam your car and crank the springs to the max, any time your car is sideways, even slightly, every time you use the gas it will increase your angle. if you are trying to exit a corner and complete a drift and accelerate, this could be difficult because you will have to let off everything when you are pointing at the straight, wait a moment for your car to start rolling in this direction, and ease onto the gas . . . and even then you will increase angle slightly and you will have to countersteer side to side cancelling the fishtail.
but because you are a pro CH drifter you probably just change directions continuously and keep fishtailing down that straight to make it look like you are showing off how you can drift even when there's no corner to drift. (but actually everyone with any driving experience can tell it's just a lousy cover up for deficient suspension tuning prowess)
OR ! you can use a lower spring rate with the high dampers, so that you can ease off the throttle as you complete the corner, slowly and smoothly hooking up your drift into full throttle acceleration and nail that next section soopah fas! HOO-AH!
Conclusion : The lowest spring rate you can get away with is the sweet spot.
( remember : body roll = grip / spring )
