German Car Zone

Lol, understeer ftl.

On a serious note, I never got it conventional wisdom has under steering as the safer option. Every time my VW understeers, my heart skips a beat, cause you usually understeer towards on coming traffic and it is not a pleasant feeling.

Very simple. When you understeer, the reflex is to release the throttle and to steer more. By doing this you charge the front with weight, so it regains tractions and there you go, end of the problems, the car goes back in control. Furthermore, when you understeer, you still see where you're going so you can try to avoid the tree/oncoming car/whatever. And the whatever can also try to avoid you if it's moving itself, because he sees where you're going. If you oversteer, you also can hit the oncoming traffic...But an understeering car doesn't risk to spin away out of control.

When you oversteer, if your release the throttle it will only increase the skid (less throttle, less weight on the rear so less traction for the rear wheels, so increased drift). If you countersteer too much the car will drift in the other side and can spin away out of control. If you don't countersteer, same thing can happen. And if yo brake while the car is drifting... well nobody can help you in that case.

Understeer: just release the throttle, steer a bit more and it's okay in most cases.
Oversteer: don't release the throttle, counter-steer delicately... Much harder to do.

That said, if you don't regain control of your understeering car because you're definitely too fast, there isn't much you can do. In an oversteering case, you always can control the car somehow if you're a good driver. Even if when the car spins away, a good driver can make sure it stays in its lane more or less and stops quickly. Given the fact that power and steering are on a different place, you have control on both axles by the throttle and the steering wheel, thus you have much greater control on your car.

FWD is very safe for Average Joe: much harder to have serious problems with it.
RWD is harder to control. But when you control it, well... Nothing can replace the joy of a RWD car!! Especially one with a LSD!

What coolraul said...

Understeer is also a lot more predictable and a bit more slow motion, thus why manufacturers always aim for mild understeer. Most of the time, it doesn't end up like that Audi video, he was going WAY too fast.

Oversteer on the other hand happens a lot quicker and if you don't know what you are doing, it can swing many ways. There are tons more videos of people screwing up due to oversteer.

But like Martin said, it's more about knowing the limits of your car in the present condition. I was just having some fun, hehe.

That is not quite right mate! I have driven several FWD and i own two FWD cars right now, plus one more from my wife.

From my experience, and believe me, i have done tons of great stuff, the way you propose of dealing with understeer is not always right. I think that there are two cases of understeer:

1. Understeer because of sudden or too much acceleration. You are in the middle of the turn and you press on the gas pedal hard. That way you understeer. To correct it, you lift the gas pedal and the whole deal works like you said. Basically it's pretty easy to do it. I can understeer that way in my Volvo when i switch the DSTC off.

2. Understeer due to taking a turn with higher speed than you should. If you manage to do it, then you have to turn the steering wheel much more and floor the gas pedal, and if you are lucky you won't hit anything. Braking or just lifting the gas pedal won't do anything.

I think that the 2nd case is the most usuall and dangerous as well.

BTW, you can also oversteer with an FWD car, but that's a hard thing to correct. I can oversteer my Clio, but then it's pretty hard, not to hit anything/anyone, since the front doesn't have much traction and it's pretty hard to improve it. Only flooring the gas and counter-turning the st. wheel can help, but not always...

In my experience, if you understeer because of excessive speed in a corner, you sure need to steer a lot more, but hitting the gas pedal will only make things worse.
However, that is right, in that case, just releasing the throttle won't be enough. You'll need to steer a lot more while releasing the throttle. You also can brake, but very very carefully.

Of course, you should never brake too hard when the car is understeering (always be cautious when braking in a corner, BTW) because you would take the risk of making the car oversteer... And like you said, if a FWD car oversteers, it's quite hard to get it back (for that you need to absolutely floor it while countersteering).

If you throttle an understeering car, two things will happen: one the weight goes at the rear, so less grip and directional power at the front, and second if a wheel spins you loose even more traction.

A car understeering because it is really too fast cannot be controlled anyway...it will understeer no matter what you do, unless you make it spin away by hitting the brakes/handbrake too hard...

That said, it also depends on the car. Now, for instance, the RWD cars tend to "naturally" understeer to be safer... While some FWD cars (like some Peugeot) have a natural oversteering tendancy (funny, but not safe at all). Every car reacts differently in case of a skid, these principles I said are only advice but no "drifting manual"... You have to feel the car and its reactions, this is the most important.

I would like it very much to hear Martin's view on this!

The best way I've learned to get rid of understeer is to lift off the accelerator, steer more, but without being over aggressive. Well in those experiences, it was aquaplanning at a skid pad.

Also, I can almost safely say that most production car is designed to understeer. Cars like the Porsche 911 and things like that, are all supposed to understeer to some degree before completely breaking to oversteering. Unless it's a race car, passenger cars are designed on the safe side.

Yeah would be interesting to have some "scientific" opinion on this subject

Basically steering the wheel more, means that the wheels have already lost their grip, and you can definitely feel it on the steering wheel, especially when you don't have hydraulic steering..

It's quite simple really and this is as scientific as you need to get. Oversteer and understeer just means the tires ran out of grip.

Now there's only a certain amount of force you can put into a tire. When you accelerate or decelerate, too much force and you lose grip (wheelspin and locking up your brakes). When you turn, too much force, that results is losing grip.

So when you try to turn and accelerate at the same time, you are putting too much load per tire, and once you pass that limit, you lose grip. Depending on the condition, you'll get either understeer or oversteer.

I'm sure Martin can put it in a much better sounding paragraph than me, but I doubt it'll be too different... I don't think