- 271
- United States
- The__Ghost__Z
Part 1 - On the nature and purposes of Drifting
Part 2: Precision - More complex factors in drift physics
Part 3: Weapons - Novice Drift Initiation Techniques
Part 4: High Caliber Weapons Advanced Drift Initiation Techniques
Part 5: Mid-Corner Drift Physics - Executing a drift at a speed and angle.
Part 6: Math and Comparative Tuning - Tuning drift cars in relation to eachother
Part 7: Beyond Competition - An Ending Note
I feel that I have, at last, exhausted the abilities of Gran Turismo 5's drifting community. This will be the last entry in this series, and the last involvement I will have. From here on, you may catch me in the occasional lobby, but there will be no more serious drifting for me. I can't get inspired by any of the new teams or drifters, and I can't find new areas to improve on that I have the time and dedication for. This is why I made this series, to express as much knowledge as I can on the basic level to the community, which I feel as a whole lacks the fundamentals and precision needed to match skill with their hype.
The best drifter is not whoever wins the most competitions, is leader of the most successful teams, or makes the craziest videos. The best drifter is the one who, at any point, can make his car do whatever he wants at will and succeed at it. The best drifter can grip race at incredible speeds. The best drifter can extract every last ounce of speed out of a slow car. The best drifter never wrecks, can approach a corner at any position too fast or too slow and drift it flawlessly. The best driver can take a poor line and drive it as fast as a good line, on demand, and adapt to any circumstance. This is not achieved through practicing the same tandem sections over and over, it is not achieved through competitions or mathematics calculation, but is achieved through a high degree of talent and skill at controlling a car. No one, even myself, has achieved this on GT5 that I have observed. But I can confidently say that the members of drift teams, in whole, are not the best drifters online, or ever will be. The best ones are the anomalies, who drive the car they love and drift it perfectly regardless of the circumstances. This is why I created this account, to try and better myself and the community as a whole. I realized this a while back when I began drifting with this new account and stopped entering competitions.
Drifting teams are created to pool knowledge and resources. The idea is that an entire team, sharing opinions and practice time, can collectively improve their abilities. This is not the case with the GT5 community. Here, drifting teams act as a buffer between skill and criticism. They are drifting gangs, there to back eachother up emotionally when a member's pride is on the line. They practice, yes, and they improve, but the goal has always been to defeat other teams in battles or success. "Tandem, Tandem, Tandem" is the goal, and any words against this is that, just words. In a long time of analyzing GT5's drifting scene since the beginning of the game (and even before in prologue) I've seen it evolve from drivers who want to push their skill to the limit, to drivers who want to wear drifting as a fashion statement.
The get back to the core, the purpose of drifting, is to reach the "purest drifting experience". I've taken you, the reader, a full circle with this now. First, I presented what the objective reasons to drift would be, and then I showed you how to optimize and utilize all of the techniques to your advantage. Now, I am showing you why I've done this.
Keiichi Tsuchiya said that he started drifting as a way to keep fans interested during his races. He said that while drifting was not the fastest way around a corner, it was the most beautiful. Drifting is not about teams, it is not about speed, and it is not about winning races or competitions. It is about pushing the very limits of what a driver and a car is capable of doing, and being so in-sync with those actions that the limits can be achieved effortlessly.
Likewise, it is not about "style" or angle either, and too much focus on specific performance causes a drifter to lose sight of the greater, more instinctual level of control of their car. Some of the best drifters, at their particular courses, fall to pieces if the car in front of them wrecks or they are on an unfamiliar course. Some drifters only win competitions by using excessively fast cars, tons of power, and letting it make up for the lack of precision they have. Some drifters really are fantastic, but never seek to improve beyond whatever niche technique they have worked into, and refuse to adapt.
Next time you are drifting on Tsukuba with someone, and you see they are swinging their body side-to-side to enter the final corner (a novice technique) out-brake them, ride on the dirt beside the track past them, and use their body to bump the rear end of your car, putting you into a drift on grass that you maintain onto the track and pull away. Next time you are on special stage route 5, swing your car out and contact drift the last chicane, rebounding the car into the SECOND corner, doing a contact drift twice in a row, for maximum speed. Next time you are on High Speed Ring, float from the inside to the outside of the track several times on each of the short corners, zig-zagging smoothly, while drifting the entire way and not losing speed either. Take an unassuming car, completely stock, and try to recreate your favorite drift car's abilities with it, and outdrift far faster vehicles. These are the things that will make you better, because they require only your skill and absolute precision to do successfully. These are just some of the techniques, ones far more difficult than it is required to win a competition, that I will do that overwhelms other drivers in terms of skill. These are not things you can do in a drift competition, they are not things that a drift team will teach you to do. You have to figure this stuff out on your own.
