Let the Red Bull Driftbrothers guide you on the finer points of drifting

Johannes Hountondji: Basically, drift is controlled oversteer. Either the car corners faster than it should or it accelerates very hard in the corner, causing the rear axle to skid as the rear tyres lose traction.

Elias Hountondji: An engineer would put it like this: the slip angle on the rear axle is significantly larger than the slip angle on the front axle.

Johannes Hountondji: From our point of view, no. Aside from the fact that you should leave that in a parking lot, that's uncontrolled rear-end swerving. By definition, a drift is very controlled, because the car does what you want it to do and not the other way around.

Johannes Hountondji: There are thousands of ways to manoeuvre a car into a corner for the first time. You just have so many different options as to how and when you put your car into the curve, at what angle and then how you transition from one direction of drift to the other.

Elias Hountondji: There are basically four criteria:

1. Speed - the faster, the better

2. Drift angle – the larger the better, but remembering that the larger the angle the slower the car will be. A good compromise needs to be found here.

3. The line – this is specified, so drivers have to approach certain points precisely, sometimes with the front, sometimes with the rear.

4. The style - the most important criteria. Above all, the evaluation here is how the drift is initiated and how the car is moved, if there are many corrections in the steering wheel, how high the percentage of throttle use is, etc.

Johannes Hountondji: There are usually three judges who evaluate each driver separately. It gets exciting in the twin battle, the supreme discipline of our sport. In the twin battle, two drivers compete against each other, one lap as a leader in front and one lap as a chaser. The competitor in front drives according to the four criteria mentioned above, while the one in back tries to stay as close to the man in front as possible. The closer to his rival's rear, the better it's rated.

Elias Hountondji: It's mainly through the front axle. Because we always countersteer – i.e. to the left in a right-hand turn and to the right in a left-hand turn – and want to drive at a wide angle, drift cars have significantly more steering angle than ordinary vehicles. A steering angle of 35 to 45 degrees would be normal and drift cars have a steering angle of 70 to 80 degrees.

Johannes Hountondji: A drift car also has to be rear-wheel drive. It's also possible to build an all-wheel drive drifter, but that has very little to do with classic drifting. The car behaves completely differently with all-wheel drive. Another important aspect is the cooling. Although we bank the car and let it drift, we want maximum grip on the rear axle. To do that, we need very powerful engines. The more power you have in the car, the more heat is generated and that's why engine cooling is a very important point. Eli's car, for example, has the cooler located in the trunk.

Elias Hountondji: Things like axle kinematics, chassis tuning, balance, centre of gravity and overall set-up of the car are just as important in drifting as in any other motorsport. The bottom line is that we want optimum control of the car at high speeds.

Johannes Hountondji: When you're drifting, the entire drive train is actually permanently stressed. We drive 80 to 90 percent of the time at full load. When driving a circuit, you're at least off the gas and on the brakes in the curves, so the car is a lot less stressed. We're only off the gas for a few seconds each run. As soon as the car is sideways again, we're back at full throttle.

Elias Hountondji: There are a couple of drift simulations on the PC that represent the driving physics in the drift quite realistically, such as Assetto Corsa. The few that are okay make it possible to practice the coordination between the accelerator pedal, steering wheel and brakes at home.

Johannes Hountondji: In order to initiate a drift, you have to go over the limits of the car. That's something you have to get used to and simulations help with that.

Elias Hountondji: Good coordination helps, as does a certain level of basic fitness and a healthy level of responsiveness. You can train all of that. It also helps to get into the car from time to time and to consciously perceive how the car behaves when there's a change in load, what it does when you corner, brake and accelerate.