Inducing Oversteer

Exercise Overview

This drill focuses on intentionally inducing oversteer and practicing oversteer corrections. The exercise begins with a warm-up and setting up an active reset at the start of the lap. The primary objective is to deliberately slide the car and catch it, building essential muscle memory and understanding of vehicle dynamics.

The Importance of Sharp Corrections

While many aspects of driving require smoothness—such as lines, initial inputs, trail braking, and throttle application—oversteer corrections are fundamentally different. Oversteer corrections must be sharp, quick, and highly reactive rather than smooth. This exercise develops the muscle memory needed to quickly catch oversteer and helps you understand how easily oversteer can be induced in different situations.

Technique for Inducing Oversteer

To properly induce a slide, you need a combination of minimal steering input with firmer hands and trail braking. There is a common misconception that sliding requires flicking the steering wheel. However, even in an oversteer-biased car setup, quickly flicking the steering will result in understeer, not oversteer.

The correct technique involves:

• Using very little steering input—barely turning at all

• Applying trail braking pressure

• Maintaining slightly firmer hands on the wheel

• Giving grip to the front tires while reducing rear tire grip

The key principle is to give love to the front tires by providing them with more grip, which simultaneously reduces grip at the rear tires and allows the slide to occur.

Exercise Execution

Your objective is straightforward: induce a slide and catch it. You can practice this at various points during a corner:

• On corner entry using trail braking

• On power application mid-corner or at corner exit

• At different speeds and in different corner types

If you spin multiple times initially, this is completely fine and actually beneficial—it provides valuable information to learn from. The catching motion must be fast. As soon as you start losing the car, you must quickly apply the correction.

Timing and Positioning Tips

For this exercise specifically, it is better to turn in slightly later than normal. This allows you to point the car and have sufficient room on the inside to experience and manage the oversteer. If you turn in at the normal point, you may induce oversteer toward the inside of the corner, which limits the usefulness of the exercise. By turning in later, you create space to slide and still benefit from the practice.

Brake Pressure Variation

Experimenting with brake pressure reveals important dynamics:

• Using approximately 30% brakes with minimal steering input can easily induce a slide

• Using less brake pressure makes inducing oversteer more difficult, as there is insufficient weight transfer to the front tires

• More brake pressure increases the ease of inducing oversteer

The ultimate objective is not to crash but to slide while staying on track, developing your ability to control the car through slides without losing control of your trajectory.

Corner-Specific Characteristics

Different corners present varying levels of difficulty for inducing and catching slides:

Easiest Locations to Slide

• Initial turn-in at corner entry—the easiest place to slide a car

• First and final corner entries under braking

Most Difficult Locations

• Mid-corner, where you need more brake pressure to induce a slide

• Low-speed corners under hard braking

• The last corner and first corner present the greatest challenge and require significant reaction time to keep the car on track

When the car is understeering mid-corner and you attempt to induce oversteer, you may simply continue to understeer depending on the setup.

Learning Outcomes

Through this exercise, you will gain comprehensive understanding of:

• Trail braking dynamics and weight transfer

• Corner entry behavior and grip limits

• Where it is easier or more difficult to induce slides

• How to prevent accidental oversteer in real driving situations

• The balance between steering input, brake pressure, and oversteer tendency

Exercise Completion Goal

The exercise is complete when you are comfortable enough to slide in all corners without spinning, crashing, or running off track. Practice sliding around and have fun with it—the playful exploration of vehicle balance is extremely useful for developing advanced car control skills. Once you can consistently maintain control through slides in all corners of the track, you are ready to progress to the next exercise.