steering with gas pedal: what is this technique?

[xagna]

I know that driving a car with a lot of horsepower and torque is substentially different from a car without them. I heard that in those high performance cars, you can steer more with gas pedal while steering wheel input is minimal. Do you know what this technique is called? Is there any good option or best motoring video or dvd teaching this technique? I heard that one of those Japanese dvd has comparison footage between an amateur and a pro showing the difference between their gas pedal induced steering.

[Bubba1]

I know that driving a car with a lot of horsepower and torque is substentially different from a car without them. I heard that in those high performance cars, you can steer more with gas pedal while steering wheel input is minimal. Do you know what this technique is called? Is there any good option or best motoring video or dvd teaching this technique? I heard that one of those Japanese dvd has comparison footage between an amateur and a pro showing the difference between their gas pedal induced steering.

It's called Throttle steer. There's a good old fashioned book to check out called "Going Faster", by Skip Barber.

[Nismo_Freak]

The next time you are autocrossing, take your left foot and apply light braking. The front end of the car will turn in allowing you to reduce your steering angle.

[InsanityInc]

The next time you are autocrossing, take your left foot and apply light braking. The front end of the car will turn in allowing you to reduce your steering angle.

This is of course assuming that you don't have really stiff springs. If you do, then doing this is pointless as your car will not dive.

"Throttle steer" is a fairly general term for it. In most cases where it's a good thing, it's power oversteering. However, power oversteering doesn't mean you need to lose traction. Basically, as you turn in a corner, various shearing forces act on your tire due to the centripetal force being applied to your vehicle, and then when torque is applied linearly to the tire it begins to follow a non-straight path. As centripetal force is pulling inwards, your tires will mostly be sheared so that they will bias outwards. If you're driving a RWD car, it will move the back of the car towards the outside of the turn. FWD will move the front of the car towards the outside of the turn (understeer... bad).

In reality, you don't even need that much torque from your engine to do it, but your alignment settings in the rear make a fair amount of difference as to how your car will power over. Most notably your rear toe setting.

If you're asking HOW to do it... just go into a turn and increase throttle input.

[Nismo_Freak]

This is of course assuming that you don't have really stiff springs. If you do, then doing this is pointless as your car will not dive.

"Throttle steer" is a fairly general term for it. In most cases where it's a good thing, it's power oversteering. However, power oversteering doesn't mean you need to lose traction. Basically, as you turn in a corner, various shearing forces act on your tire due to the centripetal force being applied to your vehicle, and then when torque is applied linearly to the tire it begins to follow a non-straight path. As centripetal force is pulling inwards, your tires will mostly be sheared so that they will bias outwards. If you're driving a RWD car, it will move the back of the car towards the outside of the turn. FWD will move the front of the car towards the outside of the turn (understeer... bad).

In reality, you don't even need that much torque from your engine to do it, but your alignment settings in the rear make a fair amount of difference as to how your car will power over. Most notably your rear toe setting.

If you're asking HOW to do it... just go into a turn and increase throttle input.

Stiff springs has nothing to do with left foot braking. My NX has 1/4th the spring rate of my 240SX and it acts the same way.