Im just going out on a limb here and assume you all know what drifing is. If not, Wikipedia is your friend.
Its videos of these so called "Arab Drifts" that get me thinking. Sure it might look insane and incredible to the untrained eye, a display of incredible motorsport mastery.
To me, it doesnt look like a display of incredible control, rather, it looks like a bunch of arabs with too much free time, discovering that "Wen yu turn ze wheel one way, bery bery fast, an den, turn it bery bery fast in ze other dyerection, ze car goes BERY OUT OF CONTROL SOI SOISOI ALLLLAHHHHH"
seriously now, what is this shit? All they are doing is massive over-sways and feint drifts the entire time. They are essentially throwing these front wheel drive cars, then doing some not so fancy powerbrake and clutch work to make their cars go woooosh in one direction, then woosh in another.
Im not saying this doesnt require control, but to me, it certianly doesnt constitute drifting. Drifting is all about control, about knowing your entrance and exits and keeping your line through a turn. Also, these cars are front wheel drive (until proven false), which means that once you start "drifting", there is no need for throttle modulation unless you want your front tires breaking loose (or unless you want to shift the weight to the front tires,increasing grip and, if you are lucky, adding a bit of oversteer), but you will never be able to hold an angle on a long corner like you could with a rear wheel drive car. This does NOT mean that drifting isnt possible in front wheel drive cars, its very possible indeed, but true drifting is accomplished by rear wheel drive cars.
All these guys are doing is massive pendulums, and their only excuse for not crashing is those big ass roads they are driving on. Kinda hard to hit a wall when you have 30 feet of clearance on either side.
True Drifting
^^ The guy even screws up at the end =p
Check how close he comes to the wall on the 2nd and 3rd runs
Im not discrediting these arab drifter guys, they obviously display skill and control to some degree (even though it comes off looking more like recklessness to me), but as for drifting, if you put these guys on a drifting circuit / drifting competition, they would not do so well. Perhaps they should rename "Arab Drifting"
to
"Saudi finds out what happens when you Scandinavian Flick a camry on a wide ass road, then tells his buddies about it"
