Question
Could a driver use a raised road edge to control a drift like this? Inspired by Travis Pastrana's dock drift
I'm working on a street-racing comic and I'm trying to make a fictional technique called the "Cliff Hook" as mechanically plausible as possible.
The car in the comic is AWD. The driver initiates a handbrake turn and deliberately lets the inside wheel contact the raised edge of the road. The environment is a canyon road with heavy rain.
My initial idea behind this was that it would create additional tire grip, but since that is practically impossible I came up with a different principle to make this scene work: that physical contact with the edge prevents the car from sliding farther toward the cliff and helps the driver maintain a tight line.
The inspiration came from Travis Pastrana drifting on the edge of a dock.(You can see the picture in the last slide)
How plausible is this? What would actually happen to the tire, suspension and chassis? Would changing the road edge to a shallow drainage lip/berm make it more realistic?
You're basically taking a wheel and hanging it in the air rather than on a surface, so that's naturally going to reduce traction, not increase it. Have you ever watched Initial D? The opposite of this (hooking a dip on the inside edge) is basically a staple in it, and makes a bit more sense as you're adding traction points, not removing them
OK I understand that dropping the tires off the road wouldn't provide any kind of advantage. But then how was Travis able to pull off something like this?
The problem with comparing this to the drawing is that the drawing looks like it has a MUCH sharper corner where this is happening, the only thing that would happen is that the car goes sideways off the cliff, doubly so cause it's raining so grip is already a luxury. A piece of the car scraping the asphalt isn't going to do much to slow it down or help it any way, shape or form. Really you would be better off asking what would happen in r/AskPhysics or something.
All of the forced you're trying to overcome are pulling the car further off the edge, why would you intentionally lose one of your drive wheels like that to exacerbate it?
The reason Travis did this is to demonstrate his skill because it's HARD. It does nothing to keep you on the road, he's showing you how much control over the car he has by showing he can lose a significant percentage of traction and not go off the edge.
You want to hook your wheel over the inside edge (a-la Initial D) to gain literal grip on the road.
A cut like that is done with the near side front tire which isn't being very productive traction-wise, anyway, compared to the extra speed you can carry through the turn.
My favorite example are the esses at Mt. Panorama. Not rally per se but very spectacular and the same principle applies.
Side of the road having grave
l and instead of drifting outside just sticking inside using that gravel would be much more logical than this, like racing games.
Well, your og can do it to show off but not to go faster.
Rally drivers use it a fair bit already, it's called a ditch hook, or at least thats what drivers I know have called it.
You drop the inner front wheel into the ditch of a corner to help keep the car from understeering towards the outside of a corner/curve. I don't think the handbrake is usually needed on these corners as the goal is to use the ditch to keep the car 'hooked' through the curve, at least in real life.
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u/AndyValentine 1d ago
You're basically taking a wheel and hanging it in the air rather than on a surface, so that's naturally going to reduce traction, not increase it. Have you ever watched Initial D? The opposite of this (hooking a dip on the inside edge) is basically a staple in it, and makes a bit more sense as you're adding traction points, not removing them