[QUOTE]Originally posted by Stealthy_S2K
[B]Stay on gas.

 

Keep it off the engine otherwise boy will it stink!

 

Ya Sunchild's instructions are right on. But after you compensate for the oversteer, you have to bring the car back in line. It is call the crank, pause and recover(CPR).
Crank is to compensate by turning the wheels in the direction the tail is sliding, pause is the moment when you realize that the weight of the car is shifting back to where you want it and then you recover with the steering. That is what I learnt at Skip Barber last weekend.

As far as staying on the throttle, I was taught to stay off the throttle, so I would have to go with S2WOOOW.

And Sunchild is right also in saying that we have to look at where we want the car to go and not where we are heading. If you look where you are heading, your hands naturally steer towards where are are likely to crash, which is BAD.

[Edited by nwk00 on 01-24-2001 at 08:05 AM]

 

Are you insured? Yes, . . .then have fun with it. Mash the pedal to the floor, if the rear is sliding towards the right, go ahead and turn to the left. Makes for a wicked rear end kick-out.

Actually what I was taught to do is to just turn your head and look into the direction you want to go. Surprisingly, if you have enough feel WITH the car (in my case, the number of hours spent behind the wheel), your body and hands will react accordingly.

This past summer I had actually taken the car out onto a low cut grassy field and practiced sliding the car and practiced how to re-cover from a slide. I also had my fiance do it as much as I did. I had alot of fun, I was now more skilled than earlier in the day, and I got to give my baby a bath (which I find enjoyable).

In late, late Fall, I took the car out (before the Chicago snow storms hit), and I actually was caught off guard and had the rear end kicking out on me. After a millisecond panic attack, I just reacted. I recovered the slide and went merriliy on my way, only to expect a good scolding from my fiance, who was in the passenger side seat. Instead, she had kept her wits about her, better than I did. She even told me that I did good, but she could've done better by catching the rear end right before the slide began!!

I can't wait until Spring. I will get back on that field for more practice. Then maybe I will have the cajones to do it on a slick road.

 

I will give you reason why you have to stay on throttle when encounter oversteer. For almost all street car (other than Porsche or Rear engine car), staying off the throttle during oversteer will be disaster. The reason to stay on throttle is to prevent weight shifting to the front. Remember, you have already lost traction in the rear. How to prevent weight shifting toward the front? You will have to step on the gas. If you let go throttle or step on the brake, the weight of the car will shift toward front and you will never get the car back AT SPEED. Just look at all racing video tape that you can find, the race drivers always stay on throttle when they are spinning. OK, I know they need to keep the engine alive for formula cars. Look at Speedvision world challenge where they can restart cars at well. If oversteer were encountered at low speed, than you can do anything you want and will never get hurt.

Go try a skidpad car control clinic or try in a real big parking lot when surface is wet. If you stay on gas, you will bring the car back much faster and smoother. Almost all schools teaches you to step off the gas, you are driving their cars. Most of us will panic and give more gas than you should and that will result in detroy the car. So, stay off the throttle and let physics do the driving will be their story. Try to go to Track Time where you can bring your own car with their intructors, they will tell you to stay on gas and steer toward where you want to go.

I will give you a example. One of guy at my local driving school who HAD a brand new Porsche Boxter S. He rear end came loose at the last corner which is a real fast left sweeper (70MPH+). He step on the brake right away, and guess what? He smashed into the pit wall with a few 360s and totalled the car. Afterward, several of us were chatting. We all agreed he should have stay on gas and just let the car slide.

Sorry for such a long post, hope this will help.

 

The idea in staying on the throttle is to go into a controled drift like the sprint cars on a dirt track.

But that takes training, talent, and sometimes a couple of cars.

Buy a go-kart or a junker and practice "throttle steering" before you do with your S2000, otherwise you could still pay the consequences!

ps. the S2000 does a nice job of "throttle steer"; but watch out for the transition from "oversteer" to "throttle steer".

 

My concern is that there are too many guys talking like race drivers. And most reading this post aren't (95% of the people think they are in the top 5% in driving skill). I think that the advice to people without any formal driving training would be different than to ones who have. I feel that for the untrained, it's safer to get off the throttle.

 

I'll tell you right now that I'm not a trained race car driver, in fact, I'm no where near "race" anything. I'm a just a driver. But I do know enough that in higher speed slides, getting off the throttle on our 50/50 weight balanced cars will shift a significant amount of weight off the rear and to the front. This WILL cause more of the undesired oversteer, and rear will continue to kick out, only faster (seeing that the weight keeping the rear glued to the street is now shifted more toward the center of the car).

For better insight, we should ask those that have more experiences in the weight transfer topic. I suggest asking Scott (at King), Jason Sanini, GTRPower, and other racers.

 

I think this brings up another consideration. There are different reasons that the rear end will come around. Two of the simplest are: accelerating to hard (or too early) on an exit of the turn, and reaching the adheasion limit through a sustained turn. I'm refering to the first because I think that is the more common problem (it is with me), and fishtailing to me (maybe it's only me) implies on a straight road. And I think that the lower the speed, the less of a weight transfer there is. On the instances that I lost the back end and instantly lifted, the car caught right away, didn't feel a great weight shift, and it was NOT a disaster

 

Siva, allow me to interject just a bit. You can do whatever you want, just do it SMOOTH. All the gents on this board are trying to help you, and their advice is great, note it all. Just try to keep in mind that inexperienced drivers (in a race sense) tend to make sharp judgements that upset the car even worse(as mentioned before). And again as mentioned, the best policy is to stay out of the spin altogether, but if that is not possible...be smooth. The professionals call it "smoothness glue". Watch Michael Schumacher, he brakes all the rules...and is possibly the best rain driver in history...and in large part it is because he is SMOOTH!

[Edited by S2Kguy on 01-24-2001 at 06:40 PM]