Wild FPV Concept Car Given Green Light to Drift
Motoring
Channel Staff - 17/May/2006
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FPV DRIF6 Drift Car
With 700 Newton meters of power on tap, the
DRIF6 should be suited to power over drifting
Drifting... What's the Point?The
point? This emerging motor sport discipline is more about style than anything else - and smoke, and
getting sideways; three of our favourite things at the Motoring
Channel! Two competitors usually line up and must take to a number of corners,
sometimes half-a-dozen various bends depending on the course, and for
the Drift Australia series, points are awarded to drivers who attain
the best speed, the acutest angles of slide and who produces the largest
amount of tyre smoke. In essence, the harder you drive, the more points
you'll get. For some info on the various moves available to drifters, such as the Manji Drift and Jump Drift, see the breakout panel at the bottom of the page. Drifting is not so much about crossing the line first (though it can help), it's about
technical driving and providing a spectacle, and with drivers judged on things like how much
smoke they produce, you can guarantee that the spectators will get
their monies worth watching this dynamic sport. -
Feann Torr, Editor |
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Originally it was just for show, but now Ford
Performance Vehicles (FPV) has given the wild DRIF6 race
car, based on the FPV F6 Typhoon sports sedan, the green light for
its competitive debut. The
highly modified F6, powered by a turbocharged, intercooled 4.0-litre
inline 6-cylinder engine, will compete in the opening round of the
Drift Australia national championship at South Australia's Mallala
circuit on May 27-28, confirms FPV. FPV explains that the highly
charged 380kW DRIF6 concept car will make its official competition
debut with one of Australia's leading Drift drivers, 23-year-old
Victorian Adam Newton. "Ford Performance Vehicles stirred up a
hornet's nest when it revealed the DRIF6 concept car at the FPV Open
Day earlier this year," Newton said. "It has generated a lot of
interest and lifted the profile of the sport to unprecedented levels
– and that was before it even hit the track. The car has all the
right ingredients for success, and I am excited to have been given the
opportunity to debut the FPV DRIF6 in the Drift Australia series,"
enthused young Newton. "I will be giving it everything I have to
put on a great show for the crowds, and we will see where we end up at
the end of the weekend." A lot of pressure is on Adam Newton to perform at the opening round of the Drift Australia national
championship in South Australia in late May, but he has
been involved in Drifting in Australia for more than four years, both
as a competitor and event organiser, and is credited as one of the
driving forces in raising the profile and professionalism of the sport,
explains FPV. Drifting is a spectacular new form of motor racing
with a knockout system of two-car battles in which drivers perform a
routine of rally-style slides through a series of turns on a race
track. Points are awarded for speed, the angle of the slide and the
car's ability to produce tyre smoke. FPV's DRIF6 was built by a
team of dedicated engineers and technicians at FPV’s
Campbellfield facility with the assistance and support of a number of
key suppliers, including Prodrive, Castrol EDGE, Bilstein, Autotek, HIS
Hoses, Robinson Racing Developments, Revolution Racegear and Dunlop. FPV
explains that at the heart of the DRIF6 project is an upgraded
4.0-litre turbocharged inline 6-cylinder engine with modifications made
to increase the efficiency of the turbo system and to boost power and
torque. The F6 Typhoon normally outputs 270kW and 550Nm of
torque, but the DRIF6 generates more than 500 horsepower, which is
380kW of power, and some 700Nm of torque. That's a 110kW and 150Nm
increase over what is already a very rapid performance sedan. Modification
made to the car in order to make it a real drifter include a
significantly larger intercooler (600mm x 300mm x 75mm)
with a revised induction system that features a ram air box taking air
from where the fog light is normally located on the production car.
There's also a hand made plenum manifold replacing the individual
inlet runners, a modified engine management system calibration and
3-inch straight through exhaust system with side outlet. In
drifting, the braking systems are integral to car's drifting abilities,
and DRIF6 features big Brembo brakes (optionally available on the
F6 Typhoon) with 355mm front and 330mm rear cross-drilled and pillar
ventilated rotors and six-piston monoblock front calliper and
four-piston rear callipers. Furthermore, it has been modified
especially for Drifting
with high quality braided hoses, a brake proportioning valve and a
WRC-style hydraulic handbrake for rapid E-Braking manoeuvres. The
transmission has an upgraded Tremec T-56 close-ratio 6-speed gearbox
and AP racing twin-plate clutch driving the rear wheels through a
locked differential with a 3.73:1 final drive ratio. FPV has also revealed that Bilstein,
one of the world's leading suspension manufacturers, will support the
DRIF6 project with a hand-built suspension system including
fully-adjustable coil over dampers and stiffer anti-roll bars. The
cockpit of DRIF6 has been stripped and replaced with world-class MOMO
racing seats and racing harnesses, MOMO steering wheel, MOMO gearknob
and a variety of ancillary gauges by VDO and Autron. These include a
monster VDO tacho on the dash located in line with the twin-pod sport
gauges that display oil temperature and turbo boost pressure, A-pillar
mounted gauges to display volts and cabin temperature and
Autron’s latest high-tech tyre-press monitoring system located at
the base of the Interior Command Centre. The cockpit also has a
racing-style roll cage to increase the car's rigidity (and safety
levels) and rides on 19-inch five-spoke alloy wheels fitted with245/35 ZR19 rubber.
Drifting TechniquesPower Over Drift: Essentially
throttle-induced drift - you need big horsepower to make this work.
Enter a corner lightly, then turn the steering wheel sharply and floor
the throttle. Your highly boosted turbo drift machine should spin up
the rear wheels, forcing the car to oversteer, and you'll often have to
counter steer into the slide to prevent the car from spinning right
around (see DRIF6 image above for counter steering in action). Dirt Drop Drift: As
the name suggests, you simply drop a rear wheel off the sealed surface
of the racetrack and on to the dirt, which can initiate a Power Over
Drift, and is sometimes used by lower powered cars to begin drifts. Jump Drift: Sometimes frowned
up (but often a crowd favourite) this manoeuvre involves swinging the
rear end of the car over a ripple-strip/kerb, which pops the rear end
in to the air and often skids about when it lands, potentially inducing
oversteer. Kansei Drift: This
technique can only really be applied during high speed approaches, or
"race speeds" as some refer to them. It's a difficult technique to
master and simply involves lifting off the throttle after you've been
screaming ahead at full speed, and as the weight shifts from the rear
to the front of the car, you turn the tiller and the rear should start
to slide as inertia does its thing. Balancing and maintaining the
drift via the throttle and steering wheel is the tricky part,
particularly because your speeds will be higher. E-Brake Drift: When you need a
quick slide simply yank the hand brake (a.k.a. emergency brake) to
break traction at the rear (most hand brakes work the rear wheels).
This move is a necessity for FWD drift cars and is often used to
correct angles and alter slide attitudes after they've began, rather than to initiate them.
Shift Lock Drift: Using
the gearbox to lock the rear wheels and break traction, it's kind of
like E-Bake Drifting. Just before you arrive at a corner, drop a gear
or two so engine reaches high revs, and as you release the clutch the
rear wheels should lock up, breaking traction. Can shag your engine
pretty quickly though... Manji Drift: If
the drift course you've been given contains a lot of straights the
Manji Drift, sometimes called the Swaying Drift, is the way to go. It
involves cranking the car left to right along a straight section of
track to induce rapid left-right drifts and plenty of smoke. |
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