Are you ready to learn how to do donuts in a car? The bare essentials for a drift car are a handbrake, a good working clutch, and a welded diff. The rest of the car can pretty much be open, as long as it’s rear-wheel drive and has enough power to do a standstill burnout. And private property to practice this! Or our track.
Step 1: Initiate the Donut
There are several ways to initiate a donut.
With an ebrake, you drive in towards the cone and put in clutch, turn, and ebrake to initiate a slide.
The other way is you drive into the turn and rev the car to about 3000 (wet) to 4000 rpm. Then, let the clutch out rapidly. This will cause the rear tires to break loose, and you’ll start to drift.
Step 2: Countersteer
When the car starts to pivot, you need to steer the wheel to the right at about the same speed as the car is rotating. You want to throw the wheel pretty quickly and then snap it in 4000 rpm. Pedal the gas to keep it in the power band, between 3000 to 4000 rpm, and use the steering to keep you centered. Keep your eyes focused on the cone or cones you are going around and keep a constant distance. You can have a small donut or a large one. Experiment between the two.
Step 3: Adjust Your Speed
The steering of the car (the yaw) is really through your pedal. As you’re doing the donut, you need to pedal the gas to adjust your speed. More throttle will push you out wider, while less throttle will pull you in nice and close. Adjust your speed until you can stay right on the cone and get as close as possible to where you need to be.
Donuts are an essential technique to learn the skills of initiation, throttle control and counter steering. We teach this as a part of every Texas Drift Academy course.