Go drift. Do incredible things. Practice for yourself, not for a team or for a battle. Go beyond competition. That is why you are playing a simulator, not to just make your ego big and be a part of a gang of bullies. Take pride in your driving and drift only for yourself. You, regardless of who is reading this, now has all of the tools, I've written them down for you. Do things in a car on GT5 that anyone would be scared to do in real life. Make the most of your time behind the wheel, don't spend it on petty arguments between teams or trying to make yourself appear better than you really are. Be the best damn drifter you can possibly be. Do not care what others think of you.
This has been a fun experiment this summer. I've vastly improved my own driving, by going from a competition winning, "good" drifter, to an anonymous driver in a 40-year-old car perfecting his technique beyond what any drift team can do online or off. I do not have the time or resources to continue improving anymore, and so I am going to let it rest now that I've taken what I've learned, and given it to the community. It's not about being the best, it's about constantly improving. Teams and fellow drifters go away. The only thing that stays with you afterwards is what skills you've developed.
If you do not understand the purpose of this post, at least take this away from it: in the end, the only thing that will matter in the petty fights between teams is what skill you manage to take away. Drift because it is fun and you want to do it as best as possible. Do not drift because you want to make someone else feel bad. The worst drifter is you. You are always the one who needs to improve, you are always the one who can do better. You are never good enough to disrespect others, and you are never good enough to stop needing to improve. There is simply no other thing as true.
I've already typed up exactly what anyone on GT5 needs to know to become a good drifter, this entire experiment was so that I could perfect my technique, and then enhance the community as a whole, which I hope I have done in the end. I want people in the community to stop caring about who wins competitions, which 99% have nothing to do with having the best control over a car, or who is part of which team. There is no team on GT5 worthy of being called "amazing", and everyone has a long way to improve, myself included. Who knows? Maybe someone will take my advice and continue the improvement in the real world, or even start their own project to improve the community.
Go beyond competition, and have real fun. That's why people buy this game, because it's fun. Thanks for reading.
Part 2: Precision - More complex factors in drift physics
Part 3: Weapons - Novice Drift Initiation Techniques
Part 4: High Caliber Weapons Advanced Drift Initiation Techniques
Part 5: Mid-Corner Drift Physics - Executing a drift at a speed and angle.
Part 6: Math and Comparative Tuning - Tuning drift cars in relation to eachother
Part 7: Beyond Competition - An Ending Note
I feel that I have, at last, exhausted the abilities of Gran Turismo 5's drifting community. This will be the last entry in this series, and the last involvement I will have. From here on, you may catch me in the occasional lobby, but there will be no more serious drifting for me. I can't get inspired by any of the new teams or drifters, and I can't find new areas to improve on that I have the time and dedication for. This is why I made this series, to express as much knowledge as I can on the basic level to the community, which I feel as a whole lacks the fundamentals and precision needed to match skill with their hype.
The best drifter is not whoever wins the most competitions, is leader of the most successful teams, or makes the craziest videos. The best drifter is the one who, at any point, can make his car do whatever he wants at will and succeed at it. The best drifter can grip race at incredible speeds. The best drifter can extract every last ounce of speed out of a slow car. The best drifter never wrecks, can approach a corner at any position too fast or too slow and drift it flawlessly. The best driver can take a poor line and drive it as fast as a good line, on demand, and adapt to any circumstance. This is not achieved through practicing the same tandem sections over and over, it is not achieved through competitions or mathematics calculation, but is achieved through a high degree of talent and skill at controlling a car. No one, even myself, has achieved this on GT5 that I have observed. But I can confidently say that the members of drift teams, in whole, are not the best drifters online, or ever will be. The best ones are the anomalies, who drive the car they love and drift it perfectly regardless of the circumstances. This is why I created this account, to try and better myself and the community as a whole. I realized this a while back when I began drifting with this new account and stopped entering competitions.
Drifting teams are created to pool knowledge and resources. The idea is that an entire team, sharing opinions and practice time, can collectively improve their abilities. This is not the case with the GT5 community. Here, drifting teams act as a buffer between skill and criticism. They are drifting gangs, there to back eachother up emotionally when a member's pride is on the line. They practice, yes, and they improve, but the goal has always been to defeat other teams in battles or success. "Tandem, Tandem, Tandem" is the goal, and any words against this is that, just words. In a long time of analyzing GT5's drifting scene since the beginning of the game (and even before in prologue) I've seen it evolve from drivers who want to push their skill to the limit, to drivers who want to wear drifting as a fashion statement.
The get back to the core, the purpose of drifting, is to reach the "purest drifting experience". I've taken you, the reader, a full circle with this now. First, I presented what the objective reasons to drift would be, and then I showed you how to optimize and utilize all of the techniques to your advantage. Now, I am showing you why I've done this.
Keiichi Tsuchiya said that he started drifting as a way to keep fans interested during his races. He said that while drifting was not the fastest way around a corner, it was the most beautiful. Drifting is not about teams, it is not about speed, and it is not about winning races or competitions. It is about pushing the very limits of what a driver and a car is capable of doing, and being so in-sync with those actions that the limits can be achieved effortlessly.
Likewise, it is not about "style" or angle either, and too much focus on specific performance causes a drifter to lose sight of the greater, more instinctual level of control of their car. Some of the best drifters, at their particular courses, fall to pieces if the car in front of them wrecks or they are on an unfamiliar course. Some drifters only win competitions by using excessively fast cars, tons of power, and letting it make up for the lack of precision they have. Some drifters really are fantastic, but never seek to improve beyond whatever niche technique they have worked into, and refuse to adapt.
Next time you are drifting on Tsukuba with someone, and you see they are swinging their body side-to-side to enter the final corner (a novice technique) out-brake them, ride on the dirt beside the track past them, and use their body to bump the rear end of your car, putting you into a drift on grass that you maintain onto the track and pull away. Next time you are on special stage route 5, swing your car out and contact drift the last chicane, rebounding the car into the SECOND corner, doing a contact drift twice in a row, for maximum speed. Next time you are on High Speed Ring, float from the inside to the outside of the track several times on each of the short corners, zig-zagging smoothly, while drifting the entire way and not losing speed either. Take an unassuming car, completely stock, and try to recreate your favorite drift car's abilities with it, and outdrift far faster vehicles. These are the things that will make you better, because they require only your skill and absolute precision to do successfully. These are just some of the techniques, ones far more difficult than it is required to win a competition, that I will do that overwhelms other drivers in terms of skill. These are not things you can do in a drift competition, they are not things that a drift team will teach you to do. You have to figure this stuff out on your own.
Go drift. Do incredible things. Practice for yourself, not for a team or for a battle. Go beyond competition. That is why you are playing a simulator, not to just make your ego big and be a part of a gang of bullies. Take pride in your driving and drift only for yourself. You, regardless of who is reading this, now has all of the tools, I've written them down for you. Do things in a car on GT5 that anyone would be scared to do in real life. Make the most of your time behind the wheel, don't spend it on petty arguments between teams or trying to make yourself appear better than you really are. Be the best damn drifter you can possibly be. Do not care what others think of you.
This has been a fun experiment this summer. I've vastly improved my own driving, by going from a competition winning, "good" drifter, to an anonymous driver in a 40-year-old car perfecting his technique beyond what any drift team can do online or off. I do not have the time or resources to continue improving anymore, and so I am going to let it rest now that I've taken what I've learned, and given it to the community. It's not about being the best, it's about constantly improving. Teams and fellow drifters go away. The only thing that stays with you afterwards is what skills you've developed.
If you do not understand the purpose of this post, at least take this away from it: in the end, the only thing that will matter in the petty fights between teams is what skill you manage to take away. Drift because it is fun and you want to do it as best as possible. Do not drift because you want to make someone else feel bad. The worst drifter is you. You are always the one who needs to improve, you are always the one who can do better. You are never good enough to disrespect others, and you are never good enough to stop needing to improve. There is simply no other thing as true.
I've already typed up exactly what anyone on GT5 needs to know to become a good drifter, this entire experiment was so that I could perfect my technique, and then enhance the community as a whole, which I hope I have done in the end. I want people in the community to stop caring about who wins competitions, which 99% have nothing to do with having the best control over a car, or who is part of which team. There is no team on GT5 worthy of being called "amazing", and everyone has a long way to improve, myself included. Who knows? Maybe someone will take my advice and continue the improvement in the real world, or even start their own project to improve the community.
Go beyond competition, and have real fun. That's why people buy this game, because it's fun. Thanks for reading.
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